Last night Ryan and I read over the adoption contract again — 15 pages plus disclosure forms — and signed on all of the dotted lines. Today, I sent it off to the agency and we are waiting to hear from them to set up our account and fill out the official application. I told Ryan the other day that all of our children have been under contract in one way or another. And when I say children we are parents to 4 – Hunter, Hunter’s twin and our miscarriage and our little emby-baby = 4 babies and we are truly blessed to have Hunter with us. Kiddo and contracts:
- First round of IUIs – 3 failed, 1 worked = Hunter (all 4 under contract with one clinic)
- Second round of IUIs – 5 failed (contracts with 2 different clinics, thank you insurance [insert eye roll])
- Attempted IVF – 2 embryos, 1 miscarriage, 1 never set up camp (contracts with one clinic, again than you insurance for making me change clinics again)
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As I was saying a lot of mixed feelings today, no tears — well almost. Mixed feelings of knowing that this is another adventure to expand our family, mixed feelings of really putting an end to trying to get pregnant, mixed feelings of meeting a birth mom who will be in our lives for forever, mixed feelings about what if we don’t get picked, or what if she changes her mind at the last minute…the list can go on and on and on. It’s scary and exciting and stressful and hopeful.
There is birth mom out there who is making a huge amazing life changing decision (possibly at this moment, right now) to have her baby and to go the adoption route. It breaks my heart just thinking about it because it takes a very strong person and one who loves that baby so much to make this choice. And we want to be the family that takes that little one home and makes them our child and raises them in our house and loves that little person unconditionally.
This is not how I thought we would have a family — the ‘plan’ was (silly me for making a plan, I should know better — Gods plan is far better than my own). My ‘plan’ was: Married by 23, have 4 kids before 29, in my dream house. Well, reality is: Married at 27, had 1 kiddo at 30, still working on the dream house 🙂 I never imagined that it would take us almost 2 years to get pregnant with faith and science, finding out that your husband can’t have kids, finding a donor (online shopping – seriously, I’ll tell ya all about it if you want to know), then finding out that your eggs are that of a 50 year old and that they are of poor quality and that even IVF wasn’t a sure shot — it was a better shot than IUIs but still didn’t work.
But going through all of this I have learned a LOT about my faith, my husband (he’s amazingly supportive, he’s my rock and keeps me together when I get a little stress-crazy) and our family. Who cares if I don’t have a family the ‘conventional’ way – not many people do any more.
So welcome to my family — our expanding family, no matter how long that takes or how it happens. This is our adventure and we are scared, excited, nervous and hopeful!
Paddock Family Adventures 