Our Adoption Story

(warning this is going to be a very long post)

As most of you know Mike and I have been trying to start our family for a few years now. It has been a long on going process. Last summer we started looking into adoption. At the time I was watching my friends 2 kids and was in charge of getting them ready everyday. I started looking at hair blogs for ideas on how to do Belles hair, one day I stumbled across a hair blog called Adopt a do" she not only does hair but has adopted 2 darling little babies and blogs about her process. That is how we first heard about our agency Heart to Heart. We looked into their website and really liked what we saw. We also learned that one of Mikes missionary companions had also adopted from this same agency as well as a neighborhood friend that Mike grew up with. The timing just was not right we decided to try a few other options first, and decided to hold off.

For some reason this last year the holidays seemed to be even harder for us than normal. We realized how ready we really were for our family and we started thinking about adoption once again. We decided that we would hold off until June before we put in our papers and start the process. A month went by and one day we both came home from work, and decided it was time and there was no reason to wait till June. We started our paperwork right away and had it completed and turned in at the end of February. At the beginning of March we had our home study done and we turned in our background checks. It felt like it took forever to get approved but it was only a month and we were approved on April 21. the next day we were presented with our first situation. however it ended up not working out in our favor and the same day we were presented with another situation. Once again it didn't work out. For some reason even though I was sad that we didn't get picked for these two babies I felt relieved and realized that they were not the situations that matched us.

On May 11th, the day after we were turned down for our second situation, we received an email from our agency telling us about another situation. This one would be closed and also the gender would remain unknown until after birth and that the agency would be picking the family. The birth mom was due on June 3rd. I looked at Mike and told him this was our baby. He told me not to get excited and just to be patient but somehow I knew that this was the one. Sure enough the next morning I got a call from our agency. She started telling me about the situation again and then said. "If you're still interested then the baby is yours". I of course said yes and I even told her "you know I just felt like this one was different, like it was the one" then she told me " we were going though the profiles and for some reason I just kept coming back to you guys every time." I called Mike and all I could say was " They picked us, it's ours" We decided to only tell our immediate family and our employers (we wanted to make sure it was ours before we told too many people as hard as it was not to tell the world). The rest of the week was a little crazy trying to get things ready. On Thursday I got another call from the agency saying that our birth mom would be flying into Utah the next day and they would be taking her to the doctor as soon as she got here because she was having blood pressure problems. I immediately started packing and trying to get everything ready.

Our birth mom flew in at 4:00PM the agency called after she landed and said they were going to go to the hospital and make sure everything was ok,and schedule a date for her to be induced. at 6:00 our agency called me; they said she had really high blood pressure, the doctors were a little worried, and that she would be going in for a c-section in an hour. holy cow, mike was still at work, I called mike and told him what was going on, installed the car seat, grabbed a few things and we were off. the trip to salt lake had never seemed so long. We got to the hospital at 8:45 and we had to wait for our caseworker to get there. As we were waiting our birth moms case worker came and found us and let us know that it was a Boy he was born at 7:23 and weighed in at 7 lbs 10 oz and was 19 inches long. No one had seen him yet except for the hospital staff. at 9:00 we walked into the nursery and he was laying right there. he was beautiful. and he was all sprawled out and was asleep. we just stood there touching his hands and feet till the nurse walked over and wrapped him up for us and let me feed him the rest of his first bottle. They had held off on giving him his bath so that we could be a part of it. The hospital set us up with our own room. It was down an over flow hallway that wasn't being used at the time. and they gave me the other hospital parent bracelet. Jax got to stay in our room the entire time and because it was down the over flow hall way the hospital staff kind of kept forgetting about us and just let us be with him. I think they only came and got him once in the 48 hours we were there. The first night I stayed up rocking him the entire night. I couldn't believe that he was here and that if everything went well in the next 24 hours that he would be ours forever. The next day was a little more nerve racking. In the state of Utah the birth mom can sign papers as early as 24 hours but is not obligated to do so until she is ready. Our agency kept coming in and giving us updates and let us know how our birth mom was doing. We learned from our case worker what an amazing person this lady really was. she lives in very humble circumstances working 2 jobs just to make ends meet. she had very little support and knew the task of a new baby was more than she could handle. we have so much love and respect for her and the beautiful gift she has given us. I can only imagine what she was going through, and to make the decision to relinquish rights as a parent, she signed all the paper work that night. It was official we were taking him home. we were so excited we called all of family and sent plenty of pictures of our handsome little man.
They let us go home the next day. I have to admit it was really hard leaving the hospital knowing that our birth mom was still there, and that she and Jax missed the only opportunity to see one another. I know it was what she felt was best. I still can't help but feel connected to her. A part of me wishes we could have seen her, hugged her, and let her know how thankful we are for her and her sacrifice. She has given us everything we have ever wanted and we will always love her for that.when we got home we were surprised to find our house had been completely decorated by our amazing sisters in law. We had signs on the doors, windows, and all over the inside of our house along with a ton of blue balloons. It was so exciting to see all of their cars come into the complex one right after the other to come and meet Jax. they all stayed for a while and took turns holding him and taking pictures. carter called later that night to talk to mike he said "I wanna hold that baby and take him home". it was so cute. Everyone has been so great. we have had such great support from family and friends. Thank you so much to everyone for all you do.