Deep breath, big leap of faith. This is my mantra for the next big step in our lives: adoption! Jeff and I have started the process for opening our hearts and home to an infant through domestic adoption. We just found out today that our formal application has been approved!
Though we just began the official process of finding an agency and submitting our preliminary and formal applications back in February, I feel like my whole life has really been preparing me for this time. Having been adopted myself from South Korea at 18 months, I've kind of just had it in my mind ever since I can remember that someday I would like to adopt a child myself. Thankfully, in Jeff, God gave me my husband/best friend who shares in that dream.
So why did we choose domestic infant adoption? I guess you could say that it choose us. From the beginning of our marriage, we had discussed hopes for having a biological child and then adopting a child of the opposite gender from South Korea since there is an obvious connection there for us. What is the saying? If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.
Fast forward a few years and we found ourselves in the midst of a 3 year battle with infertility trying to conceive our daughter. Knowing that we did not want to go down the path of assisted reproductive technology, we sought out a wonderful reproductive endocrinologist who performed a bunch of tests to see if he could determine the problem. After a few months of vitamin supplements for both of us and a minor surgery to remove my uterine fibroids and polyps, we got pregnant naturally! The joy was quickly overshadowed by a very bad bout of Hyperemesis Gravidarum that keep me hospitalized twice, bedridden for 3 months and sicker than I've ever been in my life. You can read my post about that time here. Against all odds, we welcomed our miracle baby, Shay, into the world on March 15, 2010.
Sometime last year, we began to revisit our original adoption plans and discovered, to our complete surprise and dismay, that the South Korean government will not adopt children to couples with more than a 10 year age gap. Jeff and I are 11 1/2 years apart. 18 months separate us from being able to adopt from my own native country. Ironically, the age I was when I was adopted to my forever family.
With our dreams of adopting from South Korea dashed, we were completely thrown for a loop and stepped back to weigh our options. We even went back to see our doctor to undergo some fertility tests just to see if another biological child was an option (why yes, I was asking myself if I was completely crazy to even entertain the notion of going through H.G. again). All the while, we were praying for clarity and direction.
Before we got our test results back, we found an adoption agency that we felt very good about and attended an informational session. It is a long-standing, reputable, Christian based agency with offices all over the country. The Nashville office only places infants for domestic adoption. Armed with a new world of possibilities, we prayed once again for clarity. It came back in the form of a meeting with our doctor who basically told us that there are some issues with both of us that would make our chances of conceiving naturally again next to zero. I know that hearing "you're infertile" is probably a statement that most people who want kids would not find relief in hearing, but we felt that it was an definitive answer to our prayer. This launched us fully into the adoption world and we haven't looked back.
Even domestic adoption is likely going to be a long, daunting process. However, we're excited to start the journey and hopefully be able to bring our baby home one day. There are a lot of steps to the process, but I'll try to keep this blog updated as we have more news (told you this blog would go in a bunch of different directions). Please pray for us as you think of it.
Deep breath. Big leap of faith...
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