[maviskat]

Just before hubby and I got married I was diagnosed with lupus and a blood clotting disorder that sometimes shows up in lupus patients. We were not interested in starting a family for a few years so...5 years later we saw a doctor who specialized in lupus and pregnancy. He felt that with proper care and monitoring I could have a successful pregnancy but I would have to be on high doses of blood thinners throughout the nine months and that I would have a higher chance of miscarriage and STROKE!! There was the lightbulb moment....STROKE, no thanks!! Having my own biological child was just honestly not, and really never was, that important me. My husband felt the same way...I remember him telling me that he didn't care how we became parents. We began the adoption process a few years later...why did wait? We were truly just scared of the whole process.. It seemed so daunting!!

I think I always wanted or was meant to adopt, when I was little I vividly remember sitting with my best friend on my parent's porch and telling her I would like to adopt children one day.

Well, after waiting 2 years with our agency and dealing with a heartbreaking failed match in August 2006, hubby and I were pretty much done and were going to take a break from all things adoption. Two weeks into our "break" in September 2006 we got the call that a young couple liked our portfolio and wanted to meet us. Two months later our daughter Emma Kate was born at 9:35 pm on Thanksgiving Eve and weighed in at 7 lbs 13 ozs.. We have a semi-open adoption. They have chosen not to have visits, but we send pictures and letters every 4 months.

Fast forward 17 months later to June 2006...our phone rings at 2:45 in the morning. When you get a call at that hour you definitely suspect the worst so I was totally surprised to see that it was our DD's birthfather calling. Anyway he was calling to tell us that he and our DD's birthmom just had another baby girl and he wanted the phone number for the adoption agency we had used with DD. I gave him the number, asked if they needed anything and said I would call tomorrow to see how everyone was.

DH and I were in shock. We had no idea they expecting again, we didn't even think they were together anymore. It looked they were planning adoption for this baby and we wondered if they would ask us to take the new baby. So that it was it for sleep yesterday,...way too much going on in our heads for sleeping.

Well, at 7:30 AM our SW from DD's adoption calls and to tell us that our birthparents want us to adopt the baby so the sisters can be together!! OMG!!!! A full biological sibling to our daughter...of course, we said YES!! Sara Anne was born June 10, 2008 and came home 5 days later.

So here we are 6 months later and I am honestly still amazed and shocked that we have another baby, let alone biological siblings. We just found out today that we will finalize on December 18th.

Life is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Adoption is AMAZING!!!

[crick]

Wow! Such amazing experiences!

I've not heard so many of these so it's really neat to hear for the first time and the feelings just come pouring through.

[aallen25]

DH and I were married fairly young...we were both 20. Being so young DH was in no rush to have kids, but I had a different plan. After hearing the story of how my sister-in-law became pregnant with her oldest by going off of the pill without her husband knowing, I decided to do the same thing and leave it up to God! Two and a half years later and not one positive pregnancy test I knew something was wrong. I'll never forget the day DH and I went to the doctors and were asked how long we'd been trying. His answer was about a year...mine was 2 1/2 years. You can imagine the shock on his face! Long story short, we learned that our only options for becoming parents were adoption or sperm donor. The sperm donor thing was never going to happen so adoption was it for us.
We decided late March of '07 to adopt and met with an adoption attorney mid April '07 to learn what our options were and what first steps we needed to take.
The next week at work a coworker who knew DH and I were pursuing adoption told me of a friend of hers who had decided to place her unborn baby and was looking for a family. With permission from her friend, my coworker gave me her phone number. After building up ALL of the courage I had, two days later I called said friend and left a voicemail introducing myself. A few days later I hadn't heard anything so I tried to put the situation in the back of my mind.
Friday May 4 DH and I were flying up to PA to visit my family. We had just pulled into the airport parking lot when my phone rang. I almost didn't answer because I didn't recognize the number. Anyway, I answered the phone and it was K's (DD's birth mom) dad returning my call. We talked for about 15 minutes. He basically wanted to know if we were still interested in meeting them and went over K's pregnancy thus far, their medical history...he actually gave me a lot of info during that first phone call. I spent our entire wait at our gate on the phone with my family shrieking!! DH and I returned home the following Tuesday and Wednesday evening we met K and her dad at Arby's for our face to face. We left that meeting agreeing that we were all in it for the long run. We spent the next few months getting to know eachother during doctor's visits, window shopping trips, cookouts, etc.
Then on Monday Oct 1, 2007 we got the call at 6:32 am! The greatest phone call of my life! K had been having contractions since the evening before and they were just waiting for the dr to return their call to see if they should go to the hospital. DH and I got up and started getting around. Twenty minutes later we received another phone call saying they weren't waiting any longer, this had to be it! DH and I arrived at the hospital just in time to hear that her labor was progessing enough that they would be admitting her! That was shortly after 9 am. About thirteen and a half hours later (3 hours of pushing) DD was born! I was able to to be at K's side during labor and DH cut DD's umbilicol cord! It was the greatest day of my life!
Two days later we were able to bring DD home and the rest is history!

