Words From the Heart

Tell us your story....I didnt make that clear and I apologize. We all have stories to tell and would love to hear them. Please tell them!

With my first child, it seemed to happen fast, and slow, at the same time!I finally decided I wanted to fix up the nursery. SIL came to spend a few weeks with us in the summer and she is an artist, so she was painting murals on the walls for me. While she was here, we got a call saying an emom wanted to meet us! They said not to get our hopes up because she seemed to be leaning toward a different family.We met and it was so emotional! She was so sweet and scared and shy. She had a close friend with her who translated for us.We met on a Friday. On Monday the agency called and said she'd like to place with us. This was the beginning of June and she was due July 1 (or so she had been told). Little man (who was rather big at birth- 9 lbs 12 oz 22 inches) wasn't born until Aug 17. She didn't want to see him. She couldn't. She said she had to do what was best for him and couldn't see him. I stayed with her for a long time, as she had no one. Her friend couldn't stay as she had to go keep L's boys. The nurses were treating her awful and kept trying to bring J in for her to breastfeed. They even said, "if you'd just breastfeed him you'd fall in love and want to keep him."I wanted to smack them! Of course, they thought I was there for no reason other than to steal her baby, which was not the case at all. She did later decide she wanted pictures and then to meet. I was so relieved she did. It was obviously bitter-sweet on her and ds was 1 day shy of being 2 yrs old. He loved being the center of attention. She loved watching him interact with everyone.I remember the day he was born like it was yesterday! We were going to one of her doctor visits because she didn't want to go alone. It was storming and raining so we got there late and she wasn't there yet. When she did arrive, they sent her down to labor and delivery because her blood pressure was high. Well, they were about to discharge her when they had an emergency and no doctor could check over her to discharge her. She went into labor so he was born that night! She asked me to go into the delivery room with her because while her friend was still there at that time, she had to leave soon and she didn't want to be alone. Her friend and I were still scrubbing up when ds was born. I walked in and went to her and she immediately said, "go to baby, go to baby." So I did. He grabbed my finger and I kissed him. He was screaming and screaming until I held him. When I gave him to the nurse, he screamed again, until she gave him back. :) I immediately bonded with this bundle of joy.I asked the nurse to hold him while I went to check on L. She asked (through the interpreter) that I go ahead and take baby out to see dh and to check on her later.I carried J out to the waiting room where dh was standing. I was right in front of him but he didn't know it was me at first, as I was covered from head to toe in paper garments! Also, J was bundled up so he didn't know if we had a boy or a girl yet. I told him, "meet your son, J___D_____. He started crying (dh, not JD) and I handed him over. Dh carried him to the nursery. My Mom and our friends arrived right after that. My Mom flew in that very night and my close friend picked her up for me.When we brought JD home from the hospital, my friends from church had decorated my house for me and left all kinds of gifts for us. It was SO NICE!I'll post adoption #2 in a different post since this is so long already!

For adoption #2, I was expecting to have to wait 18 months to 2 years or longer. I falsely assumed all emom's would want to place with a family who had no children.9 months after turning in the application, I get a call (on Friday before Labor Day) and the sw says she has an emom who doesn't want to meet but is considering us as well as other families. She asked me the questions emom had and said she'd call us back and let us know something later.We didn't hear anything so I assumed emom either decided to parent or chose someone else. Well, on Tuesday sw calls and says, "D chose you and baby was born yesterday, it's a boy, do you want to make an adoption plan?" I screamed, "YES!!!"D didn't want to meet and while she didn't see ds she didn't want us at the hospital either. I respect that and so we didn't go. I knew she was needing her time and I really was hoping she would spend time with ds. However, she chose not to and I respect that, too. She did send home with him a gift and a beautiful card for when he is older.I got to see tiny little J for the first time when he was 4 days old. We met sw at the agency and did the paperwork and brought him home. He seemed so tiny after JD! JM weighed 6 lbs 14 oz when he was placed with us. He is still very skinny, and very very tall!Oh, what I neglected to share is what I did after sw called saying we were chosen and ds was born the day before. I called dh at work and he wasn't at his desk so I left him a voice mail. I was crying very hard so he couldn't understand me. I told him, "J__M_____ was born yesteray! You're a daddy again! JD is a big brother!!!!" I was crying too hard and all he caught was JD and thought something had happened.I called my Mom and she was at "work." She volunteers but she does call it work, so anyway, they were in a meeting and she answered since it was me. I was crying and she had a hard time understanding me at first. When she did finally understand she started screaming and shouting and crying with me. My Dad happened to be there and he thought something horrible had happened. I hear Mom blubbering away (much like me) trying to explain to dad. Then, they planned a trip for when he was 2 weeks old to come see us and they brought my Grandmother.JD was so excited to be a brother. He was disappointed at first because he had been praying for a sister. He hasn't stopped praying for a sister yet! He does love his brother and is happy we have him. He now wants us to, "go back to that place and get a girl this time." :D Thanks for letting me share, Michelle!

