A Hope and a Future

A long overdue post:)

Well, life has gotten a whole lot more complicated since I last posted:) I desperately want to chronicle the whole thing from the start but that will have to wait at least for now. I don't want to wait too long, however, for fear I will forget details. But for now.......here are some pictures of our new family:) Enjoy!

    

 

It's a "God thing"

That's what my pastor's wife always says about situations that clearly have God's hand all over them. And that describes this whole adoption situation for us. Our meeting could not have gone any better. The birthmom was sweet, polite, and seemed very excited about us. I won't go into the details here since I feel like anyone reading this already knows anyway. Suffice it to say it seems to be a very good situation with very little room to "go wrong". She should have her babies by the end of February. We are officially in "get ready" mode. We are overwhelmed with gratitude to God for this incredible blessing that He has literally dropped in our laps.

We told Rebecca about it last night and she was THRILLED to say the least. My favorite comment that she made was "boy, we are going to be busy!" She has "claimed" the little girl and says she is going to take care of her:)

Sooo, we had an interesting phone call yesterday!

We were very pleasantly surprised to get a call from our adoption agency yesterday! There is a birthmom who wants to meet us:) She saw our profile and loved it; apparently she is excited about Dennis being a pastor because she wants her kids in church. Yes, you read that right. Her KIDS. She is pregnant with TWINS!!  A boy and a girl. We were floored to say the least. She is scheduled for a c-section the first week of March but with twins it could be sooner. We are meeting her on Wednesday at the agency. We are thrilled of course but are trying not to get our hopes up; at this point things could go either way. We know that God has His hand in all of this and if these are the kids we are supposed to have then it will go perfectly!

Now to figure out just HOW crazy our lives are about to become.....

Homestudy part 2

Today our social worker came to our house for the second part of our homestudy. Again we felt very at ease with her and everything went great. We just showed her around the house and chatted. She did Dennis' individual interview as well and that went fine. She was here for about an hour and when she left she said our homestudy would be turned in next week!

I was able to ask some more questions that had come to mind since we last met with her which was nice. I found out that things are done a bit differently with this agency than I expected: I was thinking that we would travel to the hospital to pick up the baby (probably because that's what you see on TV!) but actually the baby is released to the agency and they bring him/her back to the agency office and we go pick them up there! That ought to be interesting. Also found out that the birth moms have forms they have to fill out about family health history, etc, and we are able to have all that info.  I think the moms have HIV/hepatitis testing done but also the baby will have it done in the hospital which will be nice for peace of mind.

So now all that's left is to wait:) That will probably be the hardest part but we are peaceful and know that God's timing is perfect. We can't wait to see what He has in store!

Feeding the wee one

When we decided to adopt I had come to the conclusion that I would be bottle feeding this baby which would be a new experience for me since I nursed Rebecca. I had heard of women who had nursed their adopted babies through induced lactation but was under the impression that it was a long, drawn out process of pumping for months, taking medications, etc.... and I just didn't feel like I was emotionally or mentally up for that. Especially since we have no idea if we will have a couple of months notice or only a couple of days notice. However, I have been doing some research lately (ah, google, what did I ever do without you?) and have found out some interesting things. Apparently it is entirely possible to nurse the baby without any prior preparation. You just start nursing the baby using a supplemental nurser system (a bag/bottle of formula that goes around your neck with a small tube that goes to the breast and when the baby nurses they get the formula). Pregnancy does provide the hormones to get the milk production started but the nursing is what tells the body to continue to produce and gets it going. So if the baby is nursed at each feeding with the SNS the body gets the signal to start producing milk! Apparently most women are able to produce at least part of what the baby needs after several weeks of exclusively nursing. Some are even able to eventually produce all that the baby needs. Isn’t that amazing! I thought it was.

Obviously I am very excited about this possibility and am now planning on trying it. I will do some more research and talk to some lactation consultants I know to get advice. I think it will be awesome for bonding and of course whatever milk I produce will be great for the baby. Hopefully it will work out!

Homestudy part 1

We had the interview part of our home study today. Our assigned social worker lives about 2.5 hours away (almost to Wilmington) so we went to meet her there. Our agency assigned her to us and she said we could have one closer but it probably wouldn't get done as fast so of course we didn't mind the drive:) We had a really good meeting. She was so, so nice and the whole thing was really laid back. She talked to us together for over an hour and we discussed adoption, our story, our marriage, things like that. She was really encouraging and gave us things to think about and answered lots of questions. Then she talked to me alone and we just talked about my growing up and family and such. We both felt really good about the meeting and I think she liked us:) She thinks that we will probably have a baby within 6 months:) Wow, it's so surreal that this is actually happening! The social worker will come to our home in two weeks to see the house and talk some more and then she said she would have it written up and turned in by that next week! Awesome!

I started pulling out baby stuff the other day and seeing what all we have; that was fun! We asked the social worker if we needed to have the room set up for the baby or if it is ok to just have a plan in mind; she said we didn't need to have the room set up. I told Dennis I was sort of hoping she would say we needed it set up just because I'm so excited to do it:) Oh, well.....I need to hold my horses anyway. It won't take us any time to get it done when it needs to be done and the baby will be in a bassinet in our room for a couple of months anyway.

An unexpected blessing

This afternoon (on a Sunday, no less!) I got a phone call that I have been hoping and praying for. It was from a nice social worker that will be doing our home study. She said that the adoption agency had forwarded all of our info to her and she was ready to meet with us! Our first meeting we will go to her and be interviewed separately and then together. That will be this Wednesday, the 8th. Then in two weeks she will come to our home to visit and after that she will write up the report and we are done! She said we should be cleared for the waiting list by the first week of December!! I was so, so excited; it's just so hard to wait and to know that we have a plan and a time table as to when it will be done is just so awesome. Of course after we are cleared we may still have a long wait but we are making progress:) God is good and I am rejoicing today!

