Hello, thanks for clicking and learning a little more!
Jerry and I first became parents through the gift of adoption. After marrying young and going through several years of infertility, we felt led to pursue an international adoption from China. We had the huge honor of bringing home our first child, Ezra, in June of 2018. We saw so many miracles as we worked to bring Ezra home, and we didn't want him to be lonely–so we thought for sure we would return to China for a sibling for him.
Enter a (for us) shocking twist–a positive pregnancy test.
Our first biological daughter–Eve–was born in spring of 2019. We were so astonished and so grateful to be parents 2x over.
When Eve was just a little over a year old, I found out I was pregnant again. It was a lot, but I was excited. Every child is such a miracle, one we appreciated after our long road to parenthood. But when I was just a few weeks into my second trimester, we started getting the feedback from the doctors. Phrases like "increased risk," "syndrome," "abnormality," and "specialists" began to fill our conversations with our health care providers.
Lucy was born at 30 weeks gestation, with Dandy Walker malformation, among other issues. She lived all her life in the NICU, December 2020-March 2021. She went through a lot. She suffered. We suffered with her. She taught me, a recovering perfectionist, the value of small and imperfect humans.
After Lucy died, we had to grieve, I had had two c-section babies and I needed time to heal physically as well. We weren't sure why Lucy had had such a short and often times painful existence, but we were convinced that her life wasn't for nothing.
God sent us Flora in winter of 2022. All our kids are wonderful, but she has been a special kind of wonderful as our hearts continue to heal. Pregnancy after all the trauma and loss is really hard, and we felt pretty sure we were ready to put that part of our lives behind us. But then I remember Eve telling me that she wanted a baby brother. Then Ezra began to ask on and off for a brother. I sort of brushed it off, not feeling ready to even entertain the thought.
I'm not doing very well keeping this brief, but last winter I began to feel a nagging at me that I couldn't quite explain. This spring it suddenly sprang into clear view in my mind "adopt another little boy." Some research and conversations led to the immense need in India, which has more than 30 million orphaned children.
We expect our total adoption costs to be around $50,000. If you feel led to help us as we pursue "little brother" we would be so grateful.
