Meeting with our Social Worker

Like I mentioned in my last blog we are still planning on adopting. God has put it on our heart and we believe that is what God has called us to do. However, now that we are pregnant, it is going to look a little different.

At first, we hoped that we would be able to just continue the process like it is right now. We had anticipated that by next year Christmas we would have a referral and be able to pick them up next spring/summer. We knew that the province wanted us to wait a year between big events (like pregnancy) to adjust to our new situation, so this would work out perfectly. By that time, our baby would be about a year already, and although this would be very crazy, we still can't wait to bring home our children that we have been waiting for, for so long.

Last week we had a meeting with our social worker for our yearly update on our file. At the meeting, we found out that we can't adopt the way we originally planned too. We were going to adopt siblings, one 12 months or younger and one up to 4 years old. We found out that, not only do they want us to wait a year, they want a year between this child and any that we adopt. They also want to keep the birth order, so this baby has to be the oldest child because it is coming into our family first. What this all means is that the earliest we will be able to adopt is when this baby is about a year and a half and if we still want siblings, then we will adopt twins or we will have to wait a couple years longer.

For now, we haven't had to make any decisions, but we will have to make some tough decisions soon. We have to decide whether we want to adopt one at a time now, just twins, or still siblings like we had originally planned. We will also have to decide if we are going to continue to try and get pregnant again, if we are able to. If that happens before the adoptions, then it pushes everything back again and if we try after, we don't know if it will ever happen again.

So, although this is a very exciting time for us, we don't know when we will be able to get our adopted children. We will just have to continue to trust God. He gave us this miracle at this time and He's the only one who knows what the future is going to look like.

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,"
declares the LORD.

"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8,9

Miracle

Well, it has been a long time since I have blogged, again. I just have so much I wanted to say and not sure how to put it all in, so I'm going to split it into two blogs or maybe 3.

The week before Thanksgiving, we found out that we were pregnant. Like I have mentioned in other blogs, we never thought we would ever be able to have biological children, so this was quite the surprise and our little miracle. We had no clue how far along we were because it had been over 2 months since my last period. I had been pretty regular for the 5 or 6 months before this, but because of the stress of moving and the changes in lifestyle, I figured that this had caused my irregularity. So when we found out, we could have been anywhere between 3-9 weeks along.

At our first doctors appointment, she wasn't able to find the heartbeat, but she said it could either be because we weren't far enough along or because my uterus was tilted backwards, which would make it harder to find. So she sent us for an ultrasound to find out how far along we were. We really didn't know what to expect at the ultrasound, but we figured we would at least leave with some information, like how far along we were. We were told nothing and we were scared that something was wrong. I tried to call my doctor to see if she had heard anything from the ultrasound technicians and she wasn't in the office because she was in the ER that day. She called me from there and told me the news. We were 7 1/2 weeks along and the baby was sitting too low, barely in the uterus, and if it didn't move up, we would most likely miscarry.

Well, after many tears, Kellin and I decided that we needed to tell people about it so that they could pray for us. We told our families and friends who had been praying for us for a long time and trusted God that everything would be okay. This was not an easy thing to do because we really didn't know what God's plan was for this. The day we found out, I opened my Bible to Isaiah and found the title "A Promise of the Lord's Protection" and I began to read Isaiah 54. After reading the first verse, I burst into tears and could hardly read further. It talks about a barren woman singing and shouting because you will have more children than others, make your house bigger to get ready. God is all-powerful so don't be afraid or disappointed and it ends with the Lord, my protector makes this promise. I just felt God's peace come over me and we just trusted him for the next two weeks while we waited for the next ultrasound.

Two days before our second ultrasound, I started bleeding, not a lot but we were nervous. My doctor told me to call her if I had any bleeding, so I called her on monday morning and they told me to come in for a needle because Kellin and I have opposite Rh factors. So we rushed to Steinbach and got the needle and the bleeding stopped almost right away. The next day we had our ultrasound and we were so nervous. Since last time we heard nothing, we didn't expect to find out much but we wanted to at least know that there was a heartbeat this time before we left. This time it was a very different experience. She told me how big our baby was measuring (1 inch) and what the heartbeat was (162 bpm) and Kellin was able to come in and she showed us our baby, where it had been sitting and why that was bad, and we got to see it's little heart beating. We left feeling so blessed and so excited that we started calling everyone who prayed for us and told them the good news.

We are now 15 weeks along and I am feeling good. I was blessed with no morning sickness, just very tired and that has been getting better since we started the 2nd trimester. It is still hard to believe that in 6 months we will be having a baby, when we thought we would never be able to, but we are very excited. Everyone has been asking us if we are still going to adopt, and the answer is yes, but I will save the update on that for the next blog, which will be coming soon.