Sorry!

Sorry that I haven't updated this weekend. We've had a few things going on. It's late right now and I need to get to bed, but I promise you an update and more pictures on Monday.

We're home

We wound up getting home much later than I thought, but we finally made it back here around 6:30. We spent about two hours at the agency with the social workers and the foster mom. After we left, we had to go to Babies R Us to get some preemie diapers and clothing, because the newborn stuff we have is too big. Honestly, even the preemie stuff is too big. Girlfriend is TINY! My brain is mush right now, so I'm not going to write very much. I'd like to get off of here and hold my baby for awhile, so I'll post more tomorrow. Until then, here are some pics for you to enjoy of my baby girl. Did you hear that? MY BABY GIRL!!!


Look at what the Lord has done:

We have a daughter!!

We have picked up our baby girl and are now on our way home. I will post more later. I am on my phone`s internet right now so it is not as easy to post.

We're off!!

We are off to get our baby girl!!

Tomorrow's Timeline

So here is the plan for tomorrow. I know that many of you are dying to see pictures, but I probably won't have a post up until tomorrow evening. We'll be meeting locally with our social worker at 10am and taking care of the placement paperwork. We are supposed to arrive at the office near the baby at 2:30. I don't know how long we'll be there, but maybe an hour or so? Then we'll head back home. So we may not even be back home until 5ish. It will probably be after dinner before I get pics up. I will try to get on here just to let you know we're home. For those who are facebook friends with me, I will post a status update from my phone when we start heading back home. I know you are all waiting. Sorry that you will have to wait all day, but I will not go to bed tomorrow without posting pics..promise!

Not much longer now!

Ok, I'm starting to get very restless over here. Come on, Friday!

Another update

I have been asked what Hannah's middle name is going to be. It will be My'isha (My eesha). Her mother named her that and asked that we incorporate it as part of her name. The name is a name that has special significance for her. It was the name of a person in her family that she had a very special bond with. This person passed away from cancer and the birthmother misses her greatly and wanted to honor her memory in this way.

As far as Friday goes, we have set a time to start the placement process. We will be meeting with our social worker at 10am to do some placement paperwork. When that is all completed, we will travel to the office where the baby is and pick Hannah up from there. Then we will bring her home with us.

Some of you have been asking about how I am doing. I have mixed feelings right now. Part of me is wanting to get very excited, but the other part of me feels wrong about being happy to have this baby. I am happy to have a daughter, but the circumstances under which it is happening are very sad. My heart just breaks for our birthmother. I cannot imagine having to make this kind of choice. I told someone the other day that it is very sad that our joy is the result of someone else's pain. And it's not just our birthmother either. There are some young girls who are also in pain and will grow up without their sister in their every day lives. Yes, we will keep a relationship with them, but it still won't be the same. I said that if she does change her mind, part of me would be happy for them. I knew going into this that it would be a hard decision for our baby's birthmother. I've been praying for this unknown person for months now. I just kind of figured it would be a young single woman who wasn't ready to be a mommy yet. I didn't really expect a situation like this one, where a family is being ripped apart, against the wishes of some of it's members (the girls would like their mother to keep the baby.) It's very difficult to know how to feel sometimes. I am happy to have a little girl. I am in awe of all that God has done to get us to this point. It is neat see things He promised me awhile ago now come to fruition. I definitely look forward to all that having a daughter means- from buying little frilly dresses and Barbies, to mother/daughter pedicure appointments, to high school crushes, to being mother of the bride, to watching her become a mother herself one day. But it is all very bittersweet because I know there is a family that will never be the same again. It is hard to think that while we rejoice on Friday night, Hannah's birthmother will probably be home crying her eyes out because she can no longer change her mind. It's just a really hard spot to be in and I didn't expect to feel this way. I really hope you all will continue to pray for their family long after our adoption is finalized.

