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Matthew Smith and Trey Darnell

JOHNSON CITY, TENNESSEE

Hello! We are Matthew and Trey from Johnson City, Tennessee. We are the second-most famous Matt-and-Trey combo in the United States. First place belongs to Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park and The Book of Mormon. Our spot in second place status is secured just ahead of the Matt-and-Trey serving team at one of our local dining establishments.

Matt was born in Glendora, California and is employed as a registered nurse. I am a native of Kingsport, Tennessee and flying high as a commercial airline captain. Our story as a same-sex couple began in 2007 through the power of social media. A connection sparked over a picture of Matthew standing in front of a fast food restaurant. Matthew and I are best friends. We are very competitive with each other and laugh a lot.

In August 2012, while on a road trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, Matthew and I decided to take our relationship from “two is company” to “three is a crowd.” We already had the usual criteria before starting a family: solid careers, a large enough home, a big yard and financial stability. So there we were, staying at an inn in Charlotte, when we looked at each other and said, “Let’s adopt!”

When someone wants to learn more about a specific topic, what do they do? Look it up online! We did our due diligence that night in researching the process of adopting, possible agencies and the differences in open and closed adoptions. Matthew and I decided to pursue an adoption over a surrogacy to prevent the dilemma of which one of us would be the biological father. We are indecisive when trying to decide where to have dinner; we could only imagine the process of deciding who would be the sperm donor. E-mails and information requests allowed the excitement to build. At this point, it was way past midnight and we needed sleep before our return home the next morning.

While still feeling the euphoria of all the positive information we had obtained from our online research, we didn’t just float back to Earth; we came crashing down. Matthew and I soon received the following e-mail from a prominent domestic adoption agency:

Mr. Darnell,

Thanks for asking about our Domestic Program…Our agency has not proved to be the best fit for same-sex couples as the birthparents looking to make an adoption plan for their child through [the agency] are overwhelmingly looking for more traditional married couples to place with. That tends to be the reason they come to our agency…I certainly do not wish to mislead you or “just take your money” when the chances of receiving a placement would be unlikely.

A traditional married couple? There was no way we would ever fit into that category. Our state did not recognize marriages, civil unions or domestic partnerships of same-sex couples at that time. Questions of doubt started to form. What were people going to think and say? The e-mail was not meant to be hurtful, but it was successful in being destructive.

Now what? How does one go from a pessimistic view to a very optimistic attitude? Go on vacation! So we took a weekend trip to Atlanta, Georgia, to attend a free informational session offered by a large adoption agency. We were both surprised to learn that it was also the same weekend of Atlanta Gay Pride. I personally had never been to a gay pride event before. Did you know the group Dykes on Bikes always starts a gay pride parade? I can honestly say that weekend with the agency and the events changed everything for us.

As a same-sex couple, Matthew and I had the unique opportunity to share our story of growing a family through adoption. Instead of marketing ourselves as a couple hoping to adopt, we were given a platform to promote gay couples parenting in general. There has never been a greater moment than now for us to open up about our lives. As each day passes, equal rights for LGBT individuals are growing. Now is the time for us to share and to speak. When we started the adoption process, it was our hope to expand our family with a child and now we are able to help spread the positive message of gay parenting.

When we wrote the first draft of our profile letter, it was twice as long as our agency recommended. It is very difficult to condense everything you want to say into fewer than one thousand words. Our adoption profile was approved for viewing by expecting parents the week before Christmas in 2012. At that particular time, the average waiting period for a same-sex couple was fifteen months, though we were both well aware that our wait could end up being shorter or much longer than that.

Matthew and I had decided to promote ourselves as a couple in every way possible for six months and then take a step back and evaluate our approach. Over the next couple of weeks, we had a few contacts from potential birthmothers. All of them we considered to be emotional scams. Every waiting family is aware of the risks that adoption can bring. In most cases, families get angry with these particular situations, but we chose to use them as practice experiences to get over the nerves of talking to pregnant women.

In March 2013, we received a text message on our designated adoption cell phone number. We were both just coincidentally looking at the phone when the text was received. It said, “How do you feel about twins?” We were stunned, giddy and nervous. We had always been open to the idea of twins. Over the next couple of weeks, we talked to this particular expecting mother and all three of us seemed to hit it off very well. There were so many similarities: She was a registered nurse in Labor and Delivery and liked most of the same things we did. We had several phone conversations with her and learned that she had contacted our adoption agency and that she was also speaking to another family as well. Matthew and I both felt like this was the right match for us.

