Little Bug’s birth

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I didn’t date this, but I wrote it shortly after Little Bug’s arrival so I would not forget anything about the moments surrounding her birth.

On Tuesday, May 26th, 2009, I awoke very anxious for Little Bug to be here! Two weeks prior we had had a false alarm where Tracy called us saying she was contracting and she may go to the hospital that night. That was May 11th. Tracy did end up calling us saying she was going to the hospital. Dave and I went too and were there for about 3 hours with Tracy and her mother.

Back to May 26th… When I awoke that day I was just so ready for Little Bug to be here. During my quiet time that morning I wrote out my prayer to God. I basically said that I acknowledged that He already knew the day and hour Little Bug would be born. I told Him that I was very anxious for Little Bug to be here and just be through with the waiting season. Then I told Him that I desired His will above all and that I knew whatever happened was exactly the way He had planned it from the start. I told Him I knew He was in control of everything.

The night of May 26th Dave and I went over to my parents’ house for dinner. At around 10:45pm we had just pulled into the driveway and the cell phone rang. My heart immediately began beating very fast. Dave and I had driven separate cars. He saw I was on the phone and walked over to my car window.

Tracy was telling me that she thought her water had broken and she was headed to the hospital. She said that she would call us back once she got there and was checked out. About 2 hours later she called to say her water had broken and they were admitting her. She later called and told us to come on up. We entered the room and there she lay in the bed. Her mom and sister were there with her in the room. Labor had not started naturally so they were going to give her Pitocin to induce labor. Tracy started having contractions here and there, but they didn’t seem very regular or very painful. I knew it was going to be a long night for everyone! The minutes seemed to be ticking by incredibly slow.

At some point Dave and I went out to the waiting room. Tracy had asked us to leave and she was going to get some sleep. We decided to try and get some sleep too. Dave slept; I, however, did not. At 7:09am I was on the phone with I think Maria when the cell phone rang. I answered and it was Tracy’s mom saying, “She is giving birth!”. I could hear Tracy moaning in the background.

I immediately told Dave we need to get back there. I had to put my contacts in and then we headed to the room. As we were walking I got the urge to run and felt we needed to get there NOW.

As I walked into the room, Little Bug had just come out and the doctor was holding her. They were asking who was going to cut the cord as I walked up. They said I would, so I cut the cord which was very special. Then they moved Little Bug over to the table where they take Apgar scores and clean her up. I walked over there with her. That nurse was especially nice and let me take pictures and even put my finger in her little hand for her to grasp. Those were some precious moments as I first saw with my own eyes my daughter.

The only thing was she wasn’t yet my daughter. It was an odd feeling really. I was so enamored with the moments of being there yet I had to remain somewhat guarded because I knew Tracy still had every right to her even though her intentions were to follow through with her adoption plan for her baby.

The nurse bundled Little Bug up and asked if I wanted to hold her. I told her Tracy had told me she wanted to hold her first and then she would “give her to her Mama”. To Tracy, that only seemed right and I totally agreed with her. The nurse gave Little Bug to Tracy and she held her for a few moments and admired her. Then she passed her to her mother who held her for a few moments. Then she was passed to me. I held her and then Dave held her. Dave and I kept passing her back and forth. She was just beautiful and precious. Her little face was all bruised because of her quick entry into the world. Those were some unforgettable moments.

5/22/09

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Little Bug turns four years old next Monday. In this week leading up to her birthday, I have decided to go back in the handwritten journal I kept during my wait until her birth and share some of my writings from that time. This one was written on May 22, 2009, five days before Little Bug entered this world.

And we still wait. Even knowing You know the day and hour and have everything already planned, I am still so anxious for Little Bug to be born. I’m just so ready to be done with the adoption process and move on to learning to parent with Dave. I look forward to the days of sleep-deprivation, a crying newborn and trying to figure out what soothes her best. I look forward to all that because it will all be normal – something every couple who’s just brought a newborn home from the hospital goes through!

