Brian Wildmo and Brad Mahon have adopted a newborn baby and they’re crediting Facebook with making it happen.
“We never expected this,” Brian told WJRT. “We keep having to pinch ourselves because I feel like we’ve been in a movie.”
The Michigan couple had been fostering for a year when they decided to adopt a baby. To help them get the word out, they created a Facebook page and started networking.
One day, Brian, a nurse, and Brad, an emergency medical technician, posted a link to their page on an online nurses support group they belonged to.
“Somebody saw it and connected us,” Brian said.
But after getting in touch with an expectant mother in Missouri who had an adoption plan, they lost contact with her about a month before her due date.
They figured the relationship was over until one day they got a call that the woman was in labour and had chosen them to be parents of her baby.
“Social networking is just so powerful,” Brad explained. “That’s how it happened.”
While Brian headed to Missouri to meet their new daughter, driving 12 hours through the night and being up for 36 hours straight, Brad stayed behind in Michigan so he could reunite their foster child with her birth mother.
Brad eventually arrived in Missouri to meet their daughter, whom they named Kennedy. There a judge signed off on their adoption, making Brian and Brad her legal parents.
Source: Brian and Brad’s Adoption Journey
The couple credits social media with bringing Kennedy’s birth family and them together. But they also say that patience played a big part in their story.
“Everyone’s really excited,” they said.
One of the mantras that adoption professionals tell waiting parents is to stay active on social media and let everyone know that you’re adopting.
After all, you never know who will come across your profile or, as Brian and Brad’s story has demonstrated, how they’ll find you.
“Wow, what a crazy story,“ they wrote in their baby book. “We found your mother on a website called Facebook.”
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