Our Decision to Adopt
The best thing that has happened in the last 20 months occurred yesterday. My husband and I made an actual baby step toward...well, a baby. There is a skinny/chunky, white/black—frankly quite ambiguous child in our future. We have utterly and completely devoted ourselves to adoption!
On Sunday, we arranged a meeting with our new bishop at church. He was kind, compassionate, and had family members who adopted children into their home. He listened to us, didn’t question us, and showed so much respect. We were SO grateful for that. It turned out that he wasn’t very familiar with the adoption process, but he promised to look into it.
Later in the week, Jk went to LDS Family Services to get more information about adoption. For those of you who don’t know, LDS Family Services is operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and assists individuals and families with various kinds of counseling and services. They used to be involved with helping adoptive couples but no longer provide in-depth assistance. We knew that, but we wanted to see what services they could still offer. Again, we hit another dead-end. The employee told Jk that they don’t get involved in adoption and she had no other information.
Then yesterday afternoon, I got a call from a friend who gave me the most exciting news! She put me in touch with the sweetest, most helpful woman in the whole world. This angel used to work helping adoptive couples and birth mothers, and has since adopted two children of her own—so she knows adoption from every angle! We talked for half an hour while I took extensive notes, happy-cried, and felt the most incredible excitement for my future family. Everything about this just feels right.
So today, we officially started our application paperwork, the first of MANY forms to come! We have been overwhelmed by the number of friends, family members, and others willing to support us. My husband posted an announcement on social media, asking for our message to be shared so that we can find a birth mother. “The time has come, you guys. After 20 grueling months of trying for spontaneous conception, going through invasive infertility testing, and praying for a miracle, we are planning to adopt! We want a family, and we are asking for your help. Ariel and I are searching for a baby. We would like to find someone who is expecting a healthy baby and needs a loving couple to parent them. I know this is a long shot but by extending our network we hope to find the right child for us. Please share this post and reach out to those you know. We are crossing our fingers, and we are hoping that together we can make this happen.” It would mean the WORLD to us if you could spread our information far and wide so that we can find our baby.
I guess the point of all of this is that I want our someday little one to know how much they mean to us. And to know that we’ve always planned on adoption. Before we even started trying to have kids, before we found out about infertility, before anything—our Plan A included adoption. We are crummy at a lot of things, but one thing I know is that we have a lot of love to give… and I mean a LOT. We have an abundance of encouraging words, bedtime stories, and snuggle-bug-hugs to give our baby, no matter how they come into our family. So this is it. Our miracle.
Then yesterday afternoon, I got a call from a friend who gave me the most exciting news! She put me in touch with the sweetest, most helpful woman in the whole world. This angel used to work helping adoptive couples and birth mothers, and has since adopted two children of her own—so she knows adoption from every angle! We talked for half an hour while I took extensive notes, happy-cried, and felt the most incredible excitement for my future family. Everything about this just feels right.
So today, we officially started our application paperwork, the first of MANY forms to come! We have been overwhelmed by the number of friends, family members, and others willing to support us. My husband posted an announcement on social media, asking for our message to be shared so that we can find a birth mother. “The time has come, you guys. After 20 grueling months of trying for spontaneous conception, going through invasive infertility testing, and praying for a miracle, we are planning to adopt! We want a family, and we are asking for your help. Ariel and I are searching for a baby. We would like to find someone who is expecting a healthy baby and needs a loving couple to parent them. I know this is a long shot but by extending our network we hope to find the right child for us. Please share this post and reach out to those you know. We are crossing our fingers, and we are hoping that together we can make this happen.” It would mean the WORLD to us if you could spread our information far and wide so that we can find our baby.
I guess the point of all of this is that I want our someday little one to know how much they mean to us. And to know that we’ve always planned on adoption. Before we even started trying to have kids, before we found out about infertility, before anything—our Plan A included adoption. We are crummy at a lot of things, but one thing I know is that we have a lot of love to give… and I mean a LOT. We have an abundance of encouraging words, bedtime stories, and snuggle-bug-hugs to give our baby, no matter how they come into our family. So this is it. Our miracle.
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