My story of how my birth daughter found me and everyone is happy!

Hello, everyone. I have read many of the posts on this forum, trying to find a situation that is the same as mine and haven't found anything, so I feel that I should share my happy story. In a previous forum thread ([url]http://forums.adoption.com/making-contact/343464-my-birth-daughters-mother-sent-me-picture-now-my-world-turned-upside-down.html[/url]) you can read some back-story about how back on September 2nd (2008) my ex-girlfriend/bd's mom sent me an email out of the blue with a picture of my 14-year-old daughter attached. I'm going to refer to my birth daughter by her first initial "D" in this thread. Since that thread, and a he** of a lot of therapy, communication with my amazing wife, healing, apologizing to my D's mom, things have been progressing amazingly well. At times I think things are just going too well. After 2 painful weeks of waiting to hear anything in response to my wife and I wanting to accept D into our lives in whatever way possible, we heard from her mom reassuring us that D did want to talk to me, and to just give it time. A few days later, I heard from her (email) and we sent pictures back and forth, both of myself, and of my 3 kids (her 3 half-siblings). A day or two after that, I got an email from her mom with their phone# and that I'm welcome to call at any time. This was quite a shock as I wasn't at all prepared to talk to D, but I wanted to so badly and had so many questions (as I'm sure you can relate!). So on 9/15, we talked on the phone. It was an amazing hour-long conversation which was followed by lots of 'texting' and some more phone calls. About two weeks after our contact, and after dealing with so much stress and confusion with my wife and family, I realized that this wasn't just about me, that I had to include my whole family. D was getting "the package deal" and I couldn't just fly out alone to meet her (she's on the east coast, we're in California), but rather she would have to come out to see us, to meet her dad, her half-siblings and her "step-mom" (my wife). After running our situation by our couples therapist, and getting his blessing for D to come out to meet us, my wife and I rode our bikes together to a tea house, had a nice cup of tea together, and I booked the flight for D to come out to meet us the day after Christmas, for a week. The next few months (prior to our meeting in person) were challenging, but my wife and I continued to see our therapist, and continued to talk for hours and hours if either of us had anything on our minds. Things were definitely improving as thing progressed, but there was still the nagging anxiety of "How would things be when she was here?" and "How do I ensure that I don't play favorite to D over my 3 raised children?". I assured my wife that I would do everything I could to treat my first-born child the same way I do my 3 other kids. D and I continued to stay in touch, we texted almost daily, and had a phone conversation every week or so, and I also wanted to keep my wife feeling "included" in all this, so I made sure that she and D talked on the phone a few times to help break the ice a little before she came out to see us. D and my oldest raised-daughter are only 19 months apart (14 and 12) and so they had also been texting a great deal and occasionally having a giggly girl-talk conversation on the phone. The holidays were quickly approaching, and D and I were sending texts back and forth along the lines of "5 days to go!!!" etc. My wife and I went to our second-to-last free (EAP-covered) session a few days before D was to arrive, and everything was still going well. This isn't to say it has been easy for either of us, this situation and change in our lives has completely changed our dynamic, our stable "family bubble" has been forever changed, and amazingly my wife has been my rock, my savior and incredibly strong throughout these extremely challenging times. So Christmas came, and I received a very thoughtful gift from my 4 children: a t-shirt which has "we have our dad wrapped around our fingers" printed on it, and the hand-prints of my first-born daughter (D) as well as my 3 raised children. D's mom had the idea and secretly worked with my wife to have D put her hand-print on it, and then send the shirt to my wife to have her put my 3 raised kids hand-prints on the shirt. It was wonderful and very thoughtful of everyone involved! Obviously, we talked on the phone with D on Christmas day, including the long-awaited "see you tomorrow!" :-) So finally the day was here... I woke up and checked D's connecting flight information, texted with her a few times while she waited for her hour-delayed connecting flight out to California. We cleaned our house and got ready (emotionally?) to meet my birth daughter (and our new member of the family) for the first time. We got to the airport, got gate passes to meet her at the gate (as a family unit, remember) and our initial meeting was definitely less emotional than I had envisioned it could be. She saw us all, stood there while the airline folks got my signature (as she was an unaccompanied minor) and then we finally got our hugs! The week she spent with us was really great. Despite it being incredibly difficult for my wife to see me falling in love with "another woman", she was amazingly strong, and didn't want to let on to my D that she was having difficulty dealing with seeing the emotion between us. D and I were catching up on 14 years of lost time. She and I love each other very very much, as any father and daughter do, but because of the compressed time scale (14 years compressed into one week) it felt as though this was an incredibly intense "affair". We hugged a lot, and our interactions were playful and physical. Although it definitely felt somewhat awkward at times, I felt I had to reciprocate my feelings. Of course D should pose no threat to my wife or our relationship, but logic doesn't typically prevail when so many other emotions are flying around. We all had so much fun together, D gets along with her 3 half-siblings really well, and she really feels like this is her other family. Although she doesn't really share her feelings as well or clearly as I'd like her to, we did talk a lot and among the things we discussed was her adoption by her ex-step-father. She understood that when I agreed to the adoption in 2000, that I lost all rights and responsibilities to her. D told me about her adoptive father, and how she and her mom left him "with nothing but the clothes on their back" in 2004. Fortunately now, D has an incredible step-father who loves her very much, and I am very happy for D, her mom and step-dad. Still, I couldn't help but want to get her adoptive father out of the picture. Apparently he was abusive towards D's mother, and wants nothing to do with D. She also told me he has been to jail in the past for non-payment of child support and has been evading the child support enforcement folks since they left in 2004. When I asked D if she would like to have him no longer be her legal father, she emphatically said yes! Which brings me to another wonderful part of our story... At the airport when D was about to go back home, I asked again about her last name, and whether, if we could undo the adoption somehow, she would like her mom's last name, or her step-dad's or mine? She very quickly said she wants my last name and again said she wants nothing to do with her ex-step-dad/adoptive father. I asked how her mom would feel about this, and she jokingly said that "she probably already knows you're going to want to do this, and I'm sure she will be fully supportive". So when she got home, she talked about it with her mom and step-dad and they indeed are fully supportive. As it turns out, her step-dad was adopted as a baby and was later reunited with his birth-father, who later (re-)adopted him. Her step-dad was actually the one who pushed D's mom to "look for me one last time" 4+ months ago as he had been though a very similar situation. I talked at great length with D's mom and her step-dad about the adoption option, and reassured them both that I wanted nothing out of this (i.e. custody) and that I just wanted to make D happy and try to, in whatever way I could, do what's best for D. Obviously D's step-dad could just as easily (or actually much more easily) adopt D, but he wants me, her birth father, to be her legal father. So as is stands now, I have retained a family attorney and am in the process of adopting my birth daughter. The first step in this process is to terminate the parental rights of her adoptive father. As of a couple of days ago I didn't have a current address for him, but when I asked D's mom if she had a phone number or more recent address for him, she did something amazing that she really didn't have to do: she called her ex-husband and got his address. She called me right after she got off the phone with him, in tears, and told me what she had just done for me. I was in shock, truly grateful, proud of her, and thanked her profusely for what she had done. D has already started to insist her last name is not (old) but (mine) and is very excited to be able to have my family name as hers. I'm waiting for the paperwork from the attorneys. I hope this all goes as smoothly as everything has up to this point. So that's my "little" story. I hope it provides some hope and inspiration for others out there going through similar situations. -Dave