Jenna & Matthew Aiken

Updates

• Update 2

  

  Matched

  July 1, 2022
  We have some exciting news to share but first we would like to explain how we got here: As you all know we have been waiting to be matched with a birth mother/family for newborn domestic adoption. We have been receiving “situations” for quite some time now. We have been praying that God would heal our frustration and hurt from the devastation and loss that we went through as a family at the end of 2021 and make something good come out of it all. We often prayed that we would remain hopeful, trust the Lord’s plan and the Lords... Read moreperfect timing. Although the wait was extremely hard, we finally have been matched with our birth mother and baby! God’s timing truly is remarkable. As many of you know recently, I have had a lot of health issues and so Matt and I have been focusing on my recovery. On 6/23/22 I had just got back to my hospital room after just going through surgery and noticed an email notification come up on my phone. I saw that it was an agency sending us a possible adoption situation and they wanted us to look everything over and decide if we wanted to show our family profile to this expectant mother. I was in and out of sleep and just really felt God telling me to apply even in the mist of pain and hardship. So, I talked it over with Matt and basically was like this is a good case and I think we need to have her look at our family. He was hesitant as he should have been as a concerned husband whose wife just got out of surgery. But he reluctantly handed me my laptop and I began writing a letter to this birth mama. Once everything was sent back to the agency, I began just focusing on my recovery. Not that I forgot about the case but just didn’t think we would hear anything for weeks. As we were driving home from the hospital we got “the call”- it was our consultant telling us that this birth mom had choose us to be her baby’s adoptive parents. We immediately broke down and were just in disbelief and in awe of what was happening. When you least expect it, the Lord answers. We officially are out of the “Matching phase” with the agency and are now waiting for her to deliver in Arizona. The next 3 months are going to be extremely challenging, but we are remaining hopeful that this time we will become parents. We are truly blessed with loving family, friends, and church community by our side. With this process, we still have funding that we need to raise to reach our financial goal to finish the adoption and successfully have the child placed with our family. We truly appreciate everyone who has continued to follow our journey and we just ask that if there is any way you can share our adoption website in hopes of us reaching our goal. Any financial contribution of any kind will go such a long way in helping us finalize this adoption process and making our dreams come true in growing our family. We want to be a path of hope and faith to other couples who are considering building their family through adoption. We are looking forward to getting to know this amazing woman and we cannot wait to meet her and go through this journey with her.

• Update 1

  A Year In "The Wait"

  April 21, 2022
  Hello Family & Friends, Thank you all who have continued to follow us in this process. This year has been one of the hardest years. Filled with many challenges. We celebrated in getting that call that we have been matched with our birth mother and child. We couldn't believe we were matched after our profile was shown only 2 times to 2 different birth mothers. We were told that if that worked out, this would be an adoption story miracle. After getting to know the birth mother and speaking to her and family members over the phone and receiving sonograms... Read moreover the course of her pregnancy, we thought this is going to work. We thanked the Lord that we were going to only be in this difficult process for a short time. Then when we got the call that we were disrupted we were devastated. Not only did we not become parents (the week our baby was due to be delivered), we also lost out on a lot of money and had a financial setback. When you match with an agency they have you sign a contract and that agency has there own "At Risk" fees. If a match is to be disrupted you then owe the agency an At Risk fee which covers all the services that were offered to your birth mother and child thus far up to when the adoption was disrupted. A failed adoption is when an adoption or placement does not go through for one reason or another. With that being said, we lost our "At Risk Fee which was $8,000 Shortly after being disrupted with our 1st Match, we decided to trust the Lord, trust our team and this adoption process. We wanted to put our Family profile back out there for expectant mothers to view. We pray for each situation that comes to us. We receive emails from the agency all hours of the day. Some weeks we get 1 expectant mother's file to review, other weeks we get 4 expectant mothers files, and some weeks we get 0 files. This always has us on edge thinking I wonder how this week is going to go with situations. Since our disruption that occurred with our 1st match back in December 2021, we have received 34 different Expectant Mothers files to Review. For one reason or another, we have not agreed to share our profile with all of those expectant mothers. It has to be by both parties. They can only view our family profile if we give them that "Yes" and then they look over as many "Yes" profiles they get and then that expectant birth mother says "Yes, I want this family to be my baby's adoptive parents" Once we give our Yes for the birth mother to review us sometimes it takes over a week to hear back from the agency that the case came from to find out if she picked us or not. That time is always nerve racking. It is a time you feel very alone in the wait process because its a time when you don't want to share with family and friends in case you are to be a chosen family. Also, we have no idea how many people said "Yes" to each case, therefore we have no idea how many family profiles a mother is reviewing. Truly the only thing you can do is trust The Lord and pray! We have been in this process for a Year. A year full of a lot of uncertainty. A full year of disappointment, but also a whole year of remaining hopeful that this will work. Since it has been a year, we recently had to renew our Homestudy and all of our adoption clearances. It is almost as if we are having to restart the whole process again. The homestudy and clearances are only good for 1 Year, after that if you are still not matched you have to renew everything and update everything. Which also costs a lot of money. We have been extremely fortunate to have such loving family and friends who have prayed continuously on our family and on our adoption journey. Thank you for asking how we are doing, asking us if there is anything you can do to help, and thank you for continuing to love on our family. If you would like to contribute financially, you can do so on this newly updated website, we also have venmo and zelle accounts. Other ways you can support us is through Prayer. We would love to hear from you as well. Some weeks are harder than others and hearing from you would make us so happy. Our mailing address is 7356A Sauerkraut Lane Macungie PA 18062. Another way that you could help is by sharing our website either through email or on social media. We are praying that our story and our journey of hope will shed a light on domestic newborn adoption. Adoption is a beautiful way to grow your family.