Waiting!

Again I am sorry that it has been so long. There is not a lot to update you on other than where we are on the waiting list now. As I mentioned before in January we were told that we were number 17. In the first couple months we moved 4 spots, a month later 1 spot, and then for 3 months we were at a stand still at number 12. A month ago things started moving again taking us to number 10 and then 1 week ago we moved to number 9! We are so excited that the double digits are over!

Needless to say it has kind of been an emotional roller coaster. We know without a doubt that God is changing us in this process and find so much comfort in that. Now we are just needing prayer for a few things... First of all for our sweet baby who is likely in the baby home in Uganda. I pray that God is keeping him safe, healthy and preparing his heart for his parents. We have heard a few times that the baby home we are adopting out of, and the ladies who care for the children are wonderful! We are so grateful for this! Second if you would pray for Joel and I in this waiting process, that we are preparing in every way God wants us to be. Third for the adoption tax credit. We originally thought the adoption would be completed this year and if that was/is the case there is a tax credit that we would use to help with this adoption. We are praying that the adoption credit is renewed for 2013, not only for us but all the other waiting families! No matter what happens with this we know God is in complete control and everything will work out exactly how it should! 

Thank you so much for doing this with us!

Application to wait list!!!

Sorry it has been so long since I have updated this. We have been super busy with the holidays and all... I will try and do better!

When Joel and I decided to adopt we had already made the decision to adopt from Uganda. I have had a lot of people ask why we chose international adoption or even Africa, so you may find yourself asking the same question. Unfortunately I don’t know how fulfilling my answer will be for you.. It is just where our hearts were. Uganda being where Joel’s father is from made choosing a country fairly easy. 

Picking an agency from this point was slightly limited. For some reason there are fewer agencies that adopt out of Uganda. I made a list of the agencies and a little chart with questions, called, asked, compared, and when it came down to it the answers and mostly the feeling we had about the agency we chose led us to them. So on July 25th we put the application in the mailbox and by July 27th we had an email from the agency saying “Welcome to our Ugandan Program”. We were officially accepted 2 days after the application hit the mailbox. Now a little side note to this story is at the same time we are doing all this, I am asking friends to pray with us for this process to go as fast as it can so we could meet our baby soon! I would say a 2 day response put us off to a good start! God is so good!

We had an online orientation scheduled a couple weeks later and found out another little blessing in all of this. Now those of you who know me may have already figured this out, I get a little carried away with my thoughts sometimes and tend to worry a little (and I use “a little” loosely) about things. So in the 2 weeks we were waiting for the online orientation I had some concerns about the process and hoping the agency was really one who had our babies and our best interest in mind. So seconds before our orientation we got our skype working and instead of doing the orientation over the phone we were able to meet face to face! We went over everything, got off skype and Joel mentioned how familiar the girl we met with (our case worker) looked. After a couple minutes of thinking Joel realized he went to St. James (our old church) with this girl when he was in middle school! Now I didn’t mention this but our agency is based in Texas which is where this girl is. So I HAD to call her back immediately to tell her! This was a huge blessing! It may not make sense to you but God knew what this would do for me, and it has really helped me be at ease during this whole process. Now don’t get me wrong, this girl is awesome, and the agency has a great reputation which should have  been enough, but its little things like that along the way where God pops in and reaffirms what we are doing! 

Next we found a great social worker in Stillwater (who was much more affordable than those in Tulsa) for our home study. Met with her the first of three times August 29th, and by October 13th we had our completed home study. October 19th we mailed our home study with an application to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which you must do if you want to adopt a baby from another country. We were contacted with an appointment to be fingerprinted by USCIS in Oklahoma City on November 22nd, which we did and had our approval letter from them in our mailbox on December 23rd (possible the 22nd but I didn’t check the mail that day)! We then emailed the case worker at our agency and we are now officially on the wait list at number 17!!! We are expecting to wait about 8 months to be matched with our sweet baby. We are praying for God to help us wait and prepare during this time and would greatly appreciate for you to pray that with us! I will update you as we are updated.

Joel and I on our way to OKC for fingerprinting

The first picture of us our baby will see!

Adoption Shirts!

This is our adoption shirt one of our friends designed for us! We are selling these as a fundraiser to help us bring our baby home! If you are interested in purchasing one there is an icon to the right where you can get started. If you are not interested in buying a shirt but still want to help there is also an icon for donations. We are putting the first order for shirts in December 1st, and will continue to place orders after that based on the size of orders! We really appreciate your help more than we can tell you!

Choosing Adoption

Now adoption is something that God had previously put on my heart. Being what I call a selfish human, I would just place those feelings aside and continue to worry about what was going on in our lives. So when I finally got over the anger of failed fertility attempts and what I thought were unanswered prayers, I started to pray again, but this time with a different approach. I asked God to change my heart. If He did not want me to become pregnant the He had to take that desire away from me. So since I wasn’t listening the first time God, with a little intensity, placed adoption on my heart again. I wanted that little African baby more than ever! I knew how Joel felt about adoption from previous conversations we had during the fertility process and I knew this wasn’t something I could do on my own. I asked God to place adoption on Joel’s heart the same way He had done for me. Now this is the part that seems to be a blur for me because it happened so quickly and was such a huge change from our previous desires. We prayed and discussed adoption a lot in the next 2 months. At the end of our 2 month fertility treatment vacation we knew it was time to make a decision. 

