Legal Stuff...

Ari was born on December 23rd, at 9:13pm. If she had even been born a few hours earlier, we would have been able to contact the court and have a judge on-call for Tuesday. But as it stands she has had a nice long hospital stay. We are grateful that it has not been medically warranted.
We met with our lawyer yesterday and are beginning to understand the process better. We will go to court tomorrow morning, where if everything goes well, we will be granted temporary custody of Arianna. We will then be able to go back to the hospital and have her discharged to us. The next steps depend largely on the birth father, who to this point has not consented to the adoption. If all goes well we will go back to court at the end of June to have the adoption finalized. At finalization we will receive a new birth certificate.
Advice to Adoptive parents:

• have your lawyers cell phone number, pressure him for it if you have to...
  
• have your bags packed early!
• have a good relationship with the birth mother and her family if possible
• make sure you keep all your paperwork and receipts for everything, you will never know when you need them (even though they will keep telling you, you don't need anything)
• know the court process for the county you will be filing in...each county is different, and each judge is different
• make sure you give the birth mother the space she needs after having the baby

  

We will have more advice and thoughts as we go through this process!