This birthmother was very cautious about the adoption process and had several specific concerns. She was mostly terrified that once the adoption occurred, the adoptive parents and her twin girls would disappear. There was only one state, California, in which open adoption agreements were considered legally enforceable. In all other states, they were primarily promises.

While talking to the mother of the twins, we missed another incoming text message. Since we didn’t respond to the text within a couple of hours, we then received a call on the toll-free telephone number that was listed on our adoption profile. When someone dialed the number, Matthew and I received simultaneous calls on our personal cell phones, as well as the house phone. Needless to say, when all three phones rang at the same time, we started to panic.

This phone call was from the mother of an expecting father in Texas. She asked many questions and I felt an instant connection with her. We had come to a crossroad. Matthew and I liked both situations. The twins were due in June and the Texas baby was due in September. We decided to continue with both possibilities for the time being.

Over the next several days, we knew the Texas situation was moving fast and would probably result in a match very soon. We presented both situations to our adoption coordinator and asked for advice. It became apparent that we needed to disclose the Texas situation to the mother of the twins.

It was a very hard and emotional conversation. The mother of the twins was devastated. At that point, she was still determining whether she would parent or place her twin girls. She wanted us to parent if she chose not to, but she said it would break her heart to prevent us from matching with this other expecting couple. She insisted she would not stand in the way of us becoming dads. It was very difficult to end this potential situation, but when we received an e-mail including a sonogram photo from Mercy and Dylan, the expecting parents in Texas, we knew this was our perfect match. Mercy mentioned in the e-mail that the baby looked like a T-Rex.

Matthew and I matched with Mercy and Dylan on April 10, 2013. I still have the voicemail saved on my phone. Mercy had just entered her second trimester at that time, so we fit into the category of a long match. This meant we had the opportunity to be present for a majority of the pregnancy and build a strong foundation for our relationship that would last a lifetime.

A few weeks after we matched, it was time to determine the sex of baby T-Rex. Matthew was working the day we were supposed to find out, so I purchased two balloons: one pink and one blue. Then I waited outside of the hospital where Matthew was working. The next sixty minutes seemed to take hours. Finally, Mercy sent a wonderful text message that caught me completely off guard:

It’s a girl. YAY!

I grabbed the pink balloon, quickly entered the hospital and got in the elevator. As I exited the elevator and looked to the left, I saw Matthew working on the computer at the nurses’ station. I had the pink balloon hidden behind my back. Before he had time to say anything, I presented the balloon to him. We were able to enjoy that moment together after it had unfolded over one thousand miles away.

Soon the time came for us to travel west and meet Mercy and Dylan in person. Near the end of May, we said goodbye to our cats and flew out to Texas. Our flight arrived in Dallas and then we rented a car to make the three-hour drive to the town of Abilene.

Matthew and I dealt with a lot of stress leading up to that meeting. It seemed to escalate while driving to Abilene. We were overly excited and nervous to meet the expecting mother and father for the first time. The moments leading up to the meeting felt like a first date after building a foundation of communication with them over the past month.

A counselor from our agency was there to facilitate the match meeting. He had reserved the children’s activity room at a library for everyone to get together, but there was not much about this exceptionally large space that indicated either children or activity. It was full of six-foot tables and chairs and did not have that small, quaint feeling we had hoped for. Matthew and I picked a table in the middle of the room and allowed our anticipation and nerves to grow even more.

Before long, we heard a library representative tell someone, “The activity room is located in the back.” Mercy and Dylan were here. I’m pretty sure Matthew and I both stopped breathing. As the expecting mother and father seated themselves across from us, Matthew quickly stated what I think everyone was feeling: “I know we are all extremely nervous.” With that, the ice had been broken. Questions were then posed to both couples and with each answer the meeting seemed to get more and more comfortable.

Thirty minutes quickly turned into an hour and a half. During that time, we learned about Mercy and Dylan both as individuals and as a couple. Looking back on the match meeting, all of the stress left as we said goodbye to the counselor and began our weekend in Abilene with Mercy and Dylan. I’m thankful for those anxieties, though, as they allowed us to be aware of this truly memorable moment and made us more prepared for the spectacular time that was in our near future.

