Our Adoption Story!

If you've been reading this blog long, you know I like to talk about our adoption a LOT. :)  Bits and pieces of our story are all over the place, but today I'll attempt to cram it into one post!  This week Kelly's Korner is doing a whole day on adoption blogs!  If you go to her blog, you'll have hours of adoption blog reading. :)  I posted Landrie's nursery on her "Show us Your Life: Kid's Rooms" post.  There are a ton of fabulous ideas on that one too!

Our tiny blessing from God!

Our story starts out like many adoptive couples, with a HUGE desire for children!  We always knew we wanted to have babies, but we wanted to wait a bit so I could stay home with our babies.  If we would have only known how hard the process would be!!  For 3 years we tried every fertility treatment out there and endured a heart breaking miscarriage trying to grow our family.  Adoption was always an option for us, but we never felt peace about it, so we continued the endless monthly roller coaster.

New Year's week of 2009, we found ourselves back with the fertility doctor.  We had a fabulous appointment, and things looked very promising for another round of IVF.  We walked out of the doctor's office, looked at each other, and shook our heads.  We felt ZERO peace about it.  Of course, I immediately started reading about adoption, which was such an overwhelming topic!  This book was so life changing:
      

Amazingly (and only because it was God's impeccable timing for our family) less than a week after leaving that fertility appointment, my husband and I felt complete peace about pursuing adoption!  I cannot even begin to tell you what a relief it was to me to start the process!  That same week, our future baby girl was conceived...

We spent several months researching types of adoption and agencies all over the country.  We decided to do a domestic adoption of a newborn.  We wanted a Christian, non-profit agency with kind people, fast placement and that charged a price that would enable us to adopt more than one baby!  We hit the jackpot when we found Inheritance Adoptions in Wichita Falls, TX.  Can I tell you how much we love them??  Oh wait, I already did. :) I wrote a whole post about them!  We started filling out the mounds of paperwork with a Paperwork Party on Memorial Day weekend of 2009.  We gave ourselves a one month deadline to complete doctors visits, get letters of recommendation, fill out 37 pages of paperwork (whew!), and to collect all the different documents.  

Then we started our scrapbook and "dear birth mother" letter.  On July 10th, our profile was officially posted online!!  That was a HUGE moment!  Our agency sometimes gets calls from the hospital that babies have been born and are ready to be placed right away.  We were "expecting" but didn't know if we would wait 2 hours or 2 years!  I am such a planner, and it was so hard for me not to know when our baby would arrive.

Just a few weeks later... WE GOT THE CALL!!!!!!

Yes, a potential birth mom looked at all the profiles, and had narrowed it down to one other couple and us!!  A few days later we drove to go meet her.  Try picking out what to wear to go meet the woman who might give you her baby!  We prayed and prayed for this woman, and for God's will to be done.  As hard as it was, we knew that we didn't want this placement if this was not God's will for us.  That's not an easy prayer to pray!  

Our nerves were frayed as we walked in, but we felt as ease as soon as we met her, and found ourselves revealing where we lived (GASP!) within the first 5 minutes of meeting her!  Brianna was a college student, and I fell in love with her right away!  As we drove back to our house, it was hard not to let our minds run away with excitement.  A few hours later, we got a call that Brianna had chosen the other couple.  I would have expected to fall on the floor in a heap and sob for hours, but I didn't.  Again, we felt such phenomenal peace from God that he had the right baby for us, and that it would come at the right time.  God had changed my heart so dramatically from when we first started trying to have a baby.  I no longer felt the need to plan and control everything according to my own plan.  I was willing to trust that God had a better plan for me.  It seems so simple as I write it, but it was a tough one to learn!

I was up at school the next day, getting ready for a new school year when my cell phone rang.  It was the agency.  Maybe they were calling to check on me??  My jaw hit the floor and I immediately started sobbing with JOY as I heard the words, 

"She changed her mind.  She wants you guys to raise her baby!"  

There had been a glorious miscommunication and it turns out Brianna really chose us!!  I felt like doing back flips!!   I called Mark hysterical and finally got the good news out!  I cannot even begin to tell you what a joyful moment that was!!  We spent the next 2 days calling everyone and crying and laughing as we told the fantastic news over and over again.    

