Adoption

What is this? Two blogs in a row? Well, yes. I did not plan on this, but I feel I need to write about it so I am. As anyone who is close to me knows, our little Troy is a blessing through adoption. Lets go back to 2003. We decided we want to have more children, but there were obstacles in our way that meant we had to seek infertility treatments. InVitro Fertilization to be exact. Now, because of my beliefs (that life begins at conception) I had a struggle with this. Our decision was that we would never leave any embryo without a chance at life. Now, we never went back on that but the medical doctors, they are a different story. In our last IVF round, they "discarded" 3 of our embryos because they didn't like their quality, that left us with two. They did so without our permission and against our wishes. Hence why it was our LAST round. We did 4 rounds of IVF when it was all said and done. On the first round, we were blessed with a double pregnancy. Twins. We were thrilled. It was short lived when we lost twin A, and two weeks later twin B. The second and third transfers did not develop. The fourth, and final, we had two viable embryos and transfered both. We were delighted to learn that we were pregnant. Everything appeared to be going well, and things were progressing as they should. We passed the "danger points" and were preparing for our little Brody's arrival. Interesting fact about this pregnancy, I had a "pseudo sac" along with Brody. So, for the pregnancy I measured much larger that I should have because of the empty sac growing there too, presumably where the other baby attached but never grew. Anyhow, we were so excited and already in love with him. Then it happened. One day I couldn't get his heartbeat on my home doppler and it is then that we learned what real heartbreak was. We delivered our Brody that day, born so perfectly made but perfectly still. I struggled not understanding why he had to go be with Jesus before we even got to officially meet him. Chris' heart was broken. My heart was broken. It didn't seem at that time like we would ever be able to be happy again. We knew that we would never do IVF again, but still struggled with our empty arms. We grieved our son fiercely, and though we were shocked at how many people didn't even seem to care, there were many who showed an outpouring of love and support onto us. Oh how grateful I was for them at that time. Well, I am still grateful.

In July, Chris felt as though his heart was being led by God to adopt. Now, this was a BIG deal. Chris had not been open to adoption previously, but God changed his heart. Without going into a ton of details, I had a friend who approached us that week about adopting the baby she was pregnant with. It was such a God thing. Our son Troy was born August 4, 2005 just 9 weeks after we lost our Brody.

We agreed to a fully open adoption and to this day we are glad we chose this option. His unselfish and loving birthmom (whom I love very much) gets to see Troy as often as she like. He knows his biological siblings and he knows where he came from. I love that he has SO many people that love him.

After Troy's adoption, we wanted to adopt again. Well, that has proven to be a challenge. We have turned it over to God and his will. We have had 6 failed adoptions now. SIX. Six more heartbreaks. Just a little FYI, even though you are not carrying the baby, it still hurts when you are expecting and then it doesn't work out. You still grieve. It is still a loss. We did not share all of our adoption opportunities with our friends and family, because it is embarrassing and hurts worse to have to go say "well, once again...".

At this point we are not actively trying to adopt. We feel like if God led us to someone, or them to us, then if it is his will it will happen. If it is or if it isn't, we are happy with what we have. We certainly have enough and have been blessed beyond measure. Even though our family would think we were nuts for adopting again, we would welcome a new child with open arms. We will not seek one out though. We did enough trying to manipulate God's will before, and paid a hefty price.

Adoption is so beautiful. It is an amazing and loving option! I wish more people would chose it. I thank the Lord that we have a chance to experience what an amazing blessing it can be.