Our Family

I know, I know....I am terrible at this!lol But I have new motivation to stay on top of this blog, which is ADOPTION! We are trying to adopt again and we just recently finished our home study and are waiting for approval! A friend last week told me about a local photographer in town, Abbey Khyl, who took our son Raife's birth announcement picures....anyway, she is trying to get more involved with adoption as a way to help her clients find their families! She is doing a little competition to find the best adoption stories which will be featured in a magazine in a few months! She is also taking pictures of everyone who enters and making pass along cards for them and putting everyones stories and pictures on her website! I am very excited about this, it’s such a wonderful idea that will provide great exposure for all who enter! So if you know of anyone adopting, please let them know!

I am not sure how great our blog is at showing or telling who we are as a family, I am not very good at this! So I thought I better tell everyone about our family and how we came to be.....

Brett and I were married just over 9 years ago.....crazy! We grew up together so we have known each other for a long time, Brett was my brothers best friend. I had a secret crush on Brett that started clear back when I was 12 years old, I actually told my Mom that if I could marry any of my brothers friends it would be Brett! We didn't start dating until after Brett's mission but it didn't get serious until after he got home from boot camp. Since we already knew all the good and bad about each other we were engaged soon after!

Our fertility trials began rather quickly. I was a beast on birth control so we decided a few months after we were married that we would leave things in God's hands. Almost a year went by when we began to worry but we couldn't stress too much about it because Brett's unit, The Triple Deuce, was activated to go to Iraq. Luckily for us, things in Baghdad fell apart quickly and they were not needed there but instead of coming home, they were sort of put on hold for almost 7 months and were stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. Brett and I kind of thought maybe we weren't able to have children up to that point because Heavenly Father knew it would be a trial for us to be apart, so we figured the timing was just off and that we would be able to conceive once he was home.

We tried unsuccessfully for about a year and then started seeing doctors. At that point we found out that Brett had a very low sperm count and that we needed to seek out a specialist. Things were put on hold AGAIN when Brett's unit was activated to go to Iraq, for real this time. Brett was worried about me living alone so he got me a puppy, Liberty, who I fell in love with. She became our baby!lol I think that must be a trend with couples who can't have children! We were separated for 18 months, and it was the hardest time of our lives. It was torture to be apart for so long but we were able to email, talk on the phone or chat online every few days. Its hard to believe we went through all that....we are so grateful for that time and feel we have been very blessed because of it. The number one thing we learned was to never take each other for granted. While Brett was gone I was at a nieces baptism when a little boy, who was adopted, stood with his father and I felt the Spirit stronger then I have ever felt. It was like a really warm blanket was wrapped around me and I knew right then that we would have a child come to our family through adoption. I just sat there crying, it was such a shock because I had not even been thinking of our fertility problems, my new worry had obviously been the safety of my husband. I told Brett about it on the phone the next time we spoke and he was very surprised, we hadn't really discussed adoption, we had just assumed that everything would work out and we would get pregnant when he got home. So, we decided to save as much money as we could while he was gone so that we would be in a position to adopt some day.

A few months after Brett was released from active duty we consulted a specialist who delivered some devastating news. He was quite shocked by our fertility problem. Apparently Brett's sperm count etc was one of the lowest cases he had seen and he gave us a below 1% chance of ever getting pregnant on our own. He said the good news was that we did have that small chance. We both kind of laughed (probably to keep from crying) because it didn't sound like good news to us. He said he could up our chances a little with invitro but not much. But we decided not to go that route. We knew we were supposed to adopt and we loved the idea of creating a home for a child that needed it. That isn't to say that we weren't very sad by the news our specialist gave us, because we were. And every time someone announced a pregnancy we were ashamed at the sadness and jealousy we felt. We gave ourselves a new puppy, Roxy, as a feel better present and hoped that she would help Liberty adjust to a possible baby around the house!

We got in touch with LDS Family Services soon after and began all the paper work. We finished everything very quickly and soon found ourselves checking our online profile and email every day. We became a little obsessed but you can see how it would be hard not to! The next 5 months ended up being the hardest we had experienced in our marriage; I know that may sound strange since we had just over came an 18 month separation where we feared we may be separated even longer by death. I guess its just that every trial you face seems awful when you are in the middle of it but once you make it threw you view it as a blessing. Anyway, we were chosen and un-chosen by 5 Birth Mothers over those 5 months. Each time we were chosen we were so excited and wanted to share our joy with all those we loved which ended up a mistake. When things fell through for one reason or another we were crushed, we imagined it to be like actually losing a child.

We became very discouraged and decided we couldn’t handle any more bad news so we were going to ask to be removed from the website and instead spend our money on a trip to Brazil, where Brett served his mission. We had organized all the details of our trip and were set to call our travel agent the next day but we hadn’t removed ourselves from the website yet. We received an email that night from a Birth Mother. It was very short, she just wanted to know how we felt about open adoption and what it would mean to us and she let us know that she was also talking to other families. I am embarrassed to say that we didn’t even want to respond; we were scared of being hurt again. But thankfully we responded and Brett said he felt that we should not call the travel agent, that he had a good feeling about this. I was a little frustrated because I was sure the same thing would happen again and I knew I couldn’t handle one more let down; but I trusted Brett and told myself to relax. This time we didn’t tell anybody, we kept it a secret.

We emailed back and forth for 3 days and on Brett’s birthday, she asked us to be her baby’s parents! It happened so fast but it also felt so different. We found out that she had been looking at our profile for 2 months and had been praying the whole time. She stayed up late one night looking at profiles and fell asleep, I guess the computer froze and when she woke up the next morning it was our picture she saw and she just started crying and knew we were the ones. We were shocked when she told us she was due in a month and we asked her if she wanted to meet us before the birth, she was very excited by that so we decided we would drive to Colorado in two weeks.

In the mean time we emailed back and forth everyday, sometimes more then once. We gave her our blog address and she found out that we enjoyed the same tv shows and books. Now this is embarrassing, but to this day I credit The Twilight Saga books for the relationship I have with my son’s Birth Mother. When she saw that I had read them and was a big fan she was so excited, they were fairly new then, and they became the topic of our emails! We were totally embarrassing…..Brett would laugh hysterically when he read our emails because we were so crazy about Edward!lol

When we met her 2 weeks later in Colorado all our worries flew out the window, we knew without a doubt that she was carrying our son; she later told us she felt the same way, like we were all long lost friends. We took her and her sister with us baby clothes shopping, to dinner and then went to a Nugget’s game. We had so much fun with them it wasn’t awkward at all. We told her the names we liked and she told us hers, it was very peaceful. We told our families we had gone to Salt Lake to see some friends, it was so hard not to tell anyone what we had really been doing.

In the weeks before she gave birth our relationship flourished. It truly felt like we had always known each other. We asked her if she would be ok with us naming the baby Raife and if she would give him his middle name. She was very touched and happy to be a part of it. About a week before she was due we decided to tell our immediate family and they were all very happy but worried things wouldn’t work out, we assured them things were different this time. We went shopping for necessities that week and got the car packed.

Raife’s Birth Mother, or as we like to say “Tummy Mommy”, called me at work on February 15th around 4pm and said she had been in labor all afternoon but was just now headed to the hospital. I called Brett and told him to meet me at the house! We had asked my Mom to come with us so I went and picked her up and we were off within the hour. It was a 10 hour trip with all the bad weather but we made it to the hotel before she gave birth and she texted us to get some sleep and that she would let us know when he was here! We slept off and on and finally received a text around 9:15 am that he was born at 9:09 am and weighed 8 lbs 1 oz and was 19 & ¾ long.

As we were headed to the hospital we started worrying about weather or not he would feel like ours, but it was love at first sight. It felt no different then if we had created him ourselves. She introduced us to everyone as Raife’s parents which was wonderful to hear! The Birth Father flew in a few hours later and we got to meet him as well, he was kind of our one worry with the whole situation; we didn’t know if he would refuse to sign etc. but when we met him we knew all was well.

This is turning into to quite the novel so I am going to skip over things and wrap it up! Three days later we met at her parents house to meet with the case worker and sign the paper work. We were very excited and happy until we go there, it was strange but we hadn’t really thought about the other end. Having to see her holding him, going through the paper work was so very hard. We all of a sudden had feelings of guilt and sadness. We loved this young Mother, and didn’t want to see her in pain; I found myself thinking “keep him” because I couldn’t handle the mere thought of giving my child to another as she was about to do. Her faith was far stronger then mine. She was amazing, before we left she gave us a frozen supply of her breast milk she had been pumping…..I dare anyone to question a Birth Mother’s love for her child in my presence because I have witnessed no greater love then that of my son’s Birth Mother. It makes me think of our Heavenly Father sending His Son to earthly parents to be crucified, its that same love.

We stayed in Colorado an hour away with Brett’s brother for another 10 days before getting clearance to cross state borders and at that time we met her to say good bye and she sent us home with a months supply of breast milk. She told us that she was doing surprising well, that she was getting through this because she knew Raife Camden was where he was supposed to be.

We still see her and the Birth Father every few months and talk on the phone and send emails all the time. They have become a part of our family; we love them so much. They have really appreciated contact but never acted like they were Raife’s parents, it’s mostly like they want to see us and we are all very good friends! This may be weird to some but Raife’s “Tummy Mommy” has become one of my best friends, she is amazing and I love her so much. We truly would be lost with out them in our lives.

We know now why all those other Birth Mothers fell through, because Heavenly Father had Raife with him and knew he was supposed to be a part of our family. We are so blessed and are very excited to see what’s in store for our family next through Heavenly Father and adoption!

So, I have been searching for a pool that I can do laps in since August! I think its really weird that Fresno has no public pools....then again, every other house on our street has a pool so maybe thats why! Anyway, I finally broke down and got a gym membership....HEAVEN! I joined GB3 and it is by far the most amazing facility I have ever seen! You could park Cedar City's Golds Gym in their Free Weights section or their pool area, it is crazy. It has a 25 yard pool with a hot tub, steam room and sauna. The dressing room is huge with a ton of personal showers that are way nice! It has a spin class room with like 100 bikes, a separate room for yoga and all the classes etc. A huge area for all the treadmills, elipticals etc, a section for the weight lifting machines and it has a childrens daycare area that has a little play house village and a big old play place like at mcdonalds! Seriously, I feel so spoiled and my membership is only 29 bucks a month! I love it!

So, I am running, swimming, and cycling so I can start doing triathlons again and I am also training for a 1/2 marathon that I am doing with a friend in September at Disney Land! I am so excited! I forgot how happy swimming makes me!