The next week we got to go to a sonogram with Brianna.  What a gift!  She was 32 weeks when we got matched, which if you do the math, means we had 8 weeks to get 9 months of baby prepping done!!

Our friends and family frantically got to work helping us with a nursery and planning showers.  After walking with us through so much sorrow, it was so amazing to experience such overwhelming joy with them!  Just 5 weeks after Brianna chose us, I was at a beautiful shower thrown by some sweet friends!

People kept joking that I should have my cell phone in my lap in case Brianna went into labor during the shower.  I just laughed!  When my mom and I got into the car after the shower, I had one missed text.  You guessed it!  Brianna was in LABOR 3 weeks early!  

Mark and I threw things into a suitcase like mad and FLEW down the highway and made the hour and a half drive in no time flat!  Our backseat was full of gift bags, loose hair bows a car seat balanced on top!  We made it in time.  The ladies from the agency were there to greet us, and we spent several hours with Brianna as we all waited for the big moment.  We told her our 2 possible names, and she told us "Grace" was the only name that had been on her heart.  Once again, God confirmed that we were right on his path!  

We left the room while Brianna gave birth to our precious baby.  When we walked back in, this is what we saw...

Can you say love??  Brianna loves Landrie SO much!

It was an indescribable moment when Brianna handed sweet Landrie Grace to us for the first time.  A near- stranger was trusting us with this precious, glorious gift.  Years of pain and sorrow were erased and all completely worth it in that moment!

One thing we didn't ever dream of is a reality at many hospitals.  We were able to stay in the hospital while Landrie was there, in a room next door to Brianna.  It was such a sweet time of getting to know both Landrie and Brianna better!  Landrie stayed in our room and Brianna let me have the other hospital bracelet, so I had all the hospital privileges of a "real" mom!  

Isn't she adorable?!

In Texas, a birth mom can sign paperwork after 48 hours.  That would have been at 1am.  Amazingly, the agency doesn't wake up the birth moms in the middle of the night. :)  We knew that Brianna had every single right to choose to parent instead of sign the papers.  There were several moments of anxiety as we loved on sweet Landrie and tentatively started our little family of 3.  When Landrie was 2 1/2 days old, we drove to the agency drove with our tiny bundle of joy.  Brianna had checked out of the hospital earlier, so she asked if we would mind if she saw Landrie one more time before we left.  Are you kidding??!  We would have stayed in town for another week if that's what she wanted!  I can't explain how full our hearts were.  

Brianna with tiny Landrie and her 2 year old daughter, Brynn

When we first looked into adoption, we never thought we would have an open adoption.  Brianna didn't envision that either, but God sure did.  Before time began, He knew that he would knit our baby together in Brianna's womb, and that she would be perfectly made.  He knew what a huge blessing Brianna would be to us!  After we met and spent time together in the hospital, we offered begged to come back and see her soon! She suggested a visit on her birthday, when Landrie would be 5 weeks old.  

I was about to go crazy trying to think of a place to meet that would be easy to hang out with a 2 year old and a 5 week old in October.  Brianna sweetly suggested our home.  She's so smart! :)  We thought about it, realized that we were sure she was not an ax murderer, but just a sweet girl!  

Our first visit with Brianna was great!  We spent the afternoon in our home and celebrated her birthday at Cheesecake Factory that night.  She loved on Landrie, but never tried to parent her or even steal her from us. :)  

We've kind of played things by ear, but it has ended up that we see Brianna and Brynn about every other month.  Want to see what we do on our visits?  Click here to see them all!  

So, that's my blog post-turned mini-novel about our adoption story!  I'm impressed if you are still reading. :)  If you are thinking about adoption as a way to grow your family, you might want to check out the "8 Days of Adoption Series" that I did.  It covers lots of adoption topics!  

Thanks so much for visiting our blog!!  

And, because it wouldn't be a blog post without an adorable picture of Landrie Grace, here's one from this week!!  We love you, baby girl!!  (And we love the new dress, Granny!!)

(Of course, we asked Brianna's permission before we ever posted anything about her on our blog!  She loves to read it and see pictures of Landrie!)