"For This Child I Have Prayed"
Okay wow, this is long overdue! I promised you that there would be a post with updates back in September - we are now just a few days away from Christmas! I am really sorry about that.
The truth is that it is not procrastination that makes this post so late coming. It is a lack of knowing how to adequately describe what has been happening and our ability to process the crazy curve balls that life throws! It's been a challenge for us to switch gears and to process the changes and therefore words have failed me when it comes to sharing our new news.
This spring, as you know, we fully let go of having another biological child. We were tired after the (just shy of) three long years of miscarriage, hormones, medications, doctor appointments and scheduled *ahem* "sexy time". It is exhausting and we were done. It didn't come as a disappointing decision though, because we were VERY excited to be able to fully pursue adoption with our whole hearts invested. Then we found out this summer that we were pregnant - ummm COME AGAIN?! What a shocker. We were told this most likely would not happen, and we had accepted that. The day we found out, Jon and I were so very stunned that we sat on our steps in our backyard in full silence for a solid 20 minutes. What was there too say? We were overwhelmed with joy, but also filled to the brim with paralyzing fear, and also had a lot of confusion mixed in there. What would this mean for the adoption? Would we lose this baby too? What do we do now?
So, we processed the best we could. For us, that meant not really talking about it. And I mean, not talking about it at all. We went all summer with having maybe 4 discussions total about this pregnancy. I was VERY sick and completely exhausted all summer long - I seriously slept most of the summer away, when I was wasn't puking my guts up! Not great timing, since Jon works 16 hour days all summer long and is immersed in camp life. Thank goodness for Jon's sister Aimee who was up at camp with us this summer as Wildside's head cook. She would take my daughter every afternoon when she had her break and they would play and swim and giggle and bond and I would sleep. We didn't tell Aimee until the end of the summer, and were able to pretty much just get away with saying I was sick all the time (I suffer from chronic migraines, so it wasn't hard to pull it off). Jon and I were barely able to breathe a word of it to each other, because everytime we tried, the joy, the fear, and the confusion just became stronger and words failed. To add on top of how awful I was feeling, I also stopped sleeping much - I would wake up about 5 times per night, in a full out panic that I was miscarrying and would run to the bathroom - you would think that eventually my brain would know that this was not real, and I would stop running, but that just never happened. I did this until around 14 weeks along. My midwife and I discussed her giving me something to calm my brain down in the night (in the daytime I seemed/felt fine and not nearly as anxious - maybe that was part of the avoiding process?) but it did eventually pass, thank goodness.
By the time we were 13 weeks along, we had already had 3 ultrasounds and many rounds of bloodwork done to show that the baby was developing normally and my body was producing the necessary hormones needed to sustain the pregnancy. It still didn't really feel real and it felt scary to feel hopeful. But we hit the 13 week mark with flying colours and we knew it was time to soon start telling people, and also make big decisions regarding our adoption process. It was REALLY hard to switch gears from being fully in with adoption, to trying to wrap our minds around this new reality and twist of events!
We talked with the agency and we prayed over our options. The agency does not allow you to move forward with the process and be pregnant at the same time. So our two options were to put our account on hold until after the baby came and re-open it then, or to shut our account all together and receive a partial refund. Oh, how we agonized over what to do! After a LOT of discussion and even more prayer, we both came to the conclusion that shutting our account and moving on from the agency was the best move for us. We still want to adopt - oh so badly we want to adopt! We feel right down to our core that the Lord has been working in us and preparing our hearts for this. But having another biological baby changes the way we want to pursue that. Both private and public adoptions are beautiful, and each family needs to make the choice that makes the most sense for them. Through prayer, we felt (and still feel) total peace about our decision to move on from private adoption. We continue to pray very intentionally over our family, and over any babies/kids we will add to our family, and we know that our path is being directed by the One who loves us most. Our "plan" (I use that word SO LOOSELY because nothing in our parenting journey has gone according to our own plans!) at this point is to enjoy our next baby and soak in the baby stage, every sweet smell and sleepless night. Once baby is a bit older, we will start the process all over again, this time through the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development - through the public system we have here in BC, with a child in the foster system who is able to be adopted. Our journey is FAR from over, and it is HARD when you can't really see what is next. All we know is that we have open hands, and we have been brought to place of full surrender of our hearts when it comes to our family. We are not in control. That is terrifying and exciting.