These past 2 years have been anything but the norm! I’m ready for some normalcy to our lives – even if it is a different kind of chaos!

On the same hand, I certainly wouldn’t trade one single thing of our journey for any piece of “normal”. We’ve traveled the road God set before us 2 years ago and we made it our goal to walk the road of infertility with our trust in the Lord. He has proven His loving faithfulness to us, and to all people who put their trust and hope in Him.

When I go back and read blog posts I posted even as far as a year ago, it is so evident that I knew deep within my heart that we would not stay in the pit of despair forever. I also knew early on that God was up to something big. I stated many times throughout my blog that God’s plan for my life is bigger and better than anything I could plan for myself. I embraced my infertility. I did not accept it as a curse. I knew it was God’s tool that He was using to do something big in my life, something that only HE could do to point people to Himself. When people hear the story of how Little Bug came into our lives, God’s Name is written all over her! It thrills my heart to no end that I worship a God who can take my temporary pain and turn it into something as beautiful as Little Bug.

I know God desires to do something big in any Child of God’s life who is going through infertility or some other trial. I’ve learned over the past years to receive God’s blessings and for God to be able to work in one’s life so that He can receive the glory, we must step back in surrender and let God lead us every step of the way. Where He leads we must follow and what He says do or don’t do, we must obey. Only then can we discover the something more He has planned.

I definitely know what it means to surrender and that was the hardest part of this journey because God asked me to surrender my desire for pregnancy to Him. And then He told me no more treatments, adopt!! You better believe that is not what I wanted!! But I knew I had to surrender and trust God because if I kept going in a direction God was leading me away from I knew I wouldn’t see the something more god had planned. And so I surrendered and the floodgates of heaven’s blessings poured out for God’s glory. He gave us Little Bug.

Thank you Jesus for the pain, tears and agony. May our lives continue for Your Glory as we raise this little girl to love You.

DNA: It just doesn’t matter.

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We were out as a family when I heard Dave tell someone that we adopted both of our girls and then the person responded by saying, “It takes a special person to love a kid that isn’t yours.”

We don’t usually get a lot of comments from people about adoption, but this one stopped me in my tracks and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I was glad that Little Bug was distracted and did not understand what the person was implying to her Daddy because, goodness gracious, that could be very painful for her to hear that!

It angered me that someone would say that when our daughters are right there. Fortunately, they are little and even if Little Bug had not been distracted, I don’t think she would have understood what was being said. Or maybe she would. She is one smart little girl.

But it made me think about the future when someone might say that again with her standing right there, understanding exactly what they are implying.

While a part of me was angered that that comment had the potential to hurt my children, the other part of me was deeply saddened that this person obviously has not experienced a love that defies genetics and allows us to love our children as if they were flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.

And you know what? Really – them not being flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone is a mute point. It just simply doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. I don’t know how else to say it.

There was a time when I thought it might matter. I think everyone who adopts goes through a time when they think and wonder if they will be able to love a baby that isn’t genetically related to them.

But really genetics is just science. That is all it is. Genetics is what gave my daughters their hair color, eye color, their temperaments – but it stops there. They are who they are today because they are where they are today.

There is some truth to what that person said. My girls are not mine. I don’t know if adoption taught me this or what, but I know my children are not mine. They are God’s. They are a gift straight from heaven.

It is my greatest joy and honor to be able to raise these girls to love the God who orchestrated the events that eventually put them in my arms. It is a gift I do not take for granted and I will forever know these children are not mine – they are the Lord’s. Children are a gift from the Lord and I am so incredibly grateful that despite my barren womb, I am a mother.

From the moment they were each laid in my arms, there was the promise that these babies were the babies God was going to give me to call my own – as if I had just given birth to them myself.

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I will never in a million years forget those first few moments of holding each of my daughters. There is no way I could attempt to put in words what my heart was feeling in those moments although I have attempted to many times on this blog! They were sacred moments when all the pain and tears of infertility dissipated into the past and I was left holding a beautiful miracle of God in my arms. A baby that God and their birth mothers had chosen me to mother.