Awww....Ani thank you for sharing. I am still crying.

I LOVE sharing our story. So even though it's recent and everyone might have read it, I'll do it again. :D We had been waiting about seven months and had been holding off on getting the nursery ready. It was the end of March and I finally snapped and told DH we were taking a long weekend, doing some Spring cleaning and we were going to start that nursery. Match or no match. We worked like mad that Friday. Cleaned the whole house top to bottom. Saturday we attacked the lawn, garage and barn. It took most of the day so I had only moved a couple of boxes out of the spare room we were turning into a nursery by Saturday night. Sunday morning we slept in. DH's little siser V had stayed with us to help out all weekend and I was going to take her shopping and then we were going to clean out the nursery. At 10 o'clock I was in the shower when DH walked in.He asked what I was doing, (um, fingerpainting?), and then said, "Well, do you want to go pick up a baby?"I didn't believe him! I had been going through a really down period and he knew it and all I could do was tell him what an insensitive jerk he was being for joking around like that.It took him five minute to convince me he wasn't joking. A couple had called us saying their baby girl was born the night before and they were definitely planning on adoption for her. They'd found our profile, really liked us and if we were interested to please come to the hospital. We'd never even heard from them before!The rest is still kind of a blur. I remember flying out of the shower and dripping everywhere because I was trying to towel off at the same time I was trying to dress and comb my hair. :arrow: It was the first warm weekend and our summer stuff was still packed away so all I had was a t-shirt that says something about loving margaritas on it. Not the best first impression so I grabbed a jacket to wear over it.Meanwhile DH was on the phone to his parents and V was helping us any way she could and asking if she could go too. We decided to only tell our parents until we knew for sure this was OUR baby. Still, my Mom broke into tears and even though she won't admit it I know she ran to Carter's as soon as we were out the door.Three hours later, holding hands and more nervous than we've ever been in our lives, we met our daughter for the first time. She was 12 hours old when her bdad handed her to me and said, "Meet your daughter." There are no words, but I know you all understand.We spent the rest of the day with the bparents and their family. It was awkward, sweet, sad, all at once. But it seemed like it was almost meant to be. Eve's bparents asked us about what name we had chosen and I very nervously said, Evangelina. Bmom's mom started to cry. It was her mom's name! They also looked very much like us from coloring to height. Bmom is even lefthanded like me. We were all amazed by the similarities. By the time we left the hospital that night, we were all content in the plan we'd made.Our agency rep. told us because the drive was so long we'd better stay the night there, which we hadn't been prepared for. So at 11 p.m., with pounding headaches and racing hearts we were in Meijer buying baby things, toothbrushes, PJs, shampoo, etc. As we did so we called our friends and relatives. We were about to be parents!!!By the time we got home the next day, our dining room table was covered with gifts, there were people waiting inside and outside the house, led by my sobbing Mom, and Eve slept through the whole thing! It couldn't have been more perfect.Four and a half months later I still look at her sweet little face and wonder at how we got so lucky to have her. I probably always will.

Due to a badly handled miscarriage at the age of 20 I found myself with blocked tubes and unable to have children. At the age of 34 I had a new procedure called tuboplasty (same principle as angioplasty, they blow up little ballons to clear the falopian tubes) done and they were able to open one tube. Dh and I tried to concieve for the next two years. Despite fertility pills and artificial insemination I didn't get pregnant. At that time a lot of people aske if we would adopt, but it didn't seem like the right choice for us. At the age of 39 I got the surprise of my life when I found out I was pregnant. J was born two months after my fortieth birthday. We really hoped for another miracle. Neither of us wanted J to grow up an only child. J desparately wanted a brother or sister. I emember one morning when J was three, I went to get him up and he was crying. When I asked him why he said "I prayed God would turn Baby James [doll] into a real baby, and He didn't." My heart ached for him Then one day I was at Wendy's I saw a poster promoting the foster-adopt program. I went home and researched it on the internet. I looked at the faces of the waiting children and knew this was what God wanted us to do. But J was still only three. We wanted to adopt an "older" child, but we wanted J to be the oldest, so we decided to wait. When J turned 8 we began the process. It took sixth months to go thru all the classes and get our foster license and home study completed. In August I got a call about a little boy turning five. We drove to the DSHS office over an hour away to meet him. We were waiting in a separate room and we heard him before we saw him. The moment I heard him I knew he was our son. He moved in with us in November and his adoption was finalized a year later. Coming from a background of neglect, he has some "issues". Things have not been easy, but there has never been a moment of doubt. We fell in love with him at the first visit. The first day that the boys spent together they became brothers. Remember when J was crying that God didn't turn his doll into a baby? He did. That was about the time that E was born! Like Bajj, I will tell the story of our next adoption in another post