Over the next few days, Matthew and I were welcomed into an energetic, funny and loving family. We were able to spend time with parents, grandparents, siblings and cousins. Each and every one of them made an extra effort to show their support for us as a couple and the potential adoptive parents of their future daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, niece and cousin. We listened to stories and told a few of our own. A couple of the stories were somewhat embarrassing, but we learned about Mercy and Dylan’s family and they learned about us. There was a lot of laughter all around. Some family members commuted from hours away and everyone made sure they had ample time off from work to meet and support Mercy, Dylan, Matthew and me. We felt so welcomed and loved by this family and were extremely excited to merge them with ours.

The final night was marked by an epic family barbeque—Texas style, complete with cloth napkins, table decorations and a metal T-Rex sculpture. The menu included brisket, baby back ribs, sausage and jalapeño peppers stuffed with cream cheese, wrapped in bacon and then grilled to perfection. The evening was certainly a celebration, a family celebration that Matthew and I were a part of. There was not a better way to end our visit to Abilene than by enjoying each other’s company after a terrific Texas family BBQ.

I have to admit it was a little emotional saying goodbye to everyone that night. Over the past three days, it felt like we were already a part of their family. But luckily, Matthew and I knew that this goodbye was only for a short period of time: In just a few months, Baby T-Rex would make her arrival. We were extremely excited about what the future held for our entire family, which had now grown much larger.

As the summer quickly started to fade, we knew it could be weeks or merely days before we had to make the 1,128-mile trip back to Abilene for the birth of Baby T-Rex. When you’re on “baby time,” there are no easy planning or travel solutions. Blogs, books, lists, parenting forums and workshops do not prepare you for getting a phone call saying the expecting mom is at the hospital with contractions and you are over a thousand miles away.

As we entered the last five weeks of pregnancy, Matthew and I worked through several available options to get us to the hospital as quickly as possible. We had tentative travel plans to arrive in Abilene a week before the due date. But what if the baby decided to make her appearance sooner? There was an alternative plan in place for that: One of us would be on the first available flight and the other would drive. We also made arrangements for our cats, mowing the lawn and anything else we could think of. The goal was to have everything packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice by mid-August.

It was the second Thursday in August when we received the news that Mercy’s labor could be imminent. I hate to admit it, but Matthew and I were definitely caught off guard. It seemed as if clothing, baby clothes, diapers, cameras and cats were flying in every direction. The car was packed full with what felt like half our house and a car seat was securely in place. Everything happened extremely fast. Anxiety and excitement took complete control.

On this particular Thursday, travel by air wasn’t an option, so Matthew and I both buckled in and began the seventeen-hour drive to Texas. We received numerous text updates from Mercy’s family throughout the evening. The miles were slowly ticking off. I swore the odometer was not working correctly. Our late night turned into early morning and there had been no change in Mercy’s condition. When we reached Memphis, Tennessee, we decided to stop and get some much-needed sleep.

As the sun rose on a hot and humid Friday morning in west Tennessee, we learned that Mercy’s imminent labor was a false alarm. The expecting mother had a stalled labor and was now receiving medication to stop the contractions. Everyone was grateful that she was resting comfortably. Matthew and I took a deep breath, smiled and buckled in for our trip back home.

After arriving in Johnson City and unpacking the car, we began creating a staging area in our guest bedroom for everything we wanted to take with us on the real trip. Bags and containers were unpacked and repacked more efficiently. The false alarm had been a practice drill that we were able to learn from. Without question, it was an exhausting twenty-four hours, but we made sure that we were better prepared for the next call. Now Matthew and I were ready to leave at any given moment.

Monday, August 19, 2013, started just like any other day. It was business as usual and we were still anxiously awaiting the arrival of Baby T-Rex. Only ten days had passed since our false-alarm trip across the state of Tennessee. Travel plans were being finalized and time away from work had been scheduled. Only twenty-three days until the due date. Then everything completely changed with four text messages:

Dilated 6

We are on our way to labor and delivery

We are having baby tonight

Wahoo

Reading those four messages created feelings of anxiety, excitement and stress. The baby was coming tonight? Seriously? My first phone call was to Matthew while he was still at work. When he answered, I could only muster up a three-word phrase: “Leave work now!”

The next hour included packing clothes, stacking up bags and crates in the car, checking on available flights to Texas, calling our parents and waiting for Matthew to make the thirty-minute drive home from work. We had already experienced our practice drill, so we were prepared to leave as quickly as possible. All in all, it took ninety minutes from the phone call to when we pulled out of the driveway. As the garage door was closing, I thought to myself, The next time it opens, we’ll have our daughter with us and be a family of three.

