It begins. Finally. Maybe?

I got a text this evening from Anna.

She's in the hospital. She'll be having (relatively minor, but unplanned) surgery tomorrow and will be out for about a week. She wanted to tell me what she knew and give me her supervisor's contact information as her supervisor will be covering for her while she's recovering from the surgery.

What she knew: C is expected to stay in the hospital for one more week. Kayla plans to surrender rights (already!?), so CPS may take custody tomorrow. (They usually wait until discharge to take custody, probably for budget reasons, unless they need to prevent the parent from visiting the child in the hospital.) If they do take custody tomorrow, we might be approved to go visit C in the hospital between then and discharge. The supervisor (let's call him Tom) will be talking to the county caseworker tomorrow to get more information.

I responded thanking her and telling her to quit worrying about us. (Can I just take this moment to say something that I hate hearing? I could never do Anna's job. I can't imagine being in the hospital and having to contact a bunch of people individually to tell them about it because my job required personal connections with so many and was so time-dependent that it wouldn't work to send out a blanket email: "I will be unavailable from x date to y date for personal reasons. Contact my supervisor if you need something before I get back.") She asked me to keep her posted.

I just texted the supervisor because I had one question I wanted to ask before he talks to the county caseworker. Kayla is surrendering; what about biodad? I'd be shocked if he makes a different decision with this child than he did with Lucy, but you never know. Regardless, do we have to wait out another DNA test?

My plan is to wait until about mid-day tomorrow before calling Tom to follow up. Until then....I'm feeling kind of...frozen. I want to leap into prep work with energy -- get the beds set up, pull out the baby clothing, put our support network on notice. But I don't think I can really do that until after we hear tomorrow's update. We haven't even told the kids yet.

So many questions. Surrendering already...does this mean no visits? No case plan? Do we go straight  to an adoption worker? How unheard of is this?!

Lucy's case was fast. This one? Sounds like it could be even faster.