When we started the whole adoption process we really wanted a sibling group. We wanted one boy and one or two girls. But we told our agency we were open to doing separate adoptions too. so, as soon as E was settled into our home we began again to look for our daughter - or daughters. We wanted a girl younger than J and older than E. Because of E's special needs at that time, we did not feel he could cope with a younger sibling. The summer after E's adoption we took emergency placement of a little girl we were hoping we could adopt. We took her in before her case worker even had a full history on her. Sadly, she had problems that were just too big for us to handle on top of E's needs. E regressed badly. I let the caseworkers know they would have to find a new placement for her. She was with us for two months. But I do not feel it was a mistake for us to take her when we did. She was placed with a couple using our agency, a couple wiht no other children who has now adopted her. We will be attending her birthday party in a couple weeks! So, the search for a daughter continued. In February 06 we got a call from a sw. The year before we had done respite for a little girl on her case load. She asked if we were still looking for a little girl and I said yes. The following weekend she brought T to our home for a "respite" weekend. We all knew right away that she was a part of our family. T is just five months younger than J. the two of them alternate between being best friends and worst enemies. She has a dx of oppositional defiant disorder, and beleive me, she lives up to that dx! She has been a real challenge, but at least she has made me draw closer to God! No way I could handle her without His help. T moved in with us in Feb ruary 06 and her adoption was finalized the following December. By March dh and I were feeling that tug of "just one more". We met with our agency and told them we would like another girl. E has made such progress that we knew he could cope with a younger sibling. We definately did not want the new girl to be too close to T in age, so we settled on somewhere from 5 - 8. (E will be 8 in September). Well, time passed and we never heard a thing. In the meantime I deligently checked the waiting children sites looking for jsut the right child. It was going to be harder this time, because we are already dealing with some interesting disorders, and don't want to bring in a child that is going to trigger regression of what progress we have made. In June I saw a little girl in Oregon listing that seemed like at least a possibility. I sent an inquiry. Oregon goes thru case workers. They do not communicate with the family at all in the initial stages. When our cw got the full history of this little girl they knew she would not be a match for us. BUT a little girl whose case they have been managing for the past year had just had a change of plan from reunification to adoption. They were all hoping that they could find a family for her where they could sort of "keep tabs" because they had all fallen completely in love with her. As soon as they saw that we were looking for a little girl again (for some reason the worker we met with in February never bothered to tell anyone else in agency that we wanted another) they knew she could fit with our family. They pulled out license to make sure we were licensed for this age ( she is going on four) and found that for some reason, after T's adoption one of the FORMER cw's there had closed our foster license! We had not asked to have it closed, and were quite surprised. Anyway, long story short (okay, I know, this is definately not short), we now have our license back, and she is here!! We are doing respite for her while her current foster parents are on vacation. When they get back "if respite goes well" they may begin to transition her into our home! C is funny, bright and demanding... like all my kids! The state sw will not say for sure that she will be placed with us, but it is looking more and more promising.

