Still in Paperwork Limbo

Our agency is backed up with other home studies, so we cannot start the home visit portion of our home study or the group meetings.  We are super bummed about this.  We want to just dive in there and get things done!  We are so ready to start our family and get closer to actually being able to have our profile out there for birthparents to see.

Until then, we have a few paperwork items to complete.  We did our background checks.  It was our first time EVER going inside of a police station and jail!  We had to go to our city and county police stations to get our background check run.  We had to go to the county jail to get our fingerprints printed.  It was... interesting.

With that done, all that is left are our physicals.  We hope to have that done within a week.  Then we can mail off the humongous package of paperwork to our agency.  Then wait for a spot to open for the home study.

I've been really anxious this month regarding getting the paperwork in and starting the home study.  This is kind of our last hope at having a family.  I pray and hope that adoption will work for us and that our agency will see that we are kind, loving, faithful people who are ready to love and raise a child in our home.  I think the anxiousness comes from February being the three year aniversary of my first miscarriage and April being the two year anniversay of my third miscarriage.  Just a lot of emotions running through me and reliving the losses I felt those years ago.

I know that God has set us on this path for a reason.  I pray for strength to get through this dark time and focus on the joy that is to come.

Papers, papers, and... diapers!

We are still in the boring paperwork stage. We are hoping to have it all completed by the end of the month. Our agency is still backup with other home studies, so we aren't sure when we can start scheduling the visits. Hopefully soon!

Besides paperwork, I'm finishing up our massive cloth diaper stash! I'll do a cloth diaper specific post later. There is a ton of information on the web about cloth diapering. We decided to cloth diaper because of the cost savings. Added bonus, they are super cute!

Sorry for the boring update! Hopefully we will have more exciting things to post once we start the home study process!

So it begins...

We finally received the paperwork for our home study! I'm actually excited to begin, but I'm sure that will change after filling out the first few forms. 

Our agency is backed up, so we can't start the home visit part of the home study until later. I'm just excited to begin the process! 

Some of the questions asked are very personal.. Like questions about our sex lives personal. Both Brian and I are pretty quiet and shy, so that is just going to be awkward for us! 

Even though some of the questions might be awkward to answer, I think the process will help both of us reflect on ourselves and our relationship. It will open discussion about what we want for the future of our little family. 

Forever, I will carry you in my heart

We've come a long way in the last 3 and a half years. We first were able to successfully get pregnant in December 2010. I remember the joy I felt when I saw that little plus sign for the first time. The excitement I had to tell Brian that we were going to have a baby! I remember our first appointment and our first sonogram. Seeing our little gummy bear's heartbeat at 8 weeks and falling in love. Then it happened, I started spotting. I knew that something was wrong. When we went to the doctor for another sonogram, the baby only grew a day since the previous week and had no heartbeat. It is as if the baby held on long enough for us to see him wiggle around and hear the hearbeat.

About a year later, we were pregnant again. This time, we were both cautiously excited. I found out just before going on vacation. Sadly, the miscarriage happened during our vacation. A few months later, we were able to get pregnant a third time. This one also ended around week 6.

We've taken time to grieve each loss. We are truly heartbroken by what could have been and the little lives we lost. We believe that God has a plan. Each loss, while devestating, has brought us closer as a couple. They have helped us reflect on ourselves and what we truly want in life and what we want for our family. They've made me stronger in a way and more determined. We miss our little babies that we've never gotten to meet, but we are hopeful for the future.

We have had almost two years of unexplained infertility since our last loss. Our doctors are not sure what is wrong. Since looking into adoption, we've stopped all fertility treatments. They were doing more harm to my body than good. Plus, I did not like pumping my body full of hormones and dealing with the odd side effects.

"So... When are you guys gonna start a family?"

We get this question a lot. After being married for more than eight years, it is more like "So where are the kids, already?!?!" About four years ago, we started our journey to grow our family. Through this journey, we've experienced three heartbreaking miscarriages and over a year of unexplained infertility. Now, we are looking more closely at adoption to grow our family.

Why Adoption?
We've always planned to adopt. We wanted to have a child then adopt our second child. We've just always felt that God has called us to adopt. Adoption is a big part of both of our families. My youngest sister is adopted. Brian has cousins that are adopted. As we've started looking more into adoption, we've found that we had many friends and other relatives that are adopted or have adopted.

We are just so ready to become parents and to share our love, faith, and experiences with a child. Our families already love our future son or daughter without even meeting them yet.

Why blog about it?
I wanted to start this blog to document our adoption process and our experience growing a family. Brian may chime in with a post here and there as well. I also wanted to document this journey to help anyone else that is looking into adoption or that has experienced the pain of infertility and multiple miscarriages.