The Secret Origin of Casey

Cole and I have been watching the original 1967 Animated Spider-Man series on DVD lately (via our Netflicks subscription) and the latest episode we watched was titled "The Secret Origin of Spider-Man". Hence the name of this article... Casey's secret origin does not involve radio-active spiders or the planet Krypton, but is still interesting. I thought to tell it because we keep bumping into people on Saipan who ask us whose baby that is, and when we reply that it is ours, they give us a very puzzled look, especially at Maria, and say that they didn't know that she had been pregnant (weren't you playing soccer a few weeks ago?).

Casey's story (for us) started just a couple of months ago. The first week of March, while my college roommate Quinn from Houston was visiting us on Saipan, our housekeeper Mary told us that a friend of hers was pregnant and wanted to know if we wanted to adopt the baby. Maria and I didn't know what to say, but we agreed to meet with the Mary's friend to find out more information (if nothing else, maybe there was something we could do to help out). I was expecting Mary's friend to be a young, immature women, who probably hadn't thought through all the consequences of giving up a child, cutting those relationships, possibly forever. What we found though, when we met her, was a mature women of 40 years old, who had done some very serious thinking about her future and the future of her baby. She is unmarried (with a boyfriend that had recently become unemployed), already has a 16 year old daughter in the Philippenes that she is supporting and sending through school, and cannot start raising another family at this point in her life, especially since she is employed as a housekeeper and is busy raising other peoples' children.

It didn't take much convincing for either Maria or me to decide to pursue the adoption. We had already discussed the possibility of adopting about a year ago and so were somewhat mentally prepared, or a least mentally pre-prepared. We hired a lawyer on Saipan that had done this type of adoption before (with his own kids actually), and we took Mary's friend to her first prenatal doctors's visit. Mary's friend had thought that the baby was probably due sometime in July, but an ultrasound pegged the due date at May 21 (a later ultrasound revised the date to May 29). That wasn't that far off! We had our lawyer draft up all the paperwork, and we continued taking the mother to check-ups every two weeks, then every week once we got closer to the due date.

Over the past three months we have gotten to know the mother much better, and we expect that we will keep in some kind of contact with her, even after the adoption is legally finalized. She is a very intellegent women with a good sense of humor and we can see no harm in Casey meeting his biological mother. Time will tell whether she decides to keep in contact or not.

We still have several steps to go before the adoption is final. We currently have documents signed by the biological parents giving us the "custody agreement and power of attorney" over the baby, and their "consent to the adoption". Next we have to request a court hearing and file a "petition for adoption" with the court.

So that is the story of the Secret Origin of Casey.... ~Derek

For more Casey photos see: http://picasaweb.google.com/bwana.derek/CaseyWeek2