Hopefully that wasn't too long. I have a problem telling our story without going into way too much detail!

[Amber76]

Our adoption story is long and complicated! We first started looking into adoption in 2004, after being married for 4 years and after having doctors suggest all sorts of fertility treatments that we were uncomfortable with-everything from IVF to ICSI to donor sperm. We just didn’t feel right about any of the options they threw out there, but adoption seemed like exactly the right fit for us. So, we were scheduled to attend our first pre-adoption meeting with the agency we had chosen on September 11, 2004. Sadly, though, we never made it to that meeting because my dear sister and precious niece were killed by a drunk driver on September 10th, and we were traveling back to Indiana to be with our families and deal with our tragedy. My sister has two sons, then ages 10 and 12, whom I have always been close to and loved dearly. She had told me long ago that if anything happened to her, she wanted me to promise that I would raise her children. So, we became an instant family of 4, and in the interest of making as few disruptions to the boys’ lives as possible, we relocated back to Indiana. This put our adoption plans on hold indefinitely-adjusting to instant parenthood was a challenge, not to mention the grief all of us were dealing with.
In March of 2007, I started thinking again that I really wanted to be a mom and raise a baby. My nephews are a blessing beyond measure, but we really wanted a young child, someone to call DH and I mommy and daddy. I was driving one day and heard a commercial for an international adoption agency that was hosting an educational seminar to talk about their programs and adoption in general. Since DH was out of town, I drug my sister to the seminar, and there I fell head over heels in love with everything about the Guatemalan adoption program, and especially with the beautiful children that previous adoptive parents brought with them to the seminar. We began our homestudy and dossier preparation in April and in September our beautiful daughter, Ariana Maria, was born in Guatemala. I’ll never forget the call from the agency director or the first time I saw her pictures on the computer screen. It was love at first sight. Our process was going along very well, and on December 27 we made a trip to Guatemala City to meet our daughter and visit with her. We spent almost a week holding her, loving her, and getting to know her. It was bliss. We had to return her to her foster family on January 2 so we could return home while her adoption was processed. On January 7, 2008, she quietly, suddenly, and unexpectedly died in her sleep. We were beyond devastated, and we still miss her to this day.
Since Guatemala is closed to new adoptions, we decided in March to look into other countries. Instead, we ended up deciding to go with a domestic adoption, like our original plan back in 2004. We had our homestudy changed and I began working on our profile at the end of March. I sent it out to a few referral agencies, and we settled in for what we assumed would be a long wait. However, one night while surfing the internet, I accidentally clicked on a link that took me to a page of available adoption situations. There at the top of the listing was a brand new posting from that day, looking for a family for a Hispanic baby boy already born. I immediately emailed the agency who posted for more information. She got back to me right away and asked for our profile, which I sent that night. The next day, she called to ask some more questions, including how we came to adopt. I told her about our daughter in Guatemala. She was shocked and amazed to hear how much we had wanted a Guatemalan child and how we had prayed and prayed asking God where our child was and both felt Guatemala was the answer. The reason she was so shocked is because the baby she was trying to place had birthparents who were from-you guessed it! Guatemala! The agency had never worked with a birthmom of Guatemalan origins before even thought she had helped in placing many Latino babies. This all seemed too big to all involved for it to be a coincidence. Needless to say, we were chosen to parent that sweet baby boy, and two days later after relinquishments were signed, I was on my way to Texas to meet my son! DH was out of town for work again, but his company got him to Houston ASAP as well. I’ll never forget the moment I first laid eyes on him in his isolette in the NICU (he had some minor difficulty during labor and delivery and needed to be monitored for his heart rate and breathing). He was the most beautiful baby there. I remember asking the social worker from the agency if I could hold him, and I’ll never forget her answer, “Of course you can, he’s YOUR SON!” What a miracle he is!