I knew I was done with fertility treatments and I honestly didn’t care if I ever became pregnant. My heart was set on adopting and the only reason I would continue treatments is if Joel wasn’t ready to stop. We went back in to the fertility doctor to discuss the four months of treatments. She actually told us that during those four months things looked so good she didn’t understand why it did not work. She said we were welcome to try a few more times but if it did not work in the next couple of months it probably never would. So Joel and I thanked her for her time and told her we would go home and discuss it. Over the next few days I let Joel have some time to think. I remember that morning so clearly, I asked Joel if he had made any decisions. Joel and I talked and we both knew without a doubt that God had another plan for us, and it was adoption! Joel’s heart had completely changed! Gods desires for us had become our desires. And prayer! Man does it work! I unfortunatley can not put together the words to explain how amazing this really was. I mean if you don’t believe this is amazing then go back to the first post and re read how I felt about becoming pregnant and then come back and read this.... I don’t care AT ALL that I am not pregnant! Adoption is what we want, and I thank God all the time for all that we had to go through to get to this point. If I could choose right now, I would not be doing this any other way!

Our journey to adoption...

I am starting this blog because I am proud of our story. I am grateful of all the things God has allowed us to go through, good and bad, to get where we are now. I have been changed in this and want to be able to share what we have been through and what we are going to go through with our family, friends and those of you who find yourself in a situation similar to ours.

 Now I do need you to know that adoption IS NOT a second option for us! I am telling you the story of my infertility for two simple reasons. 1. So you can see how God worked in our lives during this time and 2. For those of you out there who are going through the same things Joel and I went through. It was hard, but I wouldn’t be who I am now without it. 

I am the girl who has always wanted to be a wife and a mommy. For years I have dreamed of the day that I found out I was pregnant, imagined my belly growing big, wondered what it would feel like when my baby kicked, and watched my husband’s face the first time he felt it kick. Even imagined the day I went into labor and have my husband frantically drive me to the hospital so we can see the face of the child that had grown inside of me for 9 months. Then all my friends would come to the hospital to visit and meet what my husband and I created together. So two years ago Joel and I decided it was time, and we were ready for dreams to be reality.

Now for some reason I have always had a feeling that getting pregnant was not something that was going to be easy for me. I never had a good explanation of those feelings but I had them. I even shared these concerns with friends who I knew thought I was just being the paranoid person that I can sometimes be. So a few months into it I decided to go in and talk with my doctor because I knew something was wrong. The doctor was very confident that he had a very simple fix for me, a little white pill called Clomid. It gives you lots of eggs when your body just can’t make them on its own. So I was excited, give me the Clomid! A couple weeks later I had to return to his office for an ultrasound to make sure the Clomid was doing what it was supposed to. Lying in the dark room with the ultrasound tech and I could see it in her face, something was wrong. The simple question of “have you ever had an ultrasound before?” became so scary. As I sat in the doctor’s office waiting to hear my results, I tried to prepare myself for the worst (which I have a bad habit of doing sometimes). My suspicions were right, it wasn’t good. The doctor told me that I had a problem that complicates getting pregnant or even carrying a baby at all. He told me it would be best to follow up with a fertility specialist and so I did. With one quick look at the ultrasound pictures she was in complete agreement with my doctor. I was told that she may be able to help me get pregnant but if I did, I would not be able to carry a baby to full term. 

Over the next few days we prayed, our family prayed, our friends prayed, our church prayed. This was the first time I realized how blessed we were to have so many people in our lives who love and care so much. The nurse at the fertility clinic called a couple days later and said the doctor really wanted me to go for one more additional test just so she could have it on file. I wasn’t sold on this and asked a few times if this was really necessary, it was. They called us after the test was complete and asked us to come back into the office. The doctor walked into the room and said something like “you don’t know how lucky you are. You should go buy a lottery ticket”. What the ultrasound showed before was not what this test showed. My problem was correctable with a simple surgery! The doctor explained that these results were so unbelievable that she showed several of her colleagues the results of each test and their responses were “there is no way this is the same person” they even questioned why she would order the second test int he first place when the ultrasound so obviously showed the problem. LUCK?! HA! GOD is more like it! 

So surgery in July of 2010, recovered, and fertility treatments started in January 2011. Each month I prayed that this was the month that it was going to happen, and every month I convinced myself that it worked and I was pregnant, just to find out a week or two later that it wasn’t the month and I was not pregnant. Not to mention all the hormones I am taking that are making me an emotional disaster. After 4 failed attempts of artificial insemination, we were beat. It was time to take a break. I can not even begin to explain how hard it was to go through that time in our life, not only for myself but Joel as well. Little did we know that the next 2 months of fertility treatment vacation would be one of the best things that ever happened to us.