Adopting Tate

One of the blogs I am a religious lurker on is Kelly's Korner. Every Friday she does Show Us Your Life Fridays. This week it is about your adoption stories. Since as most of you know, I am extremely passionate about adoption and unbelievably blessed with an amazing open adoption, I decided to participate. So below is the story from the beginning...from the moment God placed it on our hearts to adopt until the day we held Tate for the first time.

I will start from the beginning. Sean and I got married and always wanted to start a family right away. I would have been thrilled to have gotten pregnant on our wedding day if I had been able to. I have had some female issues for as long as I can remember, so I had an incling that it may be difficult for me to get pregnant. To make a long story short, we tried for several months to get pregnant and I ended up at the Reproductive Endocrinologist's office where I was told I have PCOS. I was immediately started on oral medication. I took my Basal Body Temperature every morning. The medication made me miserable. The whole experience was exausting. It lasted a year...no progress. In fact, each month that I charted my Basal Body Temperature indicated that I never ovulated...not once. I was discouraged. At the end of 2005, my doctor said that our next step was IVF. Sean and I had planned a vacation over the New Year that year and decided we would pray about it and likely start IVF when we returned at the beginning of 2006 after taking a several week break from all of the medication. While on that vacation, something happened...God put it in our hearts to stop with the fertility treatments, we didn't want to do it anymore...neither of us did. We had always talked about the possibility of adoption and were definitely open to it, but just thought it would happen after we tried every avenue to concieve. Not because we felt as though adoption was a "last resort", but because we had a preconceived notion that adoption would take years and we wanted a baby as soon as possible. While on vacation though, we knew...we knew that we were supposed to adopt. It wasn't even a full week upon returning from our vacation that we contacted Bethany Christian Services to schedule to meet with them to begin the adoption process. In February, we began the process that would lead us to the greatest blessing of our lives.

Read on HERE about our adoption. Or click on the right sidebar where it says "Our Open Adoption Story".

Then, click HERE to read about and see pictures of the first day we met Tate's birth mother...one of the most amazing and special days of our and Tate's lives.

HERE is where I announced that we had a son and pictures of our first days with Tate.

I have written about Tate's birth father Brandon on several occassions, but you can read HERE a little bit about their bond.