[AdoptInMN]

I’ve been meaning to write out our adoption story, so here it is…

DH and I met and moved quickly. Within four months of starting to date we bought a house together and moved in. We then waited about 4 years to get married and (based on my request) never planned on having children. I loved our time with our nieces and nephews but never wanted any of my own until one day….oh, that fateful day that some of us have….when I suddenly decided I needed a baby calling me Mommy.

DH and I have always known that we can’t have children biologically (we both knew before getting into the relationship); since we never planned on having children it wasn’t a big deal. But once I decided I wanted a child we had to work through those changes, which I’m sure many have faced. We worked through those and DH decided he could get over his adoptive fears.

We started the international adoption process in late January of 2007. We had a rare case (very short wait) and got the call from Colombia on January 31st, 2008, though there were in-country slow-downs and we were expected to wait another year. I was helping put on a work holiday party and had a message from our social worker. I had frequent communication with her, so it wasn’t an odd call, but I knew her voice tone enough to know something was different. I called her back when I got the message, but she was already gone home for the day. She had emailed me some paperwork that made me hopeful for a referral, but DH and I felt so far off from that that we didn’t get our hopes up (though that night we watched a movie that neither of us can remember who was in or what it was about).

We got a call from our social worker at about 7:30 p.m., which I knew was a sign of some sort. She couldn’t stand to wait until the next day, so she went back into the office that night to call us with all the info. We reviewed the info, decided on a sound YES, and started making calls that night!

For us, we had two week to complete large amounts of paperwork to get to Colombia as soon as possible to pick up our almost 7 month old son. With my husband and mom with me for portions of the trip, I was there for two months. It was a wonderful experience where we got to meet and bond with our AMAZING child.

We have been home since mid-April and are bonding and into our groove as a family. I can not imagine our life without little SA and my husband is an amazing father. I thrive now on our new life dynamics and while I previously only saw my future as a business woman, now see my future as a mother. What an amazing journey this has been…

[TxMom65]

I love reading these stories. Such amazing journeys.

My husband and I were married 12 years ago. He had3 boys, 2 of which we were raising. Soon after our marriage I was diagnosed with lupus. We never used birth control, never became pregnant, and never sought fertility treatments. We had the boys and life was good.
I am a teacher and had a student in my class who was in foster care. He had a sister and I knew a great deal of their history. He suffered brain damage as a result of the abuse.
One day we were asked to bring them to our Vacation Bible School at our church. The lived less than a mile away and I didn't mind. She was 6 and charmed my husband right away. Soon, she was asking us if we had ever considered adoption. We never stopped thinking about them.
The next year or so we were looking to buy a cabin and being our plan of an empty nest. It was a 5 year plan. The night before buying we were talking about all the things we would do when we were alone. My husband said that he would like to have had a little girl,. and how it would all be put on hold if one fell in our laps.
The next day, she stopped by my room at school to give me an update.
She was free for adoption. The boy was sent to a home with specialized care and she was to be adopted alone.
We decided to pray about it and came to the decision that we had to try. It was a long road and we almost lost her several times. Finally, we brought her home 9 months later.
She has been home 2 years now. She is now 10 years old and she is a delight. Yes, there have been hard times. I have learned about foster care, attachment, and adoption more than I ever thought I would. I do love her and am so happy that we followed this path.

[nikkianni]

I'm pretty sure everyone knows our story so I'll try for the short version.