So what about the money we raised that we paid the agency? Well they gave us a partial refund and we used the money to pay off the money we borrowed to start the process, and then we gave the rest to a family in Medicine Hat (my hometown) who are currently in the end stages of adopting a special needs toddler from an Eastern European country who is currently living in an orphanage. We wanted to make sure the money that you so generously gave us went directly towards supporting another family who is adopting. Thank you once again for your love and your support and for blessing us immensely.
We are now almost at 28 weeks of pregnancy and what a crazy ride it has been! Once we started telling people, it became more and more real, and the joy overcame the fear. The confusion lifted once we made our decision and felt peace about it and were able to move forward with delighted anticipation of this new arrival. We've had a few bumps along the road - this is a "high risk" pregnancy (what a terrible title, and a way to instil fear into mama's!) but we are well looked after, and have incredible care. We are so thankful to live where we do, where midwifery care is the norm, and they are so dedicated and thorough. We also have an OB who we like a lot, and who is committed to caring for both me and the baby well. Being high risk has meant that we get a LOT of ultrasounds, which I will never complain about!! It is so fun to watch the little one grow, and be able to see their growth and progress, and to feel reassured on a regular basis that things are progressing as they should. Our daughter is THRILLED with the reality of being a big sister approaching! She already talks and sings to the baby daily and she is just so sweet with checking in see how "our baby" is doing. She is already so invested, and such a caring big sister. She even has her own opinions over names and knows each week how big the baby is (she tells anyone who will listen the fruit or vegetable that is the weekly comparable size haha!). It makes me heart swell to see her thrive in this role already. We greatly look forward to the spring and having the baby here for us to love and take care of and soak in the newborn sweetness. The picture we used in our announcement is because a baby born after miscarriage is often referred to as a 'rainbow baby' - and we are very ready to walk away from our miscarriage and infertility storm and fully enjoy our beautiful rainbow. We are forever changed by our journey, and we will never forget the pain or heartache and we stand with those still in the storm. God is good, even when we can't understand.
"For this child I have prayed, and the Lord has granted my petition" 1 Samuel 1:27. Thank you, Lord.
It has not come as we expected, but being given the gift of another baby to be entrusted with and to love and teach is the most overwhelming kind of joy and responsibility. We are just so thankful. Now, I pray over and over "thy will be done" both in my own life, my marriage, and in the lives of my babies.
The truth is that it is not procrastination that makes this post so late coming. It is a lack of knowing how to adequately describe what has been happening and our ability to process the crazy curve balls that life throws! It's been a challenge for us to switch gears and to process the changes and therefore words have failed me when it comes to sharing our new news.
This spring, as you know, we fully let go of having another biological child. We were tired after the (just shy of) three long years of miscarriage, hormones, medications, doctor appointments and scheduled *ahem* "sexy time". It is exhausting and we were done. It didn't come as a disappointing decision though, because we were VERY excited to be able to fully pursue adoption with our whole hearts invested. Then we found out this summer that we were pregnant - ummm COME AGAIN?! What a shocker. We were told this most likely would not happen, and we had accepted that. The day we found out, Jon and I were so very stunned that we sat on our steps in our backyard in full silence for a solid 20 minutes. What was there too say? We were overwhelmed with joy, but also filled to the brim with paralyzing fear, and also had a lot of confusion mixed in there. What would this mean for the adoption? Would we lose this baby too? What do we do now?
