When Alexa turned 1 we were already in possession of our adoption paperwork for round 2 and had been working on it for a month. We barely had a conversation about how to acquire our next child because adoption was just right.
13 months later James was born. The whole thing happened really fast! Approved in August 2012, contacted by Shilo in December, and a family of 4 in March 2013. Bing-Bang-Bam!
A couple months before James was sealed to our family last October, our lives had significantly changed. We had graduated, moved states, changed jobs, and how to acquire child numero tres was not as clear. In fact, Nick wasn't even sure there was a third child to be acquired. There was a lot of praying, fasting, and discussing to do.
Let me go back in the timeline a bit. In New Mexico where we live, adopting through LDS Family Services is just not an option. They cannot legally do basically anything in this state, which brought us back to the baby acquiring drawing board. We looked into adoption through the state, but when we went to the orientation they needed a longer time commitment than we knew we would even be here since Nick's Post-Doc is a temporary position. We called adoption agencies across the state and some of them seemed like viable options, but we felt no inclination to move forward with any of them. We also looked into fertility treatments again and met with one of the two doctors in Albuquerque about what he would recommend to move our family forward.
And it was a really good meeting.
I want to make this perfectly clear: it is not a life-goal of mine to get pregnant. I have no interest in experiencing the miracle of growing life inside of me or breast-feeding or anything that goes along with biological children. However, I absolutely have a life-goal of getting my children to our family no matter what that path entails.
Frankly I don't want to go into every detail of our decision making process at this time because this blog post would get way too long. That being said, I have had three rounds of bloodwork and taken a total of one pill, all of which to begin fertility treatments again.
Our doctor has recommended we do In-Vitro Fertilization, and so that is what we have decided to do.
I absolutely want to adopt again someday in the future, but our journey to bambino number 3 has begun, and we are so excited to be moving our family forward in this incredible new way!
As I write this news out, I feel like I have so much more to share, but all in good time I suppose. We have seen the Lord's hand evident in the decision-making process and in the providing of means to do this very intense and expensive fertility treatment. Just like adoption was right for us in acquiring our first two children, IVF is right for us right now. This may not result in a child (reasonable risk), but it is how our family is to move forward.
We share this with you, our readers, because this blog was a healing place for me throughout the adoption process, and I will definitely need healing moving forward. Hopefully the little bit of time for our next little miracle will be as transformative as our first two little miracles...and perhaps less paperwork!
There is a lot I want to share with you, and as always, please ask questions of any kind -- sincere questions are never offensive!
Congratulations! I know how you feel. I never really felt the desire to "have" my own baby. I wanted children, but I told my husband that if at the year mark and we weren't pregnant, then we were going to start the adoption process. I hope that doesn't make me sound ungrateful for what I have. I am very grateful that I was able to have Adelyn but it was never my desire to carry a baby. I'm so happy that you've been able to bring two sweet children into your home. I hope things go well with your IVF! I've known 2 friends who have been successful.
ReplyDelete