The sisters' visit

I previously had been referring to the baby as "the baby" in an effort to guard my heart. But in prayer this morning, I really felt like this is the baby the Lord has for us and this is going to happen. Then I got online and got the following information from my social worker. So I will now be referring to her as our baby and Hannah. :)

I just found out that Hannah's birthmother and her sisters came in already to meet her and the visit went well. Her mother acknowledged this was very hard, but reminded the social worker again of her reasons for choosing adoption. The girls are working on a scrap book for Hannah. My social worker said it sounds like the placement will take place. They are requesting to visit with her three times the first year and once a year after that (as long as it's beneficial for everyone involved). We are totally fine with that. I'll let you know once we've set up our time for Friday.

She's one week old

Well, so far our birthmother has not changed her mind. We are getting closer to the end of the revocation period. That ends Friday at 5pm. My social worker said that it is extremely rare that a birthmother changes her mind on the 10th day. If we waited until the official end of the revocation period, then we would not be able to pick the baby up until Monday. So we are going to pick her up on Friday morning, with the understanding that we could have her for a few hours and her mother could change her mind. But since this is very rare, we are comfortable taking this risk.

Now, she still won't be officially ours at that point. The birthfather stuff still has to be done. They have to wait until the baby is 10 days old and then they send in a request to check the birthfather registry. If he is a sexually active male in VA, he is supposed to have registered in the database and also listed women he's been with. So they will search the registry under the mother's name and see if anything comes up. It is very unlikely that they will find anything as all they have for him is a first name. And even if they did, he may be totally willing to sign the papers because if he doesn't, he's got a kid to take care of. It will take a week to do this, as they have to mail in their request and wait to hear back by mail from the database people. If he has not registered, his rights are terminated, as it is his responsibility in this state to have registered, whether or not he is aware of a child. So even though the mother's revocation period will be up on Friday evening, the baby will not technically be ours until the end of next week, after the father searching is finished. So due to this, we are considered an "at risk" placement until all that is completed. We are comfortable taking this risk.

The biggest thing left to happen during the revocation period is a meeting between the birthmother, the baby, and the baby's sisters. The birthmother was not aware that her children would not be allowed into the hospital. When mom and baby were discharged, mom went home and baby went to her foster mommy's house. So the older sisters have not yet met their little sister, and they would like to see her before she becomes ours. The birthmother told us that she is not emotionally ready to see the baby again yet, but that she knows her girls need to see their sister. So she is going to try to be strong and bring them in this week. I do not know when this meeting is to take place. I just know that if it hasn't happened yet, it will be happening either today, tomorrow, or Thursday. I am not sure how this meeting will affect the birthmother and her decision. I am sure it will be very hard for her to see her and have to say goodbye all over again. It will probably be very hard on the sisters as well. So please just keep them and the meeting in your prayers.

Forgot to mention

I forgot to mention something about the money. I did call that no interest loan place yesterday, before the other person had offered to lend us the money. The lady I spoke with said she could expedite the review of our application, but it would still take at least a week. She also said that they did not currently have any money in their general fund and that several families were already waiting for money. So she said she could rush our paperwork to the board, but there was no guarantee that they would even have money to lend us. They are not a bank, so they can only lend out money as other adoptive families pay back their loans. So we were going to go ahead and submit our stuff to her anyhow and see what God would do, but we had no idea if they would even be able to help us. It was while we were working on that paperwork that we found out about the person who was willing to lend us the money.

The Meeting & The Money

Today's meeting went really well. I am not going to get into the details of everything we discussed, but we did talk about several things. We all got to know each other a little better. Thanks so much for all your prayers. We felt them. I was not sure how this would go, having never done this before. But it was not awkward at all. In fact, it felt very comfortable. I think that meeting us has helped her to feel much better about her decision. She seems to really like us. She has three other children and two of them are old enough to know what is going on. She is just not a place in her life where she feels she can raise a 4th one and knows that we can give her a much better life than she can. You can tell that she loves her baby very much and wants to give her the best life she can, even though it will cause her pain to do so. The two older children are having a very hard time with this, so please keep them in your prayers. They are 9 and 14. I made them a scrapbook of our family and wrote them a letter. I hope that knowing more about us and having pictures of the family that their sister is going to live with will help them be able to accept their mom's decision. We also set up an email address that they can contact us at, whenever they want to. If they would like to be a part of their sister's life (and it's not detrimental to either them or Hannah), then we would like to them to be able to have a relationship. The mom kept saying that she feels like she's making the right choice and the baby is going to be happy with us. Still, you could definitely feel that she is in pain, so I am not totally confident that she won't change her mind. We are just trying to gaurd our hearts and let the Lord do what He has in mind to do.