So, we processed the best we could. For us, that meant not really talking about it. And I mean, not talking about it at all. We went all summer with having maybe 4 discussions total about this pregnancy. I was VERY sick and completely exhausted all summer long - I seriously slept most of the summer away, when I was wasn't puking my guts up! Not great timing, since Jon works 16 hour days all summer long and is immersed in camp life. Thank goodness for Jon's sister Aimee who was up at camp with us this summer as Wildside's head cook. She would take my daughter every afternoon when she had her break and they would play and swim and giggle and bond and I would sleep. We didn't tell Aimee until the end of the summer, and were able to pretty much just get away with saying I was sick all the time (I suffer from chronic migraines, so it wasn't hard to pull it off). Jon and I were barely able to breathe a word of it to each other, because everytime we tried, the joy, the fear, and the confusion just became stronger and words failed. To add on top of how awful I was feeling, I also stopped sleeping much - I would wake up about 5 times per night, in a full out panic that I was miscarrying and would run to the bathroom - you would think that eventually my brain would know that this was not real, and I would stop running, but that just never happened. I did this until around 14 weeks along. My midwife and I discussed her giving me something to calm my brain down in the night (in the daytime I seemed/felt fine and not nearly as anxious - maybe that was part of the avoiding process?) but it did eventually pass, thank goodness.
By the time we were 13 weeks along, we had already had 3 ultrasounds and many rounds of bloodwork done to show that the baby was developing normally and my body was producing the necessary hormones needed to sustain the pregnancy. It still didn't really feel real and it felt scary to feel hopeful. But we hit the 13 week mark with flying colours and we knew it was time to soon start telling people, and also make big decisions regarding our adoption process. It was REALLY hard to switch gears from being fully in with adoption, to trying to wrap our minds around this new reality and twist of events!
So what about the money we raised that we paid the agency? Well they gave us a partial refund and we used the money to pay off the money we borrowed to start the process, and then we gave the rest to a family in Medicine Hat (my hometown) who are currently in the end stages of adopting a special needs toddler from an Eastern European country who is currently living in an orphanage. We wanted to make sure the money that you so generously gave us went directly towards supporting another family who is adopting. Thank you once again for your love and your support and for blessing us immensely.
We are now almost at 28 weeks of pregnancy and what a crazy ride it has been! Once we started telling people, it became more and more real, and the joy overcame the fear. The confusion lifted once we made our decision and felt peace about it and were able to move forward with delighted anticipation of this new arrival. We've had a few bumps along the road - this is a "high risk" pregnancy (what a terrible title, and a way to instil fear into mama's!) but we are well looked after, and have incredible care. We are so thankful to live where we do, where midwifery care is the norm, and they are so dedicated and thorough. We also have an OB who we like a lot, and who is committed to caring for both me and the baby well. Being high risk has meant that we get a LOT of ultrasounds, which I will never complain about!! It is so fun to watch the little one grow, and be able to see their growth and progress, and to feel reassured on a regular basis that things are progressing as they should. Our daughter is THRILLED with the reality of being a big sister approaching! She already talks and sings to the baby daily and she is just so sweet with checking in see how "our baby" is doing. She is already so invested, and such a caring big sister. She even has her own opinions over names and knows each week how big the baby is (she tells anyone who will listen the fruit or vegetable that is the weekly comparable size haha!). It makes me heart swell to see her thrive in this role already. We greatly look forward to the spring and having the baby here for us to love and take care of and soak in the newborn sweetness. The picture we used in our announcement is because a baby born after miscarriage is often referred to as a 'rainbow baby' - and we are very ready to walk away from our miscarriage and infertility storm and fully enjoy our beautiful rainbow. We are forever changed by our journey, and we will never forget the pain or heartache and we stand with those still in the storm. God is good, even when we can't understand.
"For this child I have prayed, and the Lord has granted my petition" 1 Samuel 1:27. Thank you, Lord.
It has not come as we expected, but being given the gift of another baby to be entrusted with and to love and teach is the most overwhelming kind of joy and responsibility. We are just so thankful. Now, I pray over and over "thy will be done" both in my own life, my marriage, and in the lives of my babies.
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