For us after several years of TTC we came to the conclusion that we needed to look at our next option. We thought, for about a minute, of trying IVF. At my age the chances were slim. We knew that one day we wanted to adopt because of my husband and his twin sister being adopted. Well, it just came a little sooner than we thought. We signed with our facilitator in October of 2004. We hadn't started anything yet when I got a call in the middle of my grocery store Thanksgiving week. A bmom, not from our agency wanted to place her 6 week old twin girls. The lawyer that the bmom had contacted was out of state and referred her to my facilitator. I rushed home to talk with my husband and we decided to go for it. We met that day drove about an hour away and picked up our girls. The bmom had a horrific story of how these girls came to life and what were to happen to her if she returned to her country with the babies. (She is American married to and Iranian man) By the time we returned home my house was filled with about 20 close friends waiting with gifts galore. Needless to say we were immediately in love with the girls. We stayed in contact with the bmom all weekend. Talking several time a day on the phone. The sw went to have sign TPR a few days later. She called to say she had a bad feeling about this. The bmom had been drinking all thru the paperwork. Her story kept changing and so on. 5 days later we got the call that the bmom had changed her mind. But, she still was hoping that we could lend her the money to get out of the country and she would repay us later. We were crushed and so frightened for these girls. The one thing we did take away from this horrible time was that we were on the right path for our journey. We cried for days and still get sad at times. We know that if only for a week these girls knew unconditional love and were completely safe. Moving forward, a month later we received a call that we had been chosen by bparents. I was scared, excited and every emotion that could hit me did. As you can see in my avatar picture I have beautiful daughter. This was the path meant to be for our family. Letting go and giving this over to God was hard. But, as I believe I can not make my own destiny. I can't imagine life being any different. I hope you all can keep the faith because I truely believe that one day your dream will come true.

Thank you Denice and mrsred for your stories! ((((hugs)))) for your loss. Happy that things worked out for your families. I rejoice with you and your families!!!

OK Michelle, we want to hear your story, too!I love reading all of these. Nikki, Red, Denice, awesome to read these stories, even though there is some heartache, too.

I think we all suffer some kind of loss in our adoption process. It is wonderful to hear stories that have great endings or should I say beginnings once their families are complete.

When we thought we were bringing twins home and their mom changed her mind at the last minute, I know seeing everyone else's successes really kept me focused. Of course, it stung a little at first, but in the end you see those stories and you know your baby is still out there. And she was!

DH and I met in a Sports Bar. I sent the handsome "brother" at the bar a drink and our future was sealed. We talked and meshed beautifully. But he was 10 years younger than I, I already was the parent to 4 children, the youngest was 10, I thought I was on the road to a bit of freedom. A few months of dating and he asked if I would consider having more children, no pressure, he loved me and it didn't matter but he'd always wanted children if I would consider it. Due to secondary infertility, after marriage we discussed adoption and decided it was a wonderful choice. I said I thought I could easily parent one more child. After the failed adoption of an older child that we didn't think would be right for my husband's first child, we got a call from the agency a couple of months later. I was in my office when the worker called and said "I've got a situation, I don't know if you're interested in considering". And indeed, we were. A baby boy, already 3 mos. old, in foster care. A couple of weeks later we met him at his foster home. Foster mom was wonderful and after a few visits he was placed. My other children loved him, everyone loved him. D's mom was thrilled when I handed her first grandchild to her!!! So many beautiful moments to even relate. He's now 10 years old. I recently spoke to his birth aunt who I found by searching some paperwork. She told me that our son's birthmother, who had a drug addiction problem, never took another drug after she found out that she was pregnant with our son. So through his difficulty not knowing his birthmother, I am able to tell him that he was the miracle that saved his mother from a lifetime of addiction, that God definitely brought him into this world for a very good reason, to be our son, and to be his other mother's MIRACLE!!! We've gone on to adopt 3 more children. Each one is so very special. My new motto??? NEVER SAY NEVER!!! God has a plan, go with it . . . Blessings to all of you.

We at the time that adoption became reality our bio son was about to become 4. We always knew even before we were married that we wanted to adopt. My first miracle was the birth of our son. But after a few years trying for our next miracle, we knew that it was time to pursue adoption. I was so happy but nervous at the same time. I certainly was going into this with no information and I am one that wants and needs information to think through. Sometimes I think (well maybe all the time)things thru to much. We went with an agency and started the process with classes and homestudy in April. By the first week of June we had our official letter of our homestudy approved. We both were so excited! Now the wait begins. Well, 3 weeks later a phone call came from our agency director to ask if we would be interested in meeting with her. The first couple that was to adopt her child they backed out after the baby was 3 days old. We met with our birthmom that day and spent about 5 or 6 hours with her so we could all get to know each other. We left that evening knowing that it was her decision. The next day (Saturday) dh and I decided that we should treat today as any other day. He ran to do some errands. I had relatives visiting from out of state so I was cleaning the house. The phone rings and its the agency saying how soon can you get here because our sons birthmom is ready to sign. It was such an emotional afternoon. Our sons birthmom requested that she personnaly hand her son to me when it was all done. All I could do was cry and hug her(our sons birthmom). Our second miracle road home in our car and into our heart and lives forever. Now I tried to condense this all but if you want more details you can read my journal. Hey keep these stories going! I want to hear all stores.