I've wanted to adopt as far back as I can remember. It was just the way I was going to have my family. DH had never, ever even considered it. I was open about my feelings in regard to adoption from day one and he eventually came around to my way of thinking.
We started our adoption journey in August of 2006. Our agency advised us to post a profile online so I sweated over our letter, our pictures, captions, backgrounds, you name it. On 9-12-06, the day after or second anniversary, our profile went live online.
We received several contacts but never really connected with anyone. Then in January of 2007 one of DH's customers strolled into his office and asked if we'd be interested in twins. A boy and girl had been born to her friend the night before and she was firm about their being adopted.
We were in shock. We spent that night and the following morning just staring at each other. Twins! We were on our way to the hospital the next afternoon when DH's customer called to tell us the twins' uncle had decided to adopt them.
We were crushed. February was a blur of depression for me. We'd passed the six month mark and even though now I know how little that means, then it felt like forever. We had no prospects and had been so close.
On March 25, at about 10:30 a.m. I was in the shower getting ready to take my sister in law shopping as a thank you for her help in spring cleaning our house.
When the bathroom door opened and my husband asked me what I was doing, I thought he was trying to hurry me up so I very sweetly told him I was finger painting.
He then asked if I'd like to go see our daughter. I thought he was joking and said something fairly off-color to him. It certainly was not a funny joke.
It took him about 10 minutes but he finally convinced me that DD's bgrandma had just called to say that she'd been born the night before and they'd found our profile online and chosen us to be her parents.
I don't remember getting out of the shower or dressed. I remember calling my Mom, I remember coming downstairs and seeing that DH was wearing his Guiness t-shirt while I sported my Martini t-shirt and telling him we had to change, we looked like alcoholics.
Then we were dropping SIL off at home on our way to the hospital. (She'd begged to go with us but MIL wouldn't let her take Monday off school, lol).
The next 24 hours was a sleepless, scary, terrifying blur that I remember in snapshots.
DH and I waiting for an hour at the hospital because DD's bgrandma was running late. Standing outside the hospital room door clutching DH's hand, seeing DD's perfect little sleeping face for the first time, crying on the phone to my cousin and best friend as she and Mom emptied out our local Carter's, watching late-night hotel TV while DH snored beside me, looking into the back seat a thousand times on the way home because my baby was back there.
Seeing my Mom standing barefoot on our lawn waiting as we pulled in with tears streaming down her face.
Those first days were unreal and sometimes I still have to pinch myself when I think that this beautiful little person is my daughter.

[pnewcombe]

I'm a single 62 year old mid level exec who married my career and enjoyed the freedom of a good income and no responsibilities except for choices I wanted to make. However, about three years ago I realized that my work days were winding down and life and retirement were going to be pretty empty. So as a 59 year old man I started to investigate if I could adopt and have some kind of family even if late in life. I did some research, read books, blogs and went to agency seminars and finally at the beginning of 2006 started the process convinced that I would hit some wall, some red flag, and it would end, but I would know that I had tried and it was not to be. But the longer I went, the walls kept falling and by April of 2006 I was in Estonia meeting four teenage boys in order to pick the two I would adopt, and ended up going for all four. In September of 2006, I was in court and by October we were back home and starting life as a family. What a trip the next two years have been, my youngsters are all on the way to becoming great young men and I have learned how much I did not know about being a dad. One son who skipped 23 days of school in a row in 2007, now has a 3.5 GPA and perfect attendance. Another son learning to drive managed to sideswipe one of my cars into the other. A third drove a car into the house for a mere $5k repair. We have worked through all kinds of problems as I have seen their self esteem grow and they have realized that yes I am there for them and I love them no matter what. Even after fender benders, broken furniture, (teenage boys don't know there own strength!) busted windows, and outgrowing clothes faster than I could imagine, I have learned to smile and remind myself that they are just spending their inheritance a little ahead of schedule and as long as their opps'es do not really affect our health and sanity, just keep on cooking and loving and everyone will be happy in the end. I no longer have to fear living out my days in an empty too quiet house. While the usual teenagers can't wait to define their independence from their families, my 4 who were independent in the orphanage for ten years have sworn to me that they are never moving out! (I'm quite sure that the right young ladies will arrive and solve that problem in good time). But in the meantime I am loving the daily pandimonium that greets me after work every day as I have a house full of great kids and their friends to keep my busy.

