More Details

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to update the blog with a few more details of what happened.

On May 20th... Alicia went into labor and did not call the adoption agency as planned. On the 21st... the agency found out that she had given birth through the birthfather's family and so the social worker went to go visit her. Kelly, the social worker, called us Wednesday night as she was leaving the hospital. We didn't know anything so we assumed the call was to say that Alicia had gone into labor. We were walking Tucker so we headed back to the car with anticipation. The phone call did not go as expected as Kelly told us our daughter had already been born, that Alicia had wavered on her decision to place the baby up for adoption, but that as of that evening she was still planning on signing the papers. She had decided that seeing us with the baby would be too hard so asked us not to come until she had been released from the hospital. Then, we could come and take the baby home. She had not named the baby, was not breastfeeding the baby, and even still referring to it as "ours." Kelