The Waiting Game

Well we are now in the waiting game period. :) BM will be 36 weeks pregnant on Thursday so we are playing the waiting game. Every time my phone makes any noise I'm running to get it just in case it's a call or text from her. We still have 4 WEEKS TO GO and I'm already this paranoid. I should note her last pregnancy she delivered at 37 weeks and we have a 9.5 hour drive to get to her so that hypes up my anticipation even more. And I know every pregnancy and baby is different so she could still be weeks away from delivering but it's hard to be patient at this point. PLUS it's CHRISTMAS and I've always dreamed of having a baby around Christmas time and that's sort of what we've been telling people from the get go was that we were adopting a baby around Christmas... silly of us, I know, but that was sort of an easy way to pinpoint and make it more real to us. So now that Christmas is only 7 days away and we have had our bags packed for weeks the anticipation is killing me!!! :) But I know that everything happens in God's timing. I mean we tried to get pregnant for 7 years with no luck at all and then out of the blue we get the call we've always been waiting for so I know she'll be born when she's ready but the waiting sucks. lol

Pray for us as we continue to wait it out and if you see a crazy person with their phone glued to their hand, don't judge her as rude or self-centered, she just might be waiting for the phone call that will change her entire life.

Time is Flying

Time has been flying by since I last posted. Things are going well with our adoption and we are anxiously waiting the phone call that says it's go time. Here's what we've been up to.

We met with a lawyer and got things set up as far as paperwork goes. He said that even though the BM lives in another state that he should be able to handle things from here, so that helps that we won't have to have an attorney in two different states. He doesn't always get back to me as timely as I would like but I guess we take the good with the bad.

We got to go along to one of our BM's doctor appointments. I know that most people who are adopting don't get that experience and believe me we treasured every moment of it. To be in the ultrasound room and hear the heartbeat and see our baby on the screen and get to take the pictures home. I think I was in tears the entire time. Happy tears of course!!

During that appt we got to find out that baby is a GIRL!!! We are totally over the moon excited.

We have since gotten more ultrasound pictures mailed to us from our BM. She has been nothing but super sweet and accommodating through this entire process. Keeping us up to date with everything and making sure we are always in the loop.

We I have gone just a little LOT crazy with the buying stuff for baby girl. We have 5 nephews and 2 nieces but they are older so we didn't have anything for hand-me-downs so I may or may not have gotten a little crazy with the buying clothes and hairbows. I just about die every time I get to put a hairbow in my cart and know it will go on my baby. I think we are still in shock that this is all happening.

We have chosen a name for our little peanut. She'll be Emelyn Grace. We love it and she might already have a few things with her name on it. ;)

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house and I told Jerry that this is the first year I can remember where I was actually happy on a holiday. Happy to enjoy my family and see everyone. Everyone was very excited and wanted to talk about the baby and how exited they were and how excited we were. Which is a change from every other year where I feel like they are all feeling bad for us and not really knowing what to say and so they just don't talk to us much.

Other than that it's been life as usual around here. Waiting patiently for the call to come to let us know it's time. BM thinks the baby might come before Christmas. That would absolutely be the ultimate Christmas present and no holiday would ever compare. :) We ask that you keep us in your prayers that everything will continue to go smoothly and we won't have any complications arise.

Roller Coaster of Emotions

Lately I feel like I'm just a roller coaster of emotions. I'm happy, scared, nervous, anxious, thankful, grateful, worried, stressed, and the list seems endless.

We are over the moon thankful that L found us and wants us to adopt her baby, but January seems sooooooo far away. I know in the grand scheme of our TTC 4 months seems like a cake walk but still when you've been TTC for over 7 years, 4 more months seems impossible.

This whole situation requires me to give up the control and just have faith and trust that everything will work out. Definitely NOT my strong suit. I am terrible at waiting for things to happen and not being the one making them happen. So to basically just have to sit tight until January when the baby is born is driving me bananas. I have to completely rely on L to update us when she goes to the dr or any appointments she has. I have to rely on the attorney to do all the necessary paperwork to make this a smooth transition. I have to rely on the court system not finding some strange/weird technicality to mess this up for me. (yes I know that seems far-fetched... in my life trust me it's not. If something was going to happen to 1 in a 1000 people, I'd be the one!) I have to just be patient and wait. I'm trying to spend time looking at baby things but I've yet to buy anything because I'm still plagued by the What If"s. What if something happens to the baby? What if she changes her mind? What if she finds someone else? What if the court thinks we aren't good enough? So instead I just look at things and end up being worried/stressed all over again. It's going to be tough for me the next 4 months so please pray for me. Pray that I have patience. Pray that I'm able to relax and enjoy these last 4 months of doing whatever/whenever. Pray that everything goes smoothly and according to plan. Pray that I'm able to finally realize my dreams of becoming a mother in 4 short months from now.

She Picked US!

Sorry to leave ya hanging. We met with L on Wednesday night. Everything went well, she was shy and really nervous and so were we. I wasn't really sure what to say or ask so it was mostly A (the lady who brought us together) doing the talking and each of us answering questions. L said she needed to take some time to think about everything and be certain that she'd be able to go through with it. We agreed that was good and parted ways.