Pete, pop to four great kids

[BlessedbySnuggs]

Wow, such great, inspirational stories!!!

Here's mine....

DH and I got married in '05 and started TTC right away. I kind of remember having a feeling that having a family might be hard for us. Not sure why I felt this way, just did. After a year and some change of trying, we went to a specialist who told us that we "were perfectly healthly" Hmmm....well, obviously we weren't, we weren't getting pregnant, so we were diagnosed with "unexplained infertility" just great, right??!!! We really couldn't do much, because technically there wasn't a problem. Talk about being frustrated! Well long behold, I got pregnant after trying for about 18 months. Not quite after two weeks of finding out that I was pregnant, I miscarried. Oh, what a horrible time in my life. I was so angry; actually anger doesn't begin to describe what I felt. We tried for a few more months, and that was it for the both of us. We couldn't take it anymore. We wanted children...didn't matter if I gave birth to them or if we adopted them!

In January of '07 we signed with an agency for an international adoption in Guatemala; soon after, things started getting really crazy down there (so many things changing with their adoption procedures), so after much discussion, we decided to change to domestic adoption. We signed with a facilitator in April; we received a few calls the first few months that just didn't feel right to us, so we waited patiently, and August 11th we got a call with a PBM that wanted to speak with us. We had a really good talk, but the PBM wanted to talk to a few other couples and then decide. We were the first couple she spoke with after receiving the profiles from our facilitator. About a week passed, and we hadn't heard anything. We really assumed that she spoke with another couple and had decided to "match" with them. A few days later we got the call that changed our lives forever. Our facilitator called and said that "D" wanted us to be the parents!!!! Come to find out that she never even spoke with the other PAP's. She wanted to think about us for a week and decide; 6 weeks later our beautiful DD was born. We flew out to be there for the birth but just missed it. We have been with our DD since she was 4 hours old. She is the love of our lives! Everyday we truly feel so, so blessed!!!!!!

[escottswanson]

My adoption story: I was adopted twice! the first family was found unsuitable and so my first mother had to come back a year after she had relinquished me and do another round of paperwork. I was conceive in Georgia while my first mother was on vacation. She found out she was pregnant a few months later in Los Angeles. She was 16 at the time. She said in her interview that she had always wished she was adopted and felt cheated. But the famility was going to keep me until a few weeks before my birth when first mothers parents had a falling out. The rest is history ... I was adopted by two amazing people. Turns out that nobody in my birth family ever graduated from high school and 2 of my unlces went to prison for heroin. They grew up completely unserpervised and got into a lot of trouble. I consider myself to be the luckiest person on Earth My adoptive Mom also helped me with my search and I am truly grateful and happy that she was able to be a part of it.

[musemoon]

I always have wanted a baby ever since I was very very young. After a break up of a long relationship, I ended up single at the time in my life when I should have been planning our child.

I believe in God and I meditate everyday. I also believe that my children have spoken to me through meditation. Well, I asked God to show me my child as I felt that the chance of having the children I had always wanted was slipping from me. In my meditation a very spirited "spirit" came to me and told me that she was my daughter "Aria" and that she has big hair, big eyes and latte colored skin (I started to ponder this as my ex was not a man of color, and nor was anyone I had ever dated before...but that could change).

So flash forward about a year(ish) and every time I meditate this little spirit child shows up. I actually get a little angry at the angel and tell her that she is making me crazy and if she is real, then she has to GIVE ME A SIGN and she has to pick it. So she said...

"Pink balloons mommie, sometime between today and tomorrow you will see pink balloons" well long story short at 11:59 pm on that very day a friend walked in the door of my work place carrying pink balloons (he didn't know about my meditation...he had actually stolen them from outside of a balloon store to give a friend at midnight for her bday.) The next day a friend of mine who is a social worker asked if I had ever considered foster/adoption and recommended I contact the adoption agency she worked for as she had a feeling that fost/adopt would be a good fit for me. I said yes...and...

Nine months (and one missed call for a CC baby) later SHE SHOWS UP!!!! Aria.

