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A long road to parenthood brings happiness

They both wanted children. And Mark remembers a conversation — they were on the red sofa in their living room — when Tara raised the prospect of adoption.

Mark and Tara with Emerson.
Mark and Tara with Emerson.Read moreSharon O'Reilly

THE PARENTS: Tara Greenbank, 42, and Mark Greenbank, 45, of Middletown, Del.

THE CHILD: Emerson (Emmie) Maeve, 1, adopted Nov. 9, 2021

AN EARLY TALENT: Nurses in the NICU told Tara and Mark, “She’s one of the loudest in here.” One scream convinced them the nurses were right.

Sometime between the phone call from the agency and the first visit to the NICU, amid the late-night ordering from Amazon and the frenzied visits to Target, somewhere in those buzzed and strange 10 days, there was a night when Tara and Mark found themselves outside, swaddling a stuffed Cookie Monster.

During the day, they would walk around the house, trying baby names aloud: “I bought this for … Charlotte? Do we like that?” The agency had told them only basic facts: their daughter’s birth weight of 5 pounds, 7 ounces; her stellar scores on the Apgar test.

“Think about it,” the caseworker said. “Call back with your decision.” By that point — March 2021 — they’d been waiting 14 months with Open Arms Adoption Network. Before that, they’d had six years of fertility struggles, including two IVF cycles and two miscarriages.

So when the call came, “We were looking for lightning bolts, a big sign, angels singing, ‘This is it,’ ” Mark says. “But it’s very clinical. You’re trying to process the medical data and make the most informed decision you can. You’re thinking: Is this our baby? Does it feel right?”

The two kept looking at each other. It didn’t feel wrong. “The next day, we called our coordinator,” Tara recalls, “and said, ‘We don’t know how to say this, but yes, we want that baby.’ ”

Because birth mothers in Pennsylvania have 30 days in which to change their minds about an adoption plan, caseworkers wanted Tara and Mark to wait before meeting the baby. “One night in that 10-day window, we were in front of our house, figuring out the car seat and practicing swaddling,” Mark recalls. “I grabbed two of our childhood stuffed animals and a YouTube video: OK, let’s put Cookie Monster in the car seat and buckle him in.”

From early in their relationship, adoption had been part of the plan. The two met through mutual friends in 2000, but didn’t start dating until seven years later, when a group trip to see autumn leaves in the Blue Ridge Mountains became a duo adventure after their friends canceled.

“We went on a series of dates,” Mark says, “and within a couple of months, we were both saying, ‘Hey, there really is something special and magical here.’ ”

They shared values, a similar sense of humor, and an uncanny ability to recall pop culture trivia, competing against one another while watching recorded episodes of Jeopardy!

Mark proposed in 2009, on the Ocean City boardwalk near Kohr Bros Frozen Custard; at the wedding a bit over a year later, friends kept commenting on how calm both Tara and Mark seemed. A highlight of that day was their first dance, to Nat King Cole’s “More,” which had also been Tara’s grandparents’ wedding song.

They both wanted children. And Mark remembers a conversation — they were on the red sofa in their living room — when Tara raised the prospect of adoption. She’d been intrigued by the idea since age 12, when some family friends adopted a boy from Romania; Tara often babysat for the child and became close to him.

For Mark, “adoption was not something I had ever really considered. But I was open to it. I thought: Why not? There’s so much need out there.”

They tried for years to conceive — through two surgeries to remove uterine fibroids, through IVF and pregnancy losses. After the second miscarriage, a fertility specialist gave them frank news: “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to continue with IVF.”

That pronouncement also nudged them forward. “As soon as the doctor said that, we looked at each other: We’re adopting. It was a huge weight off our shoulders. It finally felt like we were on the right path,” Tara says.

That path brought its own questions: Would they be open to a transracial adoption? What about a baby exposed to drugs in utero? Should they adopt internationally? An information session with Open Arms Adoption Network brought both pragmatism and reassurance.

“They were realistic about what our expectations should be,” Tara says, “but at the end of the day, they said: It’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when.’ You’re going to have your family.”

The two slogged through paperwork and fretted over the profile book that would be shown to birth mothers. They included photos of Ocean City, of trips to Disney World, of their dog, a lab mix named Watson. Then their first draft of the profile book came back, after being reviewed by Open Arms staff, plastered with sticky notes and comments.

“It’s hard, because you’re trying to be true and not misrepresent yourself, but at the same time, you’re trying to say, ‘We’re perfect for somebody. We want you to pick us,’ ” Mark says. And when months went by without a match, Tara wondered, “Did we do our book wrong? Does nobody like us?”

The call did come, on March 22. Ten days later, they walked into a Pennsylvania hospital with an empty infant carrier. Their daughter was in the NICU, ready to be discharged; she’d kicked a foot out of her swaddle, and when Mark scooped her up, she relaxed into his arms.

The couple had kept the good news from their families. When they brought Emerson to their rented apartment — they would need to remain in Pennsylvania until interstate adoption paperwork cleared — they began to make calls.

“What is that sound?” Tara’s mother asked when they phoned. “It’s your granddaughter,” Tara answered. “We have a daughter. We have a baby.”

Their long route to parenthood has taught them patience and humility, Tara says. “That expression: You make plans, and God laughs. It’s not going to go the way you thought. I’m very much a type A individual; I had a very hard time with that, but it’s a good lesson. There’s no controlling the journey now.”