Thankful Heart

I haven’t been able to post much lately because I’ve been so busy with all of your amazing requests for Christmas cards, family pictures, and printables! Thank you all so, so much for not only letting me do my thing that I love to do but for also your support to help bring baby B home! I can’t tell you how much we appreciate everything!!! Also my Pampered Chef party closed this weekend and completely blew my mind with how many orders we received! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!!!

In the meantime, we enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving with our families. Every year I have a lot to be thankful for but this year was extra special to me – I sat back and enjoyed every moment of it instead of feeling the emptiness that something was missing. Our families were all together, everyone was healthy, and we had plenty of food to go around the beautiful, warm houses we were in. I am so thankful for all of my many, many blessings – past, present, and future! Thanksgiving is something that I think we need more than once a year to remind us to appreciate all of the things we have in our lives, or maybe the spirit of Thanksgiving can continue on in our day to day lives without letting the busyness of life crowd our hearts!

Last minute decision to run the local Turkey Trot this year with my sisters-in-law Thanksgiving morning.

Our adoption home study is moving right along. I have been working hard on our profile book – a book about ourselves, our lives, our families, and our dreams that will be presented to birth parents. I am one final check away from ordering it and I can’t wait to see how it turns out once it’s printed! It’s really hard to summarize your journey down to one book but I think it really shows who we are both individually and as a family.

We also got our MMPI results back last night and had our individual interviews. The weird thing about the MMPI is it asks true/false questions like “I would like to be a florist.” “I feel like the world is out to get me.” “I would like to be an auto-mechanic.” (567 random questions like that…) but the results ended up being pretty close to our personalities. It breaks down your personality by certain traits and compares you to a group of people who scored similarly. It was interesting! I am glad that it’s one more thing checked off our list though.

Our individual interviews seemed to go well too! We talked a lot about my childhood, David, our marriage, and past experiences. Our social worker seemed to enjoy these as well since David and I have known each other for so long, she chuckled at times knowing what the other had said.

Found this photo when I was searching for photos for our book (I didn’t include this one…) but look at those babies! We look so young! (we were so young!)

We have one more interview, our in-home interview, and we will just be waiting for our fingerprints to get processed. I do have to say the home study was NOT at all what I expected – I had read that it was pretty in depth, scary, involved, and piles after piles of paperwork. I think our social worker rocks because she’s made it go very smooth and painless for us!

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s time for full out Christmas! Last year we were getting ready for our trip – I was in Christmas mode way before Thanksgiving and then once we came back from our trip it was hard to get back into the spirit of Christmas (it’s called Iowa Vacation Blues and it’s a real thing – when you leave somewhere warm and return to a blizzard) but this year, my tree still isn’t up! This is the latest for me, ever. I think mostly because I’m trying to figure out a way to keep Bentley from the bottom 2 feet of it (3 if he gets some air when jumping)…

How You Can Help

We’ve had a lot of people wondering how they can help us throughout our adoption process; spiritually, emotionally, and financially.

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Our number one biggest need is for prayers. I seriously don’t think we’d be where we are today without the prayers we’ve already received throughout our journey. The road towards adoption can go in so many directions; it can be messy, long, tiring, and painful. It’s filled with loss and grieving.  We ask for you to pray for us to have patience and strength as we wait. For the birthmoms out there seeking adoption that they have strength and wisdom, make healthy choices, and most importantly find peace in their decision whichever they choose. And lastly, for our baby and all of the adoptive children in the world, that they understand and know they are adopted, that they were and always will be loved by everyone around them, that they were not a second choice or an unwanted child, and that they also find peace in the complicated, hard to sometimes comprehend ins and outs of adoption.

Secondly, we ask for your friendship. We’ve had so much amazing support throughout the years and so many people who just listen. Friendships that we don’t fear of being judged or vulnerable, friendships and family who hug, and wipe tears when needed. I’m a very open person, especially when it has come to our family building journey, and had I not had the support I’ve received from so many amazing hearts – I’d be left feeling alone, broken, sad, and confused. Being able to talk things out with the people around me has helped me to grow. I like to think of our support system like spinach was to Popeye. Something I can attribute our strength to. When I’m feeling weak or we’re feeling uncertain, that system surrounding us replenishes our strength. Every.single.time.

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Lastly, adoption is expensive. Fortunately, the route we are taking, because of the potentially long wait and the nature of a local program is a lot less expensive than most adoptions, but still a large sum of money. With uncovered insurance bills due to infertility tests and treatments, one of our biggest hesitations with adoption was the cost. We are hopeful we can earn and save a portion of our fees without needing to take out a large loan.

I am currently hosting a Facebook Pampered Chef party. Pampered Chef is donating to us 10% of the first $600 worth of sales and 15% for anything above that. So it’s just like any other party except we won’t be getting products for hosting but instead money towards our adoption. If you are interested in purchasing pampered chef products for Christmas gifts or your own personal kitchen, the party is a good way to get your orders in before the holidays! IF you are not in need of pampered chef products, but would still like to help, there are a lot of other ways to offer your support financially!

As a graphic designer and hobby-photographer, I am offering my freelance skills and time! With the holidays coming, Christmas cards and family pictures are in full swing! If you are interested in getting family pictures done or having a unique, custom Christmas card design, please contact me! All money raised will go straight towards our adoption fees! I also do birthday party invitations, birth announcements, wedding stationary; the possibilities are endless!

Another is to check out my Etsy shop, Malie Prints, where you can find instant download prints to print at home! No shipping or waiting. I also can do custom prints. All funds will go towards our adoption as well!

Thank you to everyone from the bottom of our hearts for your support, every way, shape, and form of it!!!