So imagine the shock when the very next night I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize. Normally I do not answer if I don't know who it is but that night I did and I sure am glad! It was L and she said that she gave it a lot of thought and wanted to proceed if we did. WE WERE ECSTATIC! I don't really remember much of the conversation that followed because I was so excited that I'm not even sure I could make words! lol

I did send her a text message the next day to let her know that we were very excited and to please let us know if she needed anything at all.

We ended the conversation with she was going to get her paperwork turned in for the medical benefits and schedule her dr appt (that we get to go along with and find out the gender!!!) and I was going to contact an attorney and see what we needed to be doing/getting ready in the mean time.

We are super excited and can't wait until January to be able to start our lives as a family of 3. We've been waiting for this for so so long that it still doesn't seem real. It's been sort of difficult for me because there have been SO many times that I've convinced myself that I was pregnant and we'd be having a baby on this day or that day and picking names that I still feel like my brain is fighting itself and trying to convince me that this isn't real. But it is and we cannot wait!!!

Prayers Answered!!!!

Every night when I go to sleep I say the same prayer. Dear God, please help us find our baby & help our birthmother find us. We want nothing more than to be parents, please help us. Amen.

Today that prayer came true. I typically check my Facebook several times a day (addicted, I know!) so today just like normal I logged in and saw I had a private message. Upon opening it I saw it was from the lady who took my sister's wedding photos. The message said "I saw a while back you had something on your page about wanting to adopt. Can you call me" So I did and she proceeded to tell me about a girl she knew that was approximately 5 months pregnant and because of (long story) she was planning on putting the baby up for adoption. She went on to explain about how Jerry and I were the first people she thought of. *Mind you I've not seen or talked to her since my sisters wedding almost 1 year ago.* She said the girl was anxious to meet us if we were interested and went on to talk about going to appointments and ultrasounds and such. When we hung up the phone I was literally shaking. I couldn't believe what had just happened. I ran outside to call Jerry but he didn't answer (go figure!) so instead called my sister. I was crying so hard she could barely understand me and thought I'd been in an accident or something. I finally got it all out and she was just thrilled for me and told me to go and do some toe touches! lol

I finally got done talking to my sister and went back inside at work, which was right around the time Jerry called back. So I went out and told him and he just kept saying ok, ok, ok. I finally yelled IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SAY IS OK?!?! He said that he was just in shock and even though we pray every night that he never actually thought something like this would happen.

I finally got settled back in a work and my cell phone rings with the photographer again. I immediately thought "Oh no, she changed her mind already!" but she was calling to tell me that she talked to the girl and she wants to meet us THIS Wednesday at 6 pm!!!!!

I'm feeling so many emotions right now. I'm happy, grateful, excited but also nervous, worried and slightly terrified. I want to be excited and have faith that everything will work out like it's supposed to but it's very hard and we've already been through so much that I don't want to get my hopes up and be crushed in the end.

We meet her on Wednesday and I'll update again then. Please pray for us and for her and that everything will work out and we'll be adding a baby to our family in a couple months.

Crystal Ball

I wish that I could see into the future for just a little while to see where I'm supposed to end up. I know that life would be no fun if everyone got everything they wanted and knew exactly how things would play out but just a glimpse would be nice.

I want to ask where I should be looking to find the children that God wants in my family. I wish I knew how to get ourselves out of our money situations. I wish I knew a lot of things really.

I'm just stressed and confused I guess. I want nothing more than to be a mother but I just don't know how to make that happen. It doesn't help that I've been helping my little sister get things set up and ready for her 2nd baby to be born in a couple months. It's just hard, I'm 5 years older than her and she's having her 2nd baby and I still have none. It's incredibly difficult not to be jealous.

Hopefully soon I'll be able to find my way on the right path. Right now I guess I'm stuck wishing for a Crystal Ball to show me the way.

Decision Made

So after the IUI was a fail and adopting through an agency is WAY out of our price range we took a hard look at where we wanted to be and how we wanted to proceed. Did we want to stay and try Foster Care, or switch jobs to getting better insurance to move on to IVF or move all together and get a fresh start somewhere else.

Well we've decided that we are moving to Colorado!! I am BEYOND excited for this and wish that January would get here sooner. Why January you ask??? Well we are waiting until January to get things taken care of here and there, saving money and waiting for our lease to run out. We've already started going through the house and taking inventory of things we will/will not be taking with us. I've also started looking online for apartments/houses and jobs. It helps that my BFF lives there and so I've asked her to keep a lookout and if I find a place online I can send her to look at it without me having to actually be there. So that's very helpful. Job hunting is going to be a little trickier. I'm not really sure how that will work from across the country but people do it all the time, right? So far I've posted my resume on Monster.com and I'm checking with the local newspapers online there.

I'm not going to lie taking a 6 month break in the TTC dept sucks because I know I'm just going to keep getting older as time progresses but I know that I'll be happier once we get moved and settled and therefore less stressed and we will re-evaluate at that time if we are going to go forward with IVF at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine in Denver or if we'll move forward with trying to adopt.

Right now I just know that I'm excited! Scared but very excited and completely thrilled to have something to focus my energy on besides TTC and shots and doctor appointments and temperatures and periods and OPK's and BFN's and adoption paperwork and legal fees. Completely thrilled. :)