The social worker gave us some pictures of the baby and she is beautiful. Due to what happened last time, we have decided not to post any pictures until she is placed with us. So you will have to wait until then to see her. We, however, did not have to wait. We were able to meet her today! After our meeting with the mother, we went to lunch and then we came back to the office. The social worker picked up the baby (who is in interim care right now)and brought her to the office and we got to spend about 35 minutes with her. We were able to hold her and love on her and feed her. She is a teeny tiny little thing. I have never seen a 5 lb 6 oz baby before. She is so lightweight. It was hard to leave, but we needed to not stay with her for too long. I told her that hopefully I will be back to get her next Friday and gave her a kiss and then we left.

Now, you know about the money situation with the loan falling through and needing ten grand. Well, I am happy to report that need has been met!! JEHOVAH JIREH HAS PROVIDED EVERYTHING WE NEEDED! Someone we know offered to lend us the money we needed at no interest and they were ready to have the money sent out today. So we will have that money by the time the revocation period is over. So unless our birthmom changes her mind, we will be able to bring the baby home one week from today.

Please continue to pray for the birthmom, her children, Hannah, and for us. This next week is very important and only the Lord knows how it will end. I know it will be a very long week for me personally. Pray that I can keep my eyes on the Lord, no matter what happens.

Thanks everyone, for your prayers, love and support. We love you!

Placement Date

If everything goes through, it looks like we will get to bring this little girl home next Friday!

God is good!!

We have been chosen again! I got a call this afternoon that a birthmother chose us earlier today. The baby was born yesterday and the mom had not been working with an agency until she called today. This is referred to as a cold call. The baby is healthy and is 5lbs 6 oz.....three pounds and a few ounces lighter than all of my boys were. She is about an hour south of us and will be going into interim care until the waiting period is over. We will have to wait a little longer than ten days until she can be officially ours, because they have to look for the birthfather. They have to try to contact him and then he has 10 days by law to respond, so it will be 10 days from whenever they send out the notification to him. We may possibly be able to take the baby home after the mom's revocation period is over (end of next week). I'm not sure about that yet. The birthmother would like to meet us, so we will be going to meet her on Friday morning. Please keep that meeting in your prayers. Please keep the birthmother in your prayers. This is not easy for her. Pray for God's will to be done in this situation. Pray also for us. I am going to try very hard to keep my heart and mind guarded, in case this does not work out the way I'm hoping it will. Right now, I want to be excited, but I am afraid to be.

In my previous post, I told you how we had just lost our adoption loan last week. There was some confusion about that, I'm told. When I posted that we had all the money we needed, I was including a $10,000 special adoption loan that we were approved for. Now that they are not offering that loan anymore, we need $10,000 and we will need it very soon if this is the baby the Lord has for us. We have not owned our home very long, so we are not sure if we have enough equity yet to borrow against. We are looking into it. We found a place that offers a no-interest adoption loan and have begun the paperwork for apply for that. However, they take 4-6 weeks to approve you. I am not sure if we can get a rush on that or not. I am also not sure if maybe God allowed the other loan to fall through because He wants to provide in other ways. We just really need His wisdom and direction as to what He wants us to do. Pray that if this is the baby he has for us that He provides the money that we need in the next 10 days. If anyone reading this feels like supporting us financially, the information on how to do that is on the right side of my blog.

I will most definitely update you after our meeting on Friday morning.

A setback

We just got a letter in the mail that the bank we have our adoption loan approval through is revoking our approval effective immediately. It's is nothing we did. They are just not going to be doing those types of loans anymore and have ended their partnership with our adoption agency. We were approved for a $10,000 loan. It was a special loan with special terms, unlike any loan I've ever heard of before, and it was really designed to help adopting families bridge the gap between when the money is due to the agency and when you can claim the adoption tax credit. I am not sure what we will do now. I have some researching to do. But for now, we no longer have the money we need should we get a call. Please keep this situation in prayer and ask the Lord to give us wisdom and open the doors that will need to be opened.