“我总是设想自己是一个妈妈和lots of little kids. Growing up, I was the kid carrying around not one but three baby dolls. Fast forward to 2017, I got engaged to my high school sweetheart, Hudson, on our study abroad in Thailand. I couldn’t wait to say ‘I do,’ move into our first apartment, finish college, and start our family. Six months later, on a chilly November morning, we became husband and wife. It was the start of a new, beautiful, chapter of our lives together!
I was eager to start trying to grow our family but we agreed we would wait until we got closer to graduation. In the meantime, we moved apartments, Hudson worked full time and went to school full time, we traveled to new places, I started my photography business while going to school, and we made so many incredible memories in those first two years. Right before our two year anniversary, I stopped birth control and at the first of the year, we started tracking my cycle and actively trying to grow our family.
那时我们天真…我记得想我们had timed it perfectly for the baby to be born during my offseason for photography. I saw our future so clearly. Hudson massaging my swollen pregnant feet on the couch while we talked baby names or beaming down at our baby in the hospital room. We bought our first home with two extra rooms and I temporarily set up my office in what would be the baby’s nursery and we waited. And waited. And waited. Each month that passed, I could feel the anxiety in my heart like a ton of bricks just weighing on me. That picture of our lives I had once envisioned so clearly became harder and harder to see. Deep down, I knew things weren’t right. We had to wait a full year before we could see any kind of infertility specialist.
I remember our first appointment on December 5th so clearly. I was terrified and excited to hopefully get some answers. We did so many tests and met with our specialist and she laid it all out for us. She told us we had about an 8% chance of conceiving on our own. Everything on Hudson’s side checked out great and mine did too, which meant we had unexplained infertility. There was a chance my eggs were bad or I had endometriosis but without more invasive testing, there is no way to know. She recommended we do three IUI’s to start with. Each one gave us about an 18% chance. Then we would move on to IVF. Two weeks later, we started our first one. The infertility drugs were brutal. We only got one mature egg when we should have gotten two or three but I told myself it was worth it for a baby and after all, we only needed one egg. A few weeks later, we got the news it didn’t work. We went straight into our next round with a more potent drug regimen and again, we got one egg. A few weeks later, we were told we weren’t pregnant.
因为我们没有得到鸡蛋计数，所以他们再次与我们会面，回到绘图板上。我们最好的镜头是IVF，这将使我们有60％的受孕机会。我坐在那里，又一次愿意让我的身心穿过地狱。我丈夫非常明智，告诉我我们应该等待。他可以看到治疗对我的行为以及我有多低。他知道，如果我们经历了所有这些，没有孩子走开，我会被摧毁。我同意了，尽管很难听到它，但一旦我们稍微康复了一点，我们就会在几个月内开始我们的IVF周期。我的身体花了大约一个月的时间来调节荷尔蒙药物，一旦我这样做，我就可以清楚地看到。我愿意牺牲一切，我的身心，生一个孩子。关于这只是我不坐的事情。 I felt like God wouldn’t want me to do that to myself. He would want me to figure out how to find peace and joy in my life, with or without a child. I decided to put in the work and see a therapist and come to terms with our childless life.
一年半以来，我第一次没有考虑24/7的孩子。我的生活并没有围绕它旋转。我每天都发现了快乐。在我的工作中。在我丈夫里。在我们家里……包括我曾经认为的房间，这是一个托儿所。和我们的小狗一起散步。我永远不会忘记我和我的小狗和丈夫开车开车的那一天，这打了我……我很高兴。真正快乐。与我们的生活一样。 If it never changed, if I never had a baby, I would still find joy and meaning in my life.
A few weeks later, Hudson and I both had the topic of adoption brought up in separate settings. I brought it up over dinner and was surprised it was already on his mind. We entertained the thought of adopting and instantly the pieces began clicking in my mind. This is what we needed to do. I knew no matter what path we pursued, adoption or IVF, it would be hard. But at least with adoption, I would have a clear mental state untainted by fertility drugs. That was everything to me. The more we thought about it, the happier we became and the clearer we could picture it. Hudson was a little more hesitant and one night, we asked his dad if he could give Hudson a blessing to help us know what choice we could make. It was a special experience as he prayed over him and told us God was preparing a child for us. We just had to make the choice. We knew right then and there, we needed to adopt.
We found an agency we liked and interviewed with them. They thought we would be a perfect fit and said we could get started with the process. We started our home study and we decided on June 10, we would make a social media post announcing to our friends and family we were adopting through the agency. I had the picture and caption ready to go and that morning, I just couldn’t hit the POST button. I had the thought maybe we should try to find our own expectant mom through word of mouth and social media. I didn’t think it would work but I thought we could do it for a month while we were finishing our home study. Worst case, it would give us another month to save. I called Hudson and he agreed it couldn’t hurt so we went for it.
I posted it at 5:30 p.m. and that night on Facebook alone, it got over 500 shares. The next morning, I woke up to a message in my inbox from an acquaintance. She said she knew of someone that was pregnant, due in August, and wanted to place her baby for adoption. She connected us and two days after we first spoke, they chose us to be Elsie’s parents. It was indescribable. Everything seemingly fit into place. Everything felt right.
We had to wait a month and a half and each day that went passed the anticipation grew and grew. I loved our weekly check-ins and getting to know Elsie’s birth parents and how she was doing! Elsie’s birth was one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve had in my entire life. No amount of thinking, worrying or planning could have prepared us for it. It was beyond beautiful and so unique and special to us. Thursday, August 6, we got a text from Elsie’s birth mama saying she was experiencing back pain and went into the doctors but she wasn’t very dilated and the contractions were consistently 10 minutes apart. They sent her home and told her when they were five minutes apart to come back! I was so anxious and was hoping maybe she would come before her Saturday induction.
However, that night before bed when I checked in, she told me they had slowed way down to one an hour. I told Hudson and we went to bed thinking it would be a few days. Friday morning, I slept in and figured I should finish working on the hospital bag. As soon as I opened, it my phone rang and it was Elsie’s birth mom! My voice was so shaky and we were both laughing and crying as she told me the contractions had gotten way worse so they went in that morning and she was dilated to an EIGHT! I was so shocked! She told us to head in so I called Hudson and he raced home. I threw our hospital bags together and grabbed her car seat and diaper bag, and we got in the car to make our way there.
Once we got there, I am not going to lie, I was so nervous. I didn’t know what to expect with adoption and was worried the staff wouldn’t know either. From the moment we walked in, I felt nothing but love. Everyone was so kind and helpful and made us feel right at home! We got checked into our room on the recovery floor and spoke with the director. She was incredible and told us Elsie’s birth parents were doing good and they might want me in the room. I started bawling. We had thought it wouldn’t be an option and was fully prepared to anxiously wait in our room until we got an update. I was beyond grateful I would be able to witness that moment our sweet girl came into the world. After a while, they came in and told me she was ready to push. I walked into the room and her birth parents were incredible. The love I felt in that room brought me to tears multiple times as I watched them comfort each other, cheer each other on, and her birth mom push through the tears and pain as Elsie Mae made her entrance into the world.
言语无法描述她在这里的第一瞬间发生了什么。她的亲生父母想和她在一起，我决定最好在走廊里等待。我知道时间对他们来说是如此特别，我不想干预。我给了他们一个拥抱，然后走进了走廊。当我在走廊上等待时，无论接下来的几分钟或几个小时内发生了什么，我都会祈祷，上帝将帮助每个人找到和平与安慰。我不确定我是否会再次见到Elsie Mae，如果我说实话，我只是祈祷，无论如何，我们都会好起来的。
我完成后，门打开了，他们将埃尔西（Elsie）带到走廊，并进入了我的手臂。那一刻，我崩溃了1000件。我知道她是我们的！我把自己拉在一起，将她带动了称重和测量。她身高7磅，长19英寸！我把她带到我们的房间前往哈德逊，后者一直在等待。当他看到她时，他融化了，我们在一起拥抱，哭泣和爱着她。这是神奇的！我们为皮肤做了皮肤，拥抱，并学习了所有父母的父母。她像冠军一样拿起瓶子，喜欢她的配方，这对我来说是一个巨大的解脱。
我们与Elsie Mae的第一个晚上是神奇的！我很确定我什至没有睡觉，我整夜都盯着她！第二天，我们能够通过颜色进行所有测试后回家。我们绝对崇拜她，我永远感激不尽，我放开了自己对母性的愿景，拥抱了我有经历的荣誉的完全不完美的现实。她将永远成为我们最大的快乐和祝福。她带来的甜美精神使我的日子如此灿烂。我非常感谢我们的三个人的陪伴！”
This story was submitted tobeplay网络一直不畅by Kylee Sauer from Boise, Idaho. You can follow their journey onInstagram. Do you have a similar experience? We’d like to hear your important journey. Submit your own storyhere.Be sure tosubscribeto our free email newsletter for our best stories, andYouTubefor our best videos.
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