Welcome to our adoption journey! We’re honored that you would take some time to learn a little bit about our path to growing our family and that you would even consider supporting us along this road.
What led us here?
In early 2021 we decided that we wanted to pursue having children. However, the next 2 years proved to be a difficult season for us as we dealt with infertility and then a few failed pregnancies. This period left us feeling deep grief and disappointment, but also thankful for the love and support of our community, and eventually hopeful for what might come next in the life of our family. Ultimately we began to feel more and more strongly about the possibility of growing our family through adoption.
What has the adoption process looked like for us so far?
Early this year (2024) we got connected with an adoption consultant group - Faithful Adoption Consultants. They’ve helped us navigate the various stages of the process including completing our home study, gathering an encyclopedia’s worth of paperwork, compiling a profile book to be shared with expectant mothers, and applying to several adoption agencies around the US. We felt strongly about seeking a domestic infant adoption, and there are a lot of decisions we had to make regarding our preferences for a child’s situation, such as their family history, medical background, and our desired level of openness with the birth mother/family. Each part of this process has led us to be as open-handed as we can be, trusting that God will orchestrate our situation in the best way He sees fit.
Why are we raising funds?
The adoption process is a costly one: emotionally, relationally, and certainly financially. This holds true for pretty much any way in which parents bring children into their family! But our intentions behind raising funds are summed up in three ways:
The total costs associated with our adoption are expected to be in the range of $70,000-80,000. Our goal is to raise about half of those costs: $35,000. Any amount you give will help offset expenses including completion of our home study, agency fees, medical/care expenses for the birth family, travel and stay expenses in the baby’s birth state, and legal finalization of the adoption. In the event that we exceed our fundraising goal, our desire is to route any additional funds towards other adoptive families with financial needs. If you’d like to support us but can’t (or don’t feel led to) do so financially, we’d love for you to pray for us, share this page with your circles, or reach out to us directly with encouragement or to ask how you can support us!
Thank you for your time and investment in our lives! Keep reading below if you’d like to see some updates along the way.
Hey friends! It’s been a few weeks since our last update so we wanted to send out a few quick notes to keep you in the loop about our last few weeks.
First of all, THANK YOU for the incredible support that you have shown to us thus far in our journey since we first shared our news a few weeks ago. We want to call out and celebrate the immense generosity of everyone who has supported us in recent weeks: through giving financially, praying for us, being involved in our yard sale, sending beautiful words of encouragement, and the many other ways you’ve lifted us up. Truly, thank you for loving us so well.
Quick recap on the yard sale: it was a great experience in multiple ways! We had a great day working the sale with our family, there were so many friends that came by to shop and catch up with us, and we were able to share our story with several folks along the way. The proceeds we brought in from the event put us almost halfway to our fundraising goal!
And one final item for this update: we’re asking that you be thinking and praying for the birth mother with whom we’ve matched. With the baby due in January, she is in her third trimester and walking through the highs and lows that come with carrying a precious child for so many months. We deeply admire the commitment, courage and love she’s showing for this baby girl as she navigates her role in this adoption journey, and we praise God that the most recent report we received indicates that both mom and baby are healthy. So we would love for you to join us in praying for mom’s physical/emotional/spiritual health, as well as baby girl’s continued healthy development. We want both of them to feel incredibly loved and supported in this season, and we hope you know that you’ve already played a role in doing just that through your love and support of us.
Once again, we’re so incredibly grateful for you and your investment in our journey, and this won’t be the last time you hear us remind you of that!
- H&K
We've got a fun event coming up soon! If you're local to the Birmingham area then mark your calendar for the morning of Saturday, November 2nd - the Garnett family is putting on a yard sale for which all proceeds will go towards our adoption fundraising efforts.
If you're looking for a way to support our adoption financially other than giving directly through this page, this event will be a great opportunity to do so. You can come join us on a lovely Fall Saturday and shop for various items including men's & women's clothing, baby items, shoes, furniture, and more. If you can't shop with us on the day of the sale but would like to help out, feel free to contribute items from around your house that you were planning to donate anyway. Reach out to one of us directly to drop off some clothing or home goods to be included in the sale.
We'll share information about additional fundraiser opportunities soon, but don't miss out on this event!
- H&K
Last week we got the call that we officially matched with an expectant mother! This is one of the most significant milestones along the adoption journey, so it brings a lot of emotions for us and maybe some questions from you.
What does it mean that we "matched"?
In September we submitted all of the required paperwork, certificates, documentation, etc. that we had been working on for several months. Once that was approved - alongside the completion of our home study - we went "active". This meant we would start receiving information about cases and we could choose to share our profile book with expectant mothers/families in hopes that one of them would select us to parent their child. Many adoptive families are active for several months and share their profile book with dozens of expectant mothers/families before they match, so our expectation was that it would be a relatively slow and steady process before we finally matched. But after receiving several cases this month and choosing to share with a few of them, we got the call last week that one mother chose our profile meaning we "matched" with her!
We were obviously excited to hear this news, thankful that this door has been opened so quickly, and full of joy at the prospect of bringing home a beautiful baby soon! But we also want to acknowledge that we're feeling some emotions at the same time that aren’t all happy/positive: we're nervous about the reality of preparing to bring home a baby in such a condensed timeline, we're holding the situation loosely knowing that not everything is 100% finalized just yet, and we’re also wrestling with the complex mixture of beauty and brokenness that surrounds any adoption story. Even so, this is a huge blessing and we're so looking forward to the coming weeks/months!
What do we know so far about the mother & baby?
We don't have a ton of details about the mother and her baby at this moment, and out of respect for her privacy we don't feel the need to share most of what we do have insight into. But the few key details that we can share: it's a baby girl who is expected to come in late January '25. The mother will be delivering in Utah, so that's where we'll travel to meet her and hopefully be placed with her daughter after delivery.
So what happens next?
We've got to prepare to welcome a baby girl into our family! On top of the typical preparation for having a baby - setting up a nursery, collecting various baby items, and teaching our dog that baby toys are not for him - we're coordinating with the adoption agency and various other parties to take care of any legal documentation that will need to be ready at the time of the placement. We're also fundraising and planning for our time in Utah. If all goes to plan with the delivery and placement, we'll have to spend a few weeks in Utah before all of our documentation clears and we can bring the baby home. So a lot to look forward to and a lot to prepare for!
If you have any questions or comments for us about any of these details or any other steps in the process we've experienced to this point then we'd love to hear from you! Thank you again for being interested and invested in our journey!!
- H&K