It did not take me long to realize that DNA has nothing to do with the love a mother feels for her child. It just simply didn’t matter. She was my baby; I was her mother. That was it.

It’s really no different than a man and woman who love each other. Husband and wife have no DNA connection (let’s hope that is the case, anyway!) and yet they love each other deeply! No one ever asks me how I can possibly love Dave because I am not genetically connected to him and the same is true for our children. There is no genetic connection but they are our children and we are their parents.

Little Bug and Sweet Pea are “ours” in every way imaginable, but ultimately, they belong to God.

Mexican Surprise!

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Since we are settled in the new house and life has resumed to normal, I’m taking this cooking thing serious now and I am determined to get more meals besides Pepsi Roast in my meal rotation.

Rebecca came to town the first week of May and while she was here she taught me how to make Mexican Surprise!!

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Easy, fast and delicious. My motto for cooking.

Ingredients:

1/2 pound of ground beef

1 box Rice-a-roni Mexican style

1 can corn

1 can black beans

1 can Mexican rotel

2 cups water

1-2 bags Tostitos (scoops or bite size)

sour cream

salsa

shredded cheese

First, put 1/2 pound of ground beef and the Mexican style rice (without the seasoning) into the pot on medium heat. Let the ground beef brown.

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While that is cooking, strain and rinse the black beans.

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Once ground beef is browned, pour in the black beans, can of corn, Mexican style rotel, seasoning packet from the rice and 2 cups of water.

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Cover and cook on medium for 18-20 minutes. Stir about every 5 minutes.

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Yum!

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Put the shredded cheese, sour cream and salsa in serving dishes on the side (to be mixed in if desired).

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We served with salad and strawberries!

I miss her.

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On Mother’s Day I can’t help but think about the two women who played a huge role in me becoming a mother – my daughters’ birth mothers, Tracy & Melody.

The day before Mother’s Day is Birth Mother’s Day (May 11th this year). May 11th, 2009, Little Bug’s birth mother gave me a very special gift that I will always treasure. She allowed me to accompany her to a doctor’s visit where I got to hear Little Bug’s heart beating within her womb. It was a steady, loud beat that I can still hear today. I will never forget that sound. Just as a pregnancy becomes more real to a woman carrying her baby in her womb, the fact we were going to adopt and there really was a baby on the way to be our daughter, became very real to me standing in that examination room.

Tracy didn’t have to allow me to come with her that day, but she did. She was so gracious that day, recognizing that going with her was something that would be very special to me. She knew she had the power to give me that gift and she wanted to give it to me.

We had a very special conversation that day as we waited for her doctor to come in the room. We were sitting side by side in chairs talking. Tracy said something like, “I just wasn’t meant to be a mom. I don’t know how to be a mom.”, while pointing to her protruding belly full of baby. I said, “And I’ve always wanted to be a mom, but I can’t get pregnant, so we are a perfect match!”.

Our eyes connected in that moment and we just smiled, both content in the roles we were playing.

I know many reading this may not understand me saying this, but, I miss her. I miss Tracy so much. I wish I could have contact with her. I wish her life was stable enough that we could see her every so often. She is so special to me and forever will be.

She chose adoption for a baby she was pressured to abort and, as a result, I became a mother to a precious, beautiful baby girl that my heart had longed for and waited for for years.

Today, I just wish I could wrap my arms around her and tell her for the millionth time, thank you.

It’s been nearly two years since we’ve had any contact whatsoever. I have no clue when I will hear from her again, or if I will ever hear from her.

I carry her – and Melody, a woman I have never even met! – in my heart every day. I love them and I am so incredibly grateful that they chose adoption when they found themselves in a hard situation.

Mother’s Day is such an emotional day! Society sees it as a happy day when we celebrate mothers and – it is! However, that is not all it is. It is a day that brings up a torment of emotions for many, many women.

