Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Our Journey to Adoption

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First of all, thank you for taking the time to read this, whether you be a friend or family member, a birth mother, adoptive parent or just a casual pursuer.  It is our hope that through this post we can help spread the word about our decision to adopt and find the baby out there that is meant to be a part of our family.  We are so excited to begin this journey and even though we know there is the possibility of many ups and downs, we hope that in the end we will be blessed with what we have been so earnestly seeking, which is to grow our family.
It has been a journey to come to the decision to adopt.  Like many couples, we decided to “casually” try to become pregnant about four years ago.  After about a year of “just seeing what would happen” we got a little more serious about trying to become pregnant.  After two years of trying to conceive we began the process of seeing a fertility specialist, which lead us down a road that entailed, numerous tests, one surgery, multiple fertility treatments and many tears.  Each time we tried something new and it was unsuccessful it felt like having a precious baby of our own was becoming farther and farther out of reach. After a second failed attempt at in vitro fertilization, fertility treatments no longer felt like the right path to grow our family.  We have always been open to the possibility of adoption, but now it has become our reality and we couldn’t be more excited about it!  We truly feel as though the baby that finds its way into our home is meant to be with us and the love we will feel for this child will be no different had we conceived a baby with our own DNA.  Although we are still only in the beginning stages of the adoption process, people have already reached out to us about their beautiful adoption stories and it is my hope that we may one day join their ranks.
So, now for a little bit about Jake and I.  We have been married for almost six years and in that time we have lived in two different states and two countries!  We are both from Utah and moved to Buffalo, NY where Jake attended dental school.  After school Jake commissioned as a captain in the U.S Army, which brought us to Lawton, OK where Jake completed a one-year residency program at Ft. Sill.   During this time Jake got orders to work in the clinic at Grafenwohr, Germany and we couldn’t be more excited to be here!  Although this year has been possibly the hardest year of our lives due to the disappointments of failed fertility treatments, we know that we are so blessed to live out our dream of living in and traveling around Europe. One of our favorite things about travel is to experience a new culture and enjoy trying different things and foods.  In addition to traveling there are many things that we enjoy doing together.  We love the outdoors and any opportunity we have to be outside together.  We love to go hiking, camping, stand up paddle boarding, and snowshoeing.   We can’t wait to share these experiences with a little one.  We know that we will love whatever child we adopt unconditionally.  Our thoughts on parenting are that we wish to provide our child with every opportunity to progress and grow in this life in order to reach his or her full potential.
We are a U.S military family living overseas in Germany.  We plan to pursue a domestic adoption from the states, which would work just the same way as if we lived in the states, it just requires a bit more traveling on our part. :-).  Please pass this along to anyone that you think may be interested in learning about us further and please feel free to browse around our blog to get to know us a little better.  Thank you for reading.