While You Were Gone: Adoption

The nursery is perfectly appointed, from the Humpty Dumpty lamps on the bedside tables, to the armchair by the window. The only thing missing now is the baby that Elizabeth Speigle and her husband Captain Hiram Augusto Centeno Justiniano have been waiting years to meet. The couple was ready to be adoptive parents, even when they learned their baby would arrive while Augusto is deployed in Afghanistan with Virginia National Guard’s Virginia Beach-based 529th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion. Just weeks before her due date, the birth mother decided to pull out of the adoption process.

“You are only given as much as you can handle,” says Elizabeth. With the nursery ready and parenting classes completed, she checks the adoption site dozens of times a day, hoping for a match that might start the process all over again. “I fell in love with that baby from day one. Especially with domestic adoptions, you decide what your threshold is for risk and you take it. When I found out we’d lost her, I was sad and I was angry, but Augusto says that we need to be patient. Someday, our baby will come along.”