And I'm just sittin' here waiting for the phone to ring with my social worker friend telling me that her little sister is here. I have a story about her too...but she's not here yet, so...I'll have to save it for later. :-)

I love my child(ren) and am very blessed that I found my family through adoption.

[Sohmakun]

Originally Posted by musemoon

(he didn't know about my meditation...he had actually stolen them from outside of a balloon store to give a friend at midnight for her bday.)

ROTL!! Hilarious

[Stormster]

Our adoption story is difficult but in the spirit of this celebration I'll give it a go. We did not do infertility treatments because there was just TOOOOO much involved. It would have required either surgery and then IVF with an egg donor or a surrogate with an egg donor. It just made zero sense to us. My nephew was adopted, my two first cousins were adopted....it just seemed more natural to us. As for our story, it's been hard to separate our happy ending from what we went through initially. But E deserves his own story so I'm glad to be encouraged to write ONLY about him, his birth and subsequent adoption. This could be very therapeutic!

I'll just say that E's birth mother was the most steady, devoted and loyal friend we could have had throughout her pregnancy and even after. Not only did she choose us on PProfiles, pursue us (yes!) and stick by us through thick and thin, it was she who soothed my fears during the long match. It was she who called me almost every day and made me feel safe in our relationship. It was she who practically coached me to stay conscious during the L & D and basically threw E to me like a football when she had to throw up after the delivery. She also told the nurses to drag me over to cut the cord when I was barely conscious because she knew it meant so much to me ...why I wanted to cut that cord so badly I have no idea LOL (but I did!). And it was she who told me over and over again that I was his mommy after the placement. She even yelled at me a few times to snap out of it when I felt so depressed and guilty for taking her baby away. Talk about backwards! She is someone we can tell E some GREAT stories about and we hope and pray she will start to take care of herself a little bit so she will be around to tell him these things herself. She's a wonderful person.

The joy we feel being parents to this spectacular child has grown with every ounce (and there have been a few), every inch, every milestone. My heart could easily burst now. But it took a long time of just "taking care of business" before my heart followed. Still I always had faith that mother son bond would cement and it has (and then some).

Loving, nurturing and protecting E has given my life meaning. I hope my mothering will enhance who he already is and he will feel safe and content in the world. He already seems to! Because of adoption, we have a very very happy home

[jalapeno]

We had a child for one year, one week, and four hours before having to give him up. For the first 8 months it looked to be almost certain that we would be able to adopt him. So I have to do some substantial editing in order to share my adoption story. In order to be able to breathe while I write this.

But I don't want my daughter to grow up thinking her story begins in utter sorrow. So it's probably good that I practice her part of the story.

I've always thought that IF I had kids at all I would adopt them. Maybe the reasons have changed over the years. When I was young and idealistic, it was because there were already too many people in the world and there were kids who needed good homes. Simple logic. When I was older and more self-centered it was because I didn't want to be pregnant (eeewww!). My brother lost two children to adoption (involuntary TPR) and maybe then I thought I needed to right the scale somehow. (I'm simplifying all this of course). I told my DH before we married that I wanted to adopt if we had kids. We were both on the fence about being parents for years. But he was completely on board with the adoption thing. We just never felt a real need for that biological connection.

After six years of marriage I guess we'd had enough of each other. We started the process for fost/adopt. We never considered any other option and had never attempted to get pregnant. We were open to up to two siblings, up to 4 years old, any gender/race, some special needs. Somehow we ended up getting pegged as the people to call with newborns. Maybe because I could stay at home full time. I don't know. We ended up getting placed with a total of 5 infants.

Our daughter was the third of those infants. I got a call on a Monday morning in late April. I should mention it's very unusual for me to answer the phone during the day unless I recognize the number. I didn't recognize that number but for some reason I decided to answer anyway. It was an SW wanting to know if we could take another baby. She thought it was a boy and had mispelled my DD's given name and thus mispronounced it. Didn't know any of her vital stats at birth. Thought there was some drug exposure but really had no idea what was going on. I said "sure". She asked if I needed to call DH. I said "no". He and I had talked about taking in another child anyway. And it truly didn't occur to me this would ultimately be our daughter. I called DH to let him know and waited for the CW to call. We picked up our daughter the next day from the hospital. 3pm on a Tuesday. She was two days old. The tiniest human I've ever held. I assumed she'd be going home to her birthfamily. But days went by. Then weeks. Then months. And she just stayed. We finalized after 17 agonizingly long months. She's 2 1/2 now. My daughter.

