The Hunting Widow: Pretty Big News....

We're Adopting A Baby!!!!!

August 2012 we (Paschal and I) were told that in order to have children we had no other choice then to partake in IVF. By the way... the doctor we had our consultation with came across as completely unprofessional....he told me my eggs were 28 years old, and if they were sold at grocery store, no one would buy them. Really? That's your best analogy??

Anywho~ we walked out of that meeting defeated. We had informational and emotional overload... lets just say it was a LONG four hour drive home. Paschal knew that day that IVF was not the choice for us... myself on the other hand was still grieving not being able to get pregnant naturally, let alone start the process of preparing myself for IVF. Have you ever seen the needles for the hormone shots?? None of them had my name on them. I've never grieved the loss of a child, but I have grieved the loss of having children. Every month, every cycle is an emotional roller coaster ....

So... Paschal decided we should postpone IVF one month... which I agreed to after a lot of screaming and name calling. But slowly, one month turned into two and then next thing we knew it was November. We both had slowly started pushing the idea of IVF away. Now looking back, I don't think I ever truly committed myself to that path.... I wanted to and I fought hard to win Paschal over, but deep down inside, something told me God had a different plan. Paschal's grandmother passed away the week of Thanksgiving and her death/funeral/ time with family, gave us a lot of time to think about how we wanted to start "our" family.

November 26, Paschal told me he wanted us to look into adoption. Now... for Paschal, and for those of you who know him, THIS IS HUGE!!!! My husband, wanted to commit to a baby? And one that wouldn't be biologically his?? I still sometimes think he fell over Thanksgiving and hit his head. After a lot of questioning, because I wasn't about to hit the ground running if he wasn't serious.... we both made the decision to put all our eggs in the same basket.

First call I made was to Marcie ( my mom)... and if you know Marcie, you know she knows somebody, somewhere that has information you want. I'm not kidding... she has the largest network of friends. She told me about a couple she knew who had adopted... we set up a meeting with them and when I say the Lord moves.... HE MOVES!! Almost a month to the day we made the decision to adopt, Kim and Andrew Black were put in our path... they lead us to AIS (Adoption Information Services). They're a consulting firm out of Lawrenceville, GA that works exclusively with placing adoptions in 3-12 months. We had our first meeting on the 7th, second on the 22nd and started our home study interviews on the 31st of January. We hope to have all of the paperwork and red tape done by March 1st, which will put us one step closer to having our sweet baby.

Paschal and I have never been this happy.... and we've never been this less stressed! ha! even with the mountain of paper work we fill out daily! For years I prayed for a baby... and I never had peace. Every moment of our journey through infertility was heartbreaking, stressful, crazy. But the moment we decided to adopt... we had this amazing peace fall upon us. I can only credit this to my Savior... who has had and still has this amazing plan for my family... he just needed me to commit to him, to hold on, to wait out the storm. We can only sing his praises and give him the glory!

Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Through these next months your prayers over Paschal and I would be much appreciated... but the people we ask you lift up in prayer are the birth mothers... they are making one of the hardest decisions of their lives. Pray that through this whole process, they can see the unconditional love of Christ and that he will bring them comfort. Our future child's mother is choosing to share him/her with us, and in return I pray that we share our Savior with her.

Our consultant told us to go ahead and purchase a car seat, diaper bag, bottles and clothing essentials because we might have to travel fast and this whole process has SO many unknowns. The car seat came today... to quote Paschal: "This just made it 'real'... guess we're getting us a baby!"