Matthew and I had barely driven fifty miles before we were hit with the reality of just how long it was going to take to get to Texas. The GPS indicated that we still had seventeen hours to go. In the past, we had talked about listening to an audiobook together, so what better time to try one than now? A quick stop at a bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I was already over the idea. I hadn’t even heard of half the books available. One of the few titles we recognized was The Help, so forty-nine dollars later and we were back on the road. By Disc 1, Track 3, I was already lost and had no idea what was happening in the story. We had seen the movie while it was still playing in theaters and yet I couldn’t even keep up with someone reading the story to me. This was going to be a long trip.

The miles seemed to pass slowly and the chapters of the book even slower. We both regularly checked our phones for updates from the labor and delivery floor at the hospital. The current plan was to induce Mercy at 8:00 A.M. the next morning. Our GPS indicated that if we continued to drive through the night, we would arrive at 9:15 A.M. Everything appeared to be happening in our favor. Then we received a text message saying that the medical staff had broken Mercy’s water. What? We had just driven through Nashville, Tennessee, and still had hundreds of miles to go.

Less than two hours later, as we were speeding toward the Tennessee state line, we received two more text messages:

Hopefully she won’t have to push for long

Liz says she is done

The baby was here? We were dads! Matthew and I needed a moment to process this, so we took the next available exit off I-40 in Jackson, Tennessee, to fill the car up with gasoline and grab a quick bite to eat.

As I was sitting down with my food, my phone vibrated with another text message. This time it was a small image. It had to be a picture of our daughter. I held off looking at the picture until Matthew seated himself next to me in the booth. We clicked the image and it grew bigger. There she was! The very first picture of our daughter. Reminiscing about that moment still gets me a little choked up: two guys, same side of the booth, looking at a phone and getting very emotional at a fast food restaurant in Jackson, Tennessee. It was definitely a head turner.

After discarding the half-eaten fast food, we hopped back in the car and continued to process everything that was happening. Matthew drove around to the back of the building and that’s when the tears began to flow. Our world had just changed forever. It was very tough to let that reality sink in. There was definitely some sadness about missing her birth, but we were still happy and very excited. It was hard to believe the baby was finally here. We really wanted to be at the hospital with Mercy and Dylan, but were elated that both mother and baby were doing fine.

Before pulling back onto the interstate, we got all of the information that any parent should be able to rattle off to a random stranger. Harper Wade Darnell was born August 19, 2013, at 8:24 P.M. She weighed 5 pounds, 9.6 ounces and was 18.5 inches long. Harper was given my last name. Her middle name is the last name of one of Matthew’s great grandmothers.

Exhaustion had set in. It was well past midnight by the time we crossed into Arkansas. My excitement—or lack thereof—for The Help had not changed. I found myself constantly checking the CD info display. Disc 5, Track 13. Sigh…We were barely able to keep our eyes open, so we chose to stop for a brief nap and a refreshing shower.

Our alarm went off at 6:00 A.M. the next morning and it was time to start the day. Excitement and nerves were overpowering: We were anxious to meet our new baby girl. We had five hundred miles left to go and I immediately wondered if Matthew had forgotten about The Help. No such luck! Disc 6.

Arkadelphia, Texarkana, Dallas…Abilene! Eight hours later, we could see the hospital. We had finally arrived. I have to admit we were very worried about what we would encounter during the hospital stay. Matthew and I had heard about the unpredictable hospital adventures of other families adopting a newborn. Some had great experiences, but some had horrible ones. A same-sex couple adopting in Texas did not sound too positive. As the elevator doors slowly opened with the sound of metal rubbing against metal, we had no idea what to expect. The hospital episode had started.

Walking down the hall to Mercy’s room, we were greeted by many of the nursing staff. They were eager to give us the armbands that allowed unrestricted access to our baby and tried to contain their excitement while asking about our drive. I refrained from mentioning The Help. One of the nurses finally apologized and stated that we probably wanted to meet the little girl. We did! As we quickly continued on toward Mercy’s room, Dylan’s mom appeared in the hallway. Her smile immediately put us at ease.

We walked into the room and saw Mercy sitting on the bed holding the smallest human being I had ever seen—sweet little Harper. We quickly hugged Mercy and everyone else in the room before we laid our eyes on the new baby for the first time. It is hard to describe the emotion of that moment.

