A Couple Drove 10 Hours To Pick Up Their Adopted Baby. Then The Birth Mom Made An Agonizing U-turn

This U.S. couple were nearly at the end of a 10-hour drive to go and pick up their new baby, when the phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line told them something they desperately didn’t want to hear. They were left feeling completely empty.

YouTuber, Audra, the woman behind the popular channel, “This Girl Audra,” has racked up millions of views on her YouTube channel since its launch back in 2014. Not only that, but the social media star has gained more than 30,000 loyal subscribers on the platform.

On her channel, Audra talks about everything from her diet and exercise routines to mental health and life experiences, often offering advice and support to her followers. Most of her videos get somewhere between 2,000 and 20,000 views on average, but there is one that trumped them all.

She uploaded one video in July 2016 that racked up an impressive 163,000 views. But unfortunately, the topic of the video was something Audra wished she’d never have to share with her followers. It was entitled, “Our failed adoption story: The day I’ll never forget.”

The 16-minute-long video documents the day that Audra and her partner were expecting to meet the baby that had been assigned to them by an adoption agency. The couple were beyond excited to get a call on July 15, 2016, telling them that their baby was about to be born.

Audra and her partner had been waiting three years to adopt a baby, so when they heard that the baby was nearly here, they quickly packed up the last of their stuff and hopped in the car to drive 10 hours to the birth mom’s hospital.

As they were driving, the couple filmed themselves excitedly talking about the good news. Everything at home was already prepared for the arrival of their new baby; they even had a baby stroller ready to go. All that was left to do was meet their little boy and bring him home.

The drive was long, so the couple used the time to call all their friends and family to let them know that they were about to get the baby that they had always wanted. According to the YouTube video, completing their family was something they had “dreamed about.”

In the weeks before they got the all-important call from the adoption agency, Audra and her partner had FaceTimed the birth mom to see how she was doing. They asked her a bit more about herself and compiled a list of all the things she said that she liked.

So when Audra and her partner jumped in the car to drive to the birth mom’s hospital, they made sure to pack a little basket containing all of her favorite things, as way of saying, “Thank you and we love you.” This couple had clearly thought of everything.

Before they reached the hospital, the excited couple talked about all the things they were going to teach their son, as well as all the places that they would take him. “We can’t believe this is actually happening. We’ve been waiting for this day for so long!” the on-screen captions read.

“All I want to do is hold him, kiss him, tell him I love him. All we care about now is getting there as fast as we can,” continued the text. They had been informed that their baby had been born safe and well, but as they neared the hospital, the phone rang again.

The voice on the other end of the phone told the couple something absolutely devastating. All the intense feelings of anticipation and excitement suddenly fell away in one moment, leaving the couple completely floored. The birth mom had changed her mind.

The baby was no longer coming home with them. The birth mom had decided to keep the baby after all. Using captions, Audra recalled what that awful moment felt like. “Time stops. My heart stops. Everything stops,” she captioned the video footage from that day.

All that she remembers feeling is “empty” and feeling like she wanted to run away from it all. It was a truly devastating thing to happen to the couple that had been so fully prepared to give the adopted baby all the love in the world.

But it wasn’t to be. After she had come to terms with her loss, Audra explained to her followers that she was not “mad or bitter at the mother.” She couldn’t hold anything against a mother who wanted to love and keep her own baby.

What made it even worse was that Audra had actually found out that she was pregnant just a few days after being told that they had been selected as adoptive parents. So the couple had actually been planning for two babies. But then, just before their adopted baby was born, the worst happened.

Audra miscarried her baby. So, in two very different ways, the couple actually lost two babies in a short space of time. But, through it all, Audra has managed to somehow keep her faith and stay strong. “I do know God has a great plan, a plan that we might not always understand,” she wrote in the video.

Audra’s heartbreaking story provoked hundreds of touching responses online. “I can’t even fathom how you guys went through all this my heart aches for you both, I wish you nothing but positive vibes and well wishes for the future,” one YouTube user commented, while another said, “Don’t worry, your child is out there somewhere.”

Thankfully, Audra had the support of her followers as well as her faith to keep her afloat. “God is enough, he will get us though this,” she wrote on the video, which she uploaded in July 2016. Since then, she had a break from YouTube, but has since returned with fresh videos nearly a year on. As Audra so positively put it herself, “Here’s to brighter days ahead.”