To all the women out there who just feel pain on this day or a mixture of pain and joy, I pray you feel loved today. You don’t need anyone telling you today that “the pain will decrease in time” or “God has a plan”. You just need a hug today. If I was with you, I’d just give you a hug. On my painful Mother’s Days when I longed for a child yet my arms were empty, a simple hug would suffice. I didn’t need a flowery speech or prayer…just a hug. I pray you receive some form of encouragement today, even if it comes in simply stepping outside and finding beauty in God’s nature.

My dear friend, Melissa, wrote a beautiful post about Mother’s Day today. Today is her very first Mother’s Day as Gideon’s mother, yet this day still holds some pain as she remembers Mother’s Days past and her baby that is not here with her on Earth. I think her post brings encouragement no matter what emotions Mother’s Day brings to you.

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I told you I would still post a few pictures of my girls. Smile

These girls… It is hard to imagine that just four years ago I had never looked in their eyes or held them in my arms. Four years later and they are my life.

This post wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging my Mama. I get overwhelmed when I try to explain how much my mom or my girls, for that matter, mean to me. There simply are no words. It’s all action. My mom could never tell me she loves me and I would know she loves me by her actions. When I think about how I should mother my children, I think of her. She was the perfect example although I know she’d say she messed up many times. I don’t remember those times though. All I remember is a mother who loved me for me and supported me through every single phase of my life, and still is.

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One Minute

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We have an opportunity to sign a petition that can potentially make a BIG difference in the lives of the millions of orphans around the world.

You might have heard of the documentary STUCK that has been traveling around the USA. The documentary STUCK is an initiative of the Both Ends Burning Campaign. The film was made to help people understand the issues and problems surrounding the international adoption process and hopefully put pressure on world leaders, particularly in the US, to change. Click here to learn more.

It literally takes ONE MINUTE of your time to sign this petition!!!

Signing the petition puts your name on a piece of paper to show our leaders, specifically Obama and Congress that Americans want and need change in the international adoption process. And more than that, these children NEED the families that want to bring them hope.They need to be able to get to them faster as many need medical help and are literally DYING while waiting.

There is a march in DC next Friday and this petition is being presented then. 1,000,000 signatures were wanted, but the Stuck and Both Ends Burning organizations are now just hoping and praying for at least 30,000 signatures.

Monday, May 13, Stuck is also urging people to take time to call their representatives to express concern about international adoption. Click here for more information on the walk and calling representatives.

Will you PLEASE take  one minute of your time, click HERE and sign the petition so STUCK and Both Ends Burning organizations can at least take 30,000 signatures to the walk on May 17th?? At the time I am writing this, there are 14,410 signatures.

If you don’t want to have emails from these organizations you can easily unsubscribe from the emails once you receive the first one.

We MUST be the voice for the orphans around the world who desperately need change, life and family.

Target

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I don’t think I will ever step foot in a Wal-Mart again!!

This morning the girls and I ran some errands together and we went to Target (instead of Wal-Mart) because we now have one that is less than 10 minutes away.

I am not much into shopping but this trip today was actually pleasant. Target was clean, the shelves were all organized, the other shoppers were pleasant and – best of all – I had TWO employees ask me if I needed help finding something!

None of that is ever the case when I go to Wal-Mart. When I go to Wal-Mart I leave that place feeling like I need a shower and a nap.

Next time we need to make a “Wal-Mart run” we will be going to Target instead! It is seriously a relief to know I have this Target so close to home and can avoid Wal-Mart!

Has anyone compared prices between the two? From what I can tell, it doesn’t seem like there is much price difference between the two! And if there is a difference and it isn’t that much, it almost seems worth it to avoid the horrors of going to Wal-Mart, especially with two small children in tow!

Transportation

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We didn’t do any of our April Learning Time activities due to our move, but we are back into the swing of things now and I have revised my plans for the rest of the (school) year which I post soon.

This was our Learning Time for the end of March! We read about the different modes of transportation by reading The Big Book of Transportation.

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We put numbers in order on the Number Train.