We decided to try for a bio child when my DD was still a baby. We wanted her to have a sibling and I just wasn't sure I could handle going through another adoption experience. And I suddenly felt the years pressing in on me. I didn't want to be pregnant past age 35. So we planned to have our two kids pretty close in age. And then the plan was to wait a few years after that and leave the option of a third child open. Maybe adoption. Maybe bio. Maybe just keep it at two kids.

But I really thought we should have three kids. Just seemed like the right number. When I got pregnant I was secretly hoping for twins although I knew that would be insane (so that I wouldn't have to be pregnant more than once AND wouldn't have to adopt more than once - there's just no easy way to have a child). And I was secretly hoping for a boy (I already had my girl! )

About half way through my pregnancy we got an unexpected call. Another SW. Our daughter's birthmother had just had another baby. The SW wanted to know if we could take that baby. It terrified me. Our DD's adoption wasn't even close to finalized. A new baby would open the whole case wide open again. I certainly didn't want the siblings together in the event that the new baby ultimately went "home". My first reaction was to please let the other foster family know that we wanted to arrange visits so the siblings could at least know each other growing up. It took all of ten minutes for me to come to my senses. Of course we would take that baby. He was our DD's full bio brother. We picked up our "older" son when he was 13 days old. I could have picked him out of a crowd of a hundred babies. He looked so much like his sister. He never even woke up during the "transfer" but my heart just melted. My son.

So here I am. The mother of three zany toddlers (a total of 16 3/4 months apart). And despite the pain in getting to this point . . . despite the fullness and craziness of my life now . . . there are definitely days when I think . . . maybe just one more? well, maybe just one more sibling group?

[oceanica]

I love this thread! It's so nice to get to know more about you all.

I met my husband at roller skating.. he was 19 and I was 16. He decided he was going to marry me before we met he says. Anyhow we got married a few years later and we went through a phase of trying not to get pregnant to not doing anything to TTC. (I still think we couldve tried harder!) I wanted to try an infertility workup but dh is not so much on board. (I still think it was because he refused to produce a sample in the cup... he thinks he would walk out of the room and have all the nurses snickering at him.) Anyway we decided adoption was a better option, so we embarked on this process. We matched with Athena's birthmom because we were the only couple who was interested in her situation. She took home our info and says she read it over and over again. She wanted a black family or br, but when she met with us she says it was like a weight was lifted off her shoulders. She felt it was right. We of course felt it was right too! She was so beautiful and so wise beyond her years yet not bitter or hardened even though she'd been through a lot in her short life, being on her own and having had a baby at 13 and then 17 though she still graduated and had plans to continue her education. So we got another chance to meet with her on a friday and we went out to lunch... the due date was another 2 weeks off so dh and I left thinking we would go "out on the town" in case it was the last chance to do so for a while. Well, we went out dancing and we stayed overnight in another city, and sunday at 9 am we got a call from G, she was at the hospital! We raced back to where she was, about a 4 hour drive though I think we made it in quite a bit less! (We said that if a policeman stopped us we would say "we're having a baby!) We got there 40 minutes late. G said we could be in the delivery so we were very disappointed, but we got to see her in the nursery getting her first bath and so on. Looking in at that little pinkish purplish premie bundle, we couldn't believe that this could be our daughter! Anyhow G was probably much nicer than I would have been.. she let us stay in her hospital room with her and she and I took care of Athena all the time and fed her. She let me stay overnight with her and everything. G didn't want the baby in the nursery, she wanted her with us so we could take care of her and make sure it was done right and none of her feeds were late or anything. She had to stay 48 hours because of a few premie complications, but everything worked out and now she's a fabulous 4 monther, average in weight, height, head circumference, you name it. I still cannot believe that I get to be her Mom! Here are some pics of my beautiful godess soon after we took her home and now. I am the luckiest person on earth.