Birth Mom letter

I just finished the letter that will go in the scrapbook and thought you guys would like to read it.

Dear Friend,

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at our profile. We cannot begin to imagine what you are going through but want you to know that we have tremendous respect for you. The courage you are demonstrating in making an adoption plan is inspiring to us.

A little about us: we are Dennis and Laura and we have been married for 9 1/2 years. We met during college as we were training for a summer mission trip. We were friends for 8 months before we started dating and that foundation of friendship has carried us through many ups and downs. We have a strong, stable marriage deeply rooted in love with Christ as our foundation.

We knew even before we married that we wanted several children and were blessed after several years of waiting and praying to have our daughter, Rebecca. She is almost four years old and is such a joy to us. She is a happy child with an active imagination and a loving heart. She is so excited about having a sister or brother; she talks about it often. We know that she will be an awesome big sister as she adores babies. She will be a "little mama" we are sure. After having Rebecca, Laura suffered two miscarriages and after much prayer we decided to pursue adoption. It was a decision that felt very natural to us as we have always thought about adopting and feel like God is calling us to do so at this time.

We have lots of family on both sides that are very excited about a new baby! Dennis has 3 sisters and lots of nieces/nephews/cousins. Laura has a brother, a sister, one niece and two more on the way! There are grandparents, aunts, and uncles on both sides as well. All of our family are very supportive of our adoption plan and are praying for us. Our family all live within 4 hours of us with most of them being 1-2 hours away so we are able to see them often.

A little about our work: Dennis is the Associate Pastor at our church with his main duties being music and youth. He finished seminary this past May. He loves being in ministry and with his easy going nature and servant's heart he is loved by all he comes in contact with. His flexible schedule allows him plenty of family time which we love! Laura is a nurse in the special care nursery of a large hospital. She loves getting to take care of babies as she has always been a self-proclaimed "baby magnet". She works 2-3 12 hour shifts a week which allows her lots of time at home as well. Laura's goal is to be a full time mom which we hope will be realized once the baby comes home. With both of our schedules being fairly flexible, Rebecca is always able to be at home with one or both of us and never has to go to day care.

What we do for fun: we are a family that loves to go! We love going on car trips to visit family or do fun things. This past summer we went to the beach, the mountains, and camping. We have opportunities to visit an aunt's lake house and Laura's parents mountain get away which is such a blessing. We have lots of friends that we like to get together with as well.

Obviously this just scratches the surface of who we are but hopefully this album will give you an idea of our lives. We are so, so excited to see how God is going to work to bring a new baby into our home. We love being parents and look forward to the opportunity to continue to grow our family. Please know that we are praying for you and pray that you will experience God's peace and comfort during this time. May God richly bless you.

Love in Christ,

Dennis, Laura, and Rebecca

The scrapbook is done:)

Our adoption agency requires us to do a scrapbook of pictures for potential birth moms to look at. It includes pictures of family, friends, a letter to the birthmom, and just in general is supposed to give her an idea of what life with us would be like for her child. This could have potentially been a very daunting task for me since my idea of "scrapbooking" is slapping pictures in albums maybe two or three times a year. Yah, not ok for this particular task. Thankfully I am friends with an amazing woman who happens to be an awesome and talented scrapbooker:) So I took my humble offerings of pictures and a blank scrapbook to her last night and she and another friend (also very creative) put together an INCREDIBLE scrapbook for us! My friend H has all the awesome gadgets and pages and stickers we needed to make the album what it is: 14 pages of beautifully laid out, cropped, and accessorized pictures. It took 5 hours and we didn't finish until 2AM. Do I have great friends, or what? There is just no way to say thank you for something like that. Now all I have to do is write the letter and it is ready to turn in......except I don't know how I will part with it! I keep wanting to look at it over and over:) Thankfully we will get it back once the baby is home.

H......you know I love you and I just want you to know that I do not take lightly the sacrifice of time and hand-cramping that you gave last night doing that book......I will never forget it!

We did not hear from the social worker this week which is a bummer but maybe we will this week!

The Journey Begins

So the decision was made with much prayer and thought: we would pursue adoption. I was initially open to domestic or international adoption but D felt strongly about going the domestic route. We began to research different agencies and that in itself was overwhelming. Then "randomly" (I don't believe anything happens randomly and know God orchestrated this) a good friend met a lady who had adopted from a Christian adoption agency based in the nearby city. She had so many good things to say about the agency so we decided to check them out. From the first phone call I knew this was the right agency for us. We had to apply and were accepted. Then we got the dreaded paperwork; I knew that there was going to be a lot to it but other than just being annoying and a lot of little pieces of info to gather, it went very smoothly. We had everything together and turned in to the agency in about two weeks! We had to get three friends and our pastor to all write a reference letter about us and those along with all our paperwork had to be turned in before they would schedule our homestudy. So we have been waiting for about 3 weeks on all that to be processed.  I have been kind of down about having to wait (that patience thing again: its a recurring lesson I have to learn!). I have been trying to remember that the process is in God's hands and however fast or slow it all goes is for a reason: there is a specific baby that is supposed to join our family!

All that said, I am at this moment very excited again because I talked to the agency today and everything has been forwarded to the social worker who will complete our homestudy and she should be contacting us this week to set up our first meeting:) Yay! Now we're getting somewhere!