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Little Bug put together Transportation Puzzles. There was a car, truck, taxi, airplane, crane, train, helicopter and bus.

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Little Bug made Airplane Art.

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Little Bug spelled Transportation words.

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Little Bug made a Shapes Sail Boat.

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We did a Left/Right activity.

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We did a Transportation Sort chart. We talked about each type of vehicle, where it stops at, where it travels in or on and the sound it makes.

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We were doing the H page and Little Bug did not want to write the H on the dotted lines. She wanted to write the H all by herself so she flipped the page over and wrote an H!

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We finished up Transportation and then took an unintended month long break from Learning Time due to our move!

Changes at God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility

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This is something that has always been on the back of my mind ever since arriving on the other side of infertility.

How long will I keep blogging?

I’ve wrestled with this time and time again and now I finally know what needs to happen.

I guess it has always seemed a little eerie to me that my blog is public and anyone in the whole world can read it. And people all over the world do read it. That is why I have never shared my daughters’ real names on the blog and why I try to keep our exact location off the blog.

Much of this turmoil stems from the fact that I am by nature a quiet, reserved, private person. I still marvel at the fact that God used this blog as a platform for me to be able to proclaim to the world His faithfulness through my journey through infertility. The fact I was so incredibly open and vulnerable with essentially the world as I walked that very personal journey is nothing short of a miracle in and of itself!

I never dreamed God was going to use this blog in the ways He did.

There is no way I could count the number of emails I have received from readers who stumbled across my blog and found hope in the Lord from reading my posts because they are traveling the road of infertility after me. I’ve been asked some pretty deep questions about infertility, treatments and adoption via email and when I started the blog, I never imagined it would open doors for me to minister to people from all over the world, many of whom I will most likely never meet. But my story has such a strong and very evident thread of God’s faithfulness woven through it from the very first post all the way to the end and God continues to use my story to bring glory to His Name.

Since passing over to the other side of infertility and falling fully into my role as mom with infertility completely behind me my blog – for me – has become my “scrapbook” of our life as a family of four. I enjoy going back and reading posts that I wrote years ago (about infertility and about the girls growing up) and I am so, so, so grateful that I have my children’s lives documented via my blog from birth to present day! My dream is to one day make this blog into a book format and I will have instant scrapbooks of my girls!

But – and I hope you don’t take offense to this and understand my need for a little bit of privacy after blogging publically for over 5 years now – I am just not so sure I want to continue to put pictures of my girls and write stories about them where the entire world can read.

It occurred to me recently that Little Bug is getting older and one day I hope she will want to read this blog from beginning to end. I have always been very careful to write things that she wouldn’t mind being on the internet for anyone to read. But who am I to judge that? She is her own person and what I may think is “okay” she may not want shared.

So, what exactly does all this mean for God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility?

Honestly, my first thought was to completely close God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility down. I feel my girls are too exposed and I simply want to protect them and it no longer feels “right” to have their lives exposed on a public blog. At the same time, it didn’t feel “right” to completely obliterate my story – GOD’S STORY and the work He has done in my life – from the internet. It’s a beautiful, miraculous story full of hope and I truly did not want to remove God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility from cyberspace, but I just didn’t see a way to protect them without completely closing my blog down.

So I took my thoughts and concerns to my husband and he came up with a fabulous solution that will allow me to keep God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility up and running without exposing our daughters.

I will no longer be using God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility as my scrapbook which means pictures of my girls and posts about our daily lives are no longer going to be frequently posted. This is not to say I will never post another picture of Little Bug and Sweet Pea on the blog. I know many have read my blog from the beginning and have watched the girls grow up via my blog. I will post a picture of them every so often but their pictures and posts about our every day lives will no longer be heavy content on my blog.

The main content of my blog is going to go back to it’s roots: infertility and adoption. I will still write about those topics in this space. I also plan to finish up my Learning Time posts for this year because I can’t stand to start something and not finish. (As in, post October to March and then quit posting. So I will post what we do from here until I finish the plans I’ve made for this year…which are a month behind due to our move!) I have a wide variety of topics I write about on this blog and I do plan to keep writing but just eliminate the “scrapbook posts” and frequency of posts. I haven’t decided if I will continue to blog about parenting and my next adventure: homeschooling.