As the next several hours passed, we had the chance to feed, diaper, cuddle and kiss our little girl. Mercy had been cleared for discharge that afternoon, but Harper had to stay through the night so the medical team could monitor her body temperature. The hospital gave Matthew and I our own room so we could spend our first night together with Harper as a new family. Mercy was ready to be discharged, but she requested some time alone with the baby first. With all the constant visitors, she hadn’t gotten any mother-daughter time with Harper. Everything had been moving in a positive direction until the nursing shift changed. In fewer than ten minutes, it all quickly turned to chaos.

The night-shift nurse entered the room and insisted she needed Harper’s car seat that instant. A few minutes later, the baby was wheeled out of the hospital room for a two-hour car seat test. It didn’t take long for our protective instincts to kick in. Matthew chased the nurse down the hall to explain the circumstances. We pleaded with her, asking to delay the car seat check until later that night, so Mercy could spend some time with Harper before leaving. No luck. Emotions had reached the breaking point. The lack of sleep accompanied by the magnitude of the adoption plan was not the best combination. In the end, Mercy was discharged without having what she really needed: alone time with her baby.

In light of what happened with the night-shift nurse, Mercy decided to get some rest at home and planned to visit the next day. We offered her our room when she did. She was our main concern at that moment: It was our goal to make sure that Mercy had everything she wanted or needed at the hospital. To give her some extra space while visiting with Harper, Matthew and I decided to get some fresh air and grab something to eat.

When we got back to the hospital, we received the good news that Miss Harper was being discharged. We let Mercy pick an outfit for Harper to wear on her way out. Mercy carefully evaluated all of the options and made her selection. Then we, as Harper’s posse, walked out of the hospital with bags, blankets, pillows, diapers, formula and a car seat. The nurse made sure that Harper was buckled securely into her car seat. We hugged everyone and made plans to have dinner later that evening.

When we arrived at our hotel, the staff was waiting patiently for us. Before we even opened the car door, many staff members were peeking out from the lobby. Everyone was hoping for a quick glimpse of the new arrival.

As we opened the door to our room, we were met with another pleasant surprise. The entire hotel staff had signed a banner that exclaimed: “It’s a Girl!” They had also filled the room with pink balloons and pink flowers. We were in awe of their amazing hospitality. It felt like Texas had rolled out the red carpet and welcomed us with open arms.

This was our first real night alone with Harper and the first chance to settle into our new roles as parents. However, like others who have adopted or are in the process of adopting, Matthew and I were just theoretically babysitting until the relinquishment documents had been signed and the revocation period was completed. For an agency adoption, there is no revocation period in Texas and the relinquishment documents cannot be signed until forty-eight hours after the birth of the child. Our counselor was traveling to Abilene from Houston and had scheduled a meeting to sign all of these documents at three o’clock the next afternoon. We began holding our breath. Our nerves were out of control.

Matthew and I had already planned to stay in Abilene through the weekend and leave on Tuesday morning. It is not uncommon for an adoptive family to leave town immediately after the relinquishment documents are signed, but we chose to wait an extra five days. We wanted to spend as much time as possible with Mercy and Dylan and the rest of the birth-family. Matthew and I wanted to reassure everyone that this was not a goodbye: It was a new beginning. We were very committed to the idea of an open adoption.

Thursday, August 22, 2013. The day had arrived that could truly make us dads. The hotel graciously offered a vacant suite for our counselor to use. Mercy and Dylan’s mother, Stacie, came to the hotel a few hours before the meeting. While Stacie and I talked about everything from food to medical insurance, Matthew got carried away with the digital camera. It seemed like every couple of seconds the sound of the camera shutter echoed through the room. The results were phenomenal. We still look at those pictures often.

Soon our adoption counselor from the agency arrived and asked who wanted to go first. My heart started to beat faster. I felt nauseous. I couldn’t think straight and every possible outcome played out in my head.

Everything was happening very fast. After what seemed like only four or five blinks of an eye, she returned and asked Matthew and I to sign two forms. We were now officially dads!

The counselor posed for a couple of pictures, asked if we had any questions, gave everyone a hug and then left. I held my composure as plans were being made with Mercy and Stacie for later that night. Everyone gave hugs and said a quick goodbye, as we would all be back together in just a couple of hours. When the door to our room closed, Matthew started to do his quirky happy dance. We hugged each other, hugged Harper and then one of us asked, “Now what?”