The Journey Begins

originally written July 2005

I remember the day that the dr told us that we may never have children of our own. It was one of the darkest days of my life. There is such a misconception about infertility. Most people think that it is sad, but not that big of a deal. It is not like a disease or something that will hurt you physically. The truth is that there are only 2 things worse than infertility: death of a loved one and a debilitating/terminal illness of yourself or a loved one. Every part of my being begs to be a mother.

We began to pray about adoption or pursuing fertility treatments. The problem with both of these is cost. Either option could easily cost $20,000. We were unsure of which route to take, so we just waited. In Dec of '03 we got a call from a friend of ours about adopting a baby from a woman in his church. By doing this as a private adoption, the cost would only be about $5,000. We decided to go for it. The birth mom was planning to abort the baby. After she heard about us, she decided to let us adopt. In march, 5 days before I was to go with her to the dr's for an ultrasound, the birth mom backed out. I was crushed. She said that she needed more time. We anxiously waited the next 5 months, praying that we would hear from her. We learned later that she went through an agency instead. We were crushed.

In October, I told a friend of mine that I would NEVER try adoption again. The next day we got the call about Abbie. The bmom was in prison, probably for another 6 years. Originally, the bmom asked us to care for Abbie (due to be born in Jan) until she was released. I told her that I needed a week to pray about it. She called later that day to say that she was considering letting us adopt Abbie. A few weeks later she told us to begin adoption precedings. We were beside oursleves! A few weeks before she gave birth, she changed her mind about letting us adopt, but asked if we would still keep her until she got out. I don't know if it was wrong of us to do so, but we said that we would. This is where our journey of loving and losing Abbie begins.