Whether I closed the blog or just started posting less frequently, I’ve known for some time now that there would be big changes coming to this blog in the near future.

I do 100% of my blogging while my children are either sleeping or doing their Independent Playtime in their bedrooms. And I’d venture to say that probably 75% of my blogging is done while my children are napping in the afternoons. My children are not going to nap forever! Little Bug is nearly four and I know she has started her nap wean. She still has a daily nap and she still usually sleeps for the 2-2.5 hours. But more and more she is laying down for nap and not sleeping. One day recently I asked her why she didn’t sleep for nap just to see what she would say and she said, “Because I wasn’t sleepy!”. So, yes, her napping days are numbered I know and while we will have a “rest time” during the day where she is required to lay in her bed quietly with books or quiet toys, I know my days of complete silence to be able to blog for a couple hours during naptime is coming to a close.

I also plan to homeschool and I look at that as a new responsibility in my role as mother that is going to take up A LOT of my time. Nap/rest time will soon become my planning time for school. I know homeschooling a preschooler/kindergartener won’t necessarily take up a lot of my time (or maybe it will?) but I know as we get further and further into homeschooling and the girls grow up more and I start schooling two children instead of doing just a Learning Time with Little Bug, I am most likely going to need to carve out a lot of time to be able to prepare our lessons. And I feel like now would be a good time to go ahead and get used to not blogging during this time.

I feel very good about these decisions that I have made. It is always good to evaluate things in our lives and really make sure they are serving their purpose well and, if not, do something about it. I am happy that, with the help of my husband, we’ve come up with a way to keep the story of the work God did in our lives out there for anyone to read but to also protect our girls from having their daily lives broadcast on a public blog. It will be interesting to see the ideas of where I want to take this blog play out in the coming months and years, but I think this new focus is going to work.

I don’t think I can ever “shut down” God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility. It holds some of my deepest most intimate thoughts concerning a journey God took me on that has changed my life forever. As long as God keep using our story to bring encouragement to others walking this path, today, God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility will be right here where it has always been.

I will never grow weary of writing about infertility and, especially, adoption. While the posts won’t be nearly as often as they once were (because I can’t think that deep every day!) when God spurs something within my heart to write about infertility and/or adoption, it will end up here in this place.

I will forever be grateful for the lifelong friends God brought me through blogging which is something else that came totally unexpectedly. I never imagined I would meet people on the internet and then one day consider them some of my closest friends – but it happened, multiple times!

And now, to all my faithful readers through the years – I know there are some of you out there that have read every single post I’ve ever written – I thank you for joining me in this journey, praying for me through my darkest days and rejoicing with me as we both watched God’s perfect plan unfold in my life.

Throughout this blog, there is a tapestry of God’s faithfulness woven through every post because He is faithful. His Word is FULL of promises He has made to those who believe in Him and call Him Savior and Lord. When we are weary because of the circumstances we find ourselves in, He is there – right there in the middle of it all. Nothing is happening that takes Him by surprise. The day I learned I’d never experience pregnancy did not take Him by surprise, at all. It was just His platform to do Something More in my life, something more than I ever could have imagined on that dark day. But that is our God. He takes the brokenhearted and turns their mourning into joy. He takes something as ugly as infertility and turns it into beauty. Why? Because that is Who God is. From the beginning of creation, His plan has been to always redeem His children and bring good from bad. He promises that He has plans that will prosper us and give us hope and a future. We can’t always see that right away, but if we hang in there long enough and sit back and let God do His work, following His ways in surrender and obedience, He WILL reveal His Plan. And that plan is going to be better than anything we can imagine or plan for ourselves. That is just who God is. He is faithful.

God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility will forever proclaim God’s faithfulness to anyone who happens upon this place!