Saturday, July 10, 2010

Exciting news!! :)

The past 24 hours have been absolutely amazing and I have got to share my excitement and hope - I am just unable to really concentrate on anything else today, so I might as well get on here and get more people praying for us.

Thursday is when I have my practicum, so I got home a little before 11 pm. I came up to check messages and visited my friends' blog - www.uandmeplusthree.com. David and Danyel are dear friends to us who have been married 15 years...always wanting children and never having any luck. They started the adoption process years ago and have faithfully waited on God's time and when I got home Thursday and pulled up their blog, I saw their first family picture with their 3 beautiful Brazilian children. It brought instant tears to my eyes and praise to my heart.

I have taken to spending time each morning writing a prayer journal about our hopes for more children, and Friday morning, this is what I wrote:

"God, thank you for D&D who show how powerful a testimony a successful adoption is and I pray our story will also speak to Your perfect timing and great love. God, I pray for our birthmother - Lord, please let her and her baby be healthy and may we shine Your love on them...You are GREAT & GOOD & LOVE & I cannot wait to share You as our journey continues."

Well, something came up as I was doing my actual Bible study later in the afternoon and I felt like I wasn't sharing God's goodness enough, so I got on my Facebook and wrote a post about David and Danyel and how awesome God is.

ONE MINUTE after posting that, my cell phone rang. It came up as "Restricted" - my IVF doctor and the adoption agency are the only 2 numbers that show up that way, and I got this incredibly excited feeling. It was our adoption agency and they had a potential situation for us. We have only gotten one other call and it was for a baby that would likely have neurological problems and we didn't pursue it because it was so soon after the twins.

This time, everything she said sounded great. Teen mom (my hope has always been able to help someone like the students I loved so much), lives in Texas, healthy, Caucasian (not that that really matters), and on and on with positive characteristics and wanting a stay-at-home mom. We said we'd love to talk with her and I suggested after 6 when Reagan was sure to be home.

We prayed and prayed and asked others to pray and were just so excited and around 6:30, she called and I felt like the conversation went GREAT! She said that she wanted to help us and she would tell Lifetime that she didn't want to speak to any more families. We talked about trying to meet her and the birthfather (who is supportive of the adoption) in 2 weeks - the 24th - and we said we would call her after we both talked with Lifetime and get that set up. Her due date is sometime in October...we are so excited!!

Actually, we are BEYOND EXCITED!! I just cannot stop praying for this to work out. It felt so good yesterday and I feel this lack of worry today about it all. Monday, Lifetime will call her and make sure she still wants to go ahead with us and then they will get in touch with us.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE PRAY FOR THIS TO ALL WORK OUT. I would crash HARD if she changed her mind, and it really feels like this is God's work and just had such a good feeling talking with her. WE ARE SO EXCITED!! HOW GREAT IS OUR GOD!!

We also have put the embryo transfer thoughts on hold. We are 100% committed to this adoption happening and showering this baby with God's love (through us....and like the 1000s of other people praying). :) Hopefully, this all will work out and we will plan on having money set aside to be able to grow our family in a few years...most likely trying adoption again.

So, in case my caps didn't clue you in - two things to get from this:

1 - PRAY (please pray for the birthmom and birthfather to have peace about this decision, to stay with us if it is the right thing for us all, and for our meeting to go smoothly in a few weeks and start a great relationship and just add to our excitement).

2 - WE ARE EXCITED!! I am in awe of God yet again and His timing and His answers and His perfect plans for our lives.

Love you all!

Kate

OH - let me just say all the frustrations that come from waiting are so COMPLETELY WASHED AWAY in this excitement. I have continually recited Psalm 30 today - "Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing will come in the morning...." and "You have turned my wailing into dancing"
OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD!

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Update!

Oh my goodness - I didn't realize the last time I was on here was the babies' birthday! I really have been gone awhile, haven't I? How funny that it was my birthday on Thursday that made me want to get back on here. I turned 35 on Thursday - that sounds old to me, but I really don't feel old...maybe because the thing I want for my adulthood - raising children - still alludes me.

I did have quite a moment on Thursday remembering my time with Hallie. I shed some tears for both babies, just wishing I had something to hold and remembering just how sweet it was to hold Hallie's hand and stroke her hair. My birthday last year is one of many awesome days in Hallie's story. I went in to the NICU determined to be positive - I had bought presents for the twins of my two best NICU friends and that made me happy to deliver those. I went back to see Hallie and she was in a bad spot with her swelling - so puffy, not able to open her eyes and numbers not so good. The doctor came back and painted a dire picture of the situation - basically, Hallie's numbers looked like she was entering kidney failure and that would 'eventually lead to her demise'. I remember wanting to tell the doctor that it was my birthday and if she could try to be more positive, it'd be a nice present. But instead I just focused in on my little girl. I had asked for big diapers as a birthday present and everyone was praying for those - and while I was there, the nurse changed a diaper with 85 ml of pee!!!! To put that in Hallie perspective, we'd been happy when she had diapers with 5-8 ml, so that was truly a miracle! She kept it up all day - I think she peed about 300 ml that day alone...it was amazing, and I knew it was all God answering our prayers for Hallie. The next day, when I got there, it was one of my favorite Hallie days ever. First, I got to share it with my sister-in-law, Brandy - I loved nothing more than getting to actually show off Hallie to others. And then, it was one of her most 'alive' days. She had figured out how to wiggle and scoot, so the nurse would position her and Hallie would start shaking her booty and pop out of her snuggly....it was the most adorable thing I've ever seen and I felt a little like it was my little girl saying, "I want to get out of here" and a little like she was playing - it was one of her spunkiest days. She was able to look at me and well, it was answered prayers all around. We came out of that day and had quite the roller coaster the rest of the holiday weekend, but that day was so good. God is AMAZING!!

And one reason I share that story is because it is such a testimony of how much the prayers for our family HELPED our family. We saw God working in Hallie, and we felt the power of prayer in being lifted up to God by so many voices. So PLEASE KEEP IT UP!! :) Here are the latest updates: