Well...we should be in Chicago by now. Hopefully. If all goes well. (I wrote this last week, so really who knows where we are right now!).
I was so excited when Amberly e-mailed me because our stories sounded quite a bit alike, and because she seems like such a doll! Go ahead, read for yourself and find out what I mean! She's great! Amberly...
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I have a story to tell, and it goes like this..
Boy meets Girl, they fall in love, they get married, they have 4 children, and they live Happily Ever After…
Oh, Wait. That’s not what happened, now is it? That’s the image that I had built up in my head from thetime I was a little girl. I would get married and have four little children. They would all be blue-eyed little kids; two boys, then two girls, and life would be grand. Or so I thought.
Now, in some ways, portions of the fairy tale are true. I did meet a wonderful man who I fell in love with. We were married in the LDS-San Diego Temple in 2001 and were ready to start our fairy tale life together; after all, we were married in a “castle”. In 2002, we decided to trash the birth control (halleluiah) and start our family. We felt we were ready for that first boy, and to have the first grandchild on both sides of our family. We were ready. I giddily found little things for our baby, and we were enjoying one another. Well, 2003 came along and we weren’t pregnant yet, and so we went to the doctor to investigate. They did all of the fun tests, said that there were some complications, but nothing to be super concerned about and gave my husband some medicine to help. Fast forward to November of that year; my husband was diagnosed with Lymphoblastic Lymphoma and was put on invasive chemotherapy and radiation. This put all plans to an abrupt halt. At this point, we were surprisingly thankful we didn’t have a baby to add to the stress of the time. After all was said and done, and he was healthy, the oncologist said that part of making him completely healthy was making our dreams of a family come true. So, we started trying again, and we were back to square one. At this point, I had gone to the doctor and was diagnosed with a lovely case of PCOS. I was given some medicine and the prescription of “keep trying”. After three months of that, I went back for a follow up and have the doctor say “Well, why aren’t you pregnant yet?” I was wondering the same thing as I left the office in tears, never to return. At this point, the constant barrage of “why aren’t you pregnant yet”, combined with losing the ability to have the first grandchild as my sisters both had children, became impossible to bear. We basically gave up everything, and just tried to truly focus on us.
In 2008, my husband received test results that dashed our hopes of becoming parents naturally and then trying to fight with insurance companies, and everything else that goes along with it, made me frustrated, angry and wondering if parenthood really was worth it.
We really started thinking about adoption, and wondering if this was what we were supposed to do; if that was our purpose. We spent a lot of time waiting, wondering, and praying, but keeping it all very “secretive”. That is something we have done all along on this journey. I chose to not share my story with anyone because of the challenges, and it seemed that every time I would share a bit of my painful journey, that person would end up pregnant a few months later.
In 2010, we were presented a potential adoption of an 18-month-old little boy, and we were excited. We truly felt that he was supposed to be our son. Unfortunately, circumstances were not as they appeared, and he was not to be our baby. This helped us truly cement our decision that adoption was, in fact, the avenue we needed to pursue.
In January of 2011, we went to the adoption agency and filled out all of our paperwork, and as of June, our home study has been approved. We are anxiously awaiting our children, yes, children; we are willing to take up to three. We hope they are ready to join our family soon, as we have been waiting ten years for them.
Our fairy tale may have been full of heartbreak and anxiety, but it has also been filled with love, caring, and tender moments for both my husband and me. We are ready to continue our story and add those children to the pages of our book so that we can truly have a Happily Ever After.