If you are interested in custom design work, please contact me at nestingheart@gmail.com.

Why Adoption?

Some people may be wondering why we are wanting to adopt. There are a lot more treatments and things we could do to continue to try to get pregnant. A lot of expensive, life-draining things to exhaust: to try to get pregnant.

But our goal is to be parents; to share our lives, our experiences, our adventures, and more than anything to share our love. Having children and being a parent goes far beyond being pregnant.

These days, fortunately, there are never-ending scientific, medical ways to have a family. Medications, hormone injections, artificial inseminations, in vitro fertilization, embryo adoptions, donors, surrogates, and the list goes on. There are a lot of amazing things the world of science can do to help families have children.

But those ways aren’t for us. At the news of my endometriosis and the months of failed cycles, our hearts opened to adoption and moved away from the constant letdown that comes with the non-stop infertility treatments. Once that happened, everything else fell into it’s place.

There’s a family in our church that has 4 adopted children. This family sits towards the front of the church every week and looks no different than any other family in church. Their kids don’t look like them, they don’t have their mom’s eyes or their dad’s nose but the love is real, genuine, and abundant. This family has held an example to David and I as we went to church each week, praying for a miracle child – exhausted, hopeless, and saddened. It was that family that David and I would watch each week and later get in the car to go on with our day with that picture in our heads…hope crept back little by little each week as we continued to watch this family in front of us; as God worked in our hearts.

Our neighbor is a foster dad. He recently adopted a boy, J, who is polite and kind. A few times when David was outside doing yard work, J would come over and talk to him or if I would be outside he would always wave and say Hi. When you talk to J, you can see deep down in his eyes how much bravery he has, how much strength he has, how much pain he’s experienced, and how much he loves his Dad; his forever family. After we got Bentley, J came over to meet him and J and his 2 foster brothers were petting Bentley, doing everything they could to avoid Bentley’s excited puppy teeth and tail wags, as the one boy told me how many foster homes he’s been in and how many pets he has had to leave in the past. There had been multiple times where David and I would come back in our house and felt our hearts changing. We have a lot of love to give and there are children in this world who most definitely need it.

See, David and I didn’t know many people who were adopted, didn’t have any close connections to adoption (that has changed dramatically as we have met many other adoptive families on our journey already!), and this may be one of the only stories of adoption you’ll hear where we didn’t both grow up planning to adopt some day.

That’s where our infertility journey comes into play. I truly feel God worked through our story differently, having to break us down to open us up, to listen and see how things could be different but equally as great. The family at church and J were just a few of the tools set in our lives and I am so thankful we were tuned in enough to hear Him out!

For now, we will pray, hope, and trust.

Where We Are Today

Happy National Adoption Month! November kicks off a full month of adoption awareness. I always love these types of dedicated months because I feel like there’s never too much awareness and adoption is one that seems to get overlooked. I also found it fitting to announce our adoption plans publicly on November 1st. The amount of support and kind words were incredible!

The road getting to where we are today was a long, bumpy one but we are very excited to be here, checking one thing after another off of our list of to do’s for our home study.

After experiencing the pain of infertility for the past 3 years, switching gears from doctors’ appointments, monitoring, and the constant disappointment of negative cycles to reading books about adoption, looking at all available avenues, and meeting with multiple agencies/information sessions renewed our hope of being parents – a hope that was lost months ago.

One of the many things we have learned is that life isn’t meant to be easy. It isn’t meant to be ‘perfect‘ in any way. We have been broken down so that we would open up. There is beauty in that pain.

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But adoption isn’t a guarantee, it isn’t easy, and it isn’t something to be taken lightly. Adoption is centered around loss and that grief will continue on with our family for all of the years to come. I already feel the pain of that loss my child and birth family will experience and it strikes me deep in my heart.

Before our path with our agency was put in front of us, we explored adopting through the state’s foster care system. We did a lot of researching, discussing, praying, and soul searching during that time as we tried to find the path that was meant for us right now in our lives. My heart breaks for every child who experiences the pain of the loss of one family as they try to set roots down – roots that are buried deep in a mass of confusion, pain, and conflict – a mass that can only fade with an outpouring of consistent love and time. I don’t think a parent is ever ready for all that life throws at them, the things that no one has control over, the things that are life changing – and so we were ready to jump in, not sure if we knew how to swim, and try our best at it.

As we decided to go forward with foster-to-adopt, we got a call from our agency to move forward with them. Literally within days of making that decision – days! A call that we didn’t expect after a short 2 months on their long waiting list…a call we weren’t sure we’d ever end up getting. And we mulled things over again, and again, and again. We even told our agency we were going to stick with foster-to-adopt, though our gut felt hesitant…and our social worker sensed that. She didn’t take no for an answer and gave us another week to discuss things before she would move on to her next family on the list. So we searched deep down into the pit of our gut – the pit that you often ignore because of logic and reasoning – the pit that when people say ‘to listen to your gut’ you really have to silence the world to hear what it’s saying. That pit told both David and myself that at this point in our lives, foster-to-adopt isn’t the right path for us and once we both listened, our hearts immediately felt at peace. The peace we wanted to feel with foster-to-adopt but just wasn’t there.

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We truly believe this decision was meant for us to make. We contacted our social worker, met with her, and confidently moved forward; with peace in our hearts and excitement lighting the way.

So where are we today? Well we have been fingerprinted, completed physicals, wrote our autobiographies, filled out pages after pages of information on ourselves and our families, sent in tax information/basic financial statements/marriage certificate, and this week we will have our MMPI personality tests as well as our first official in-office interviews with our social worker.

I am excited to share my blog with you all so that if you chose to follow our journey – it’s here and if you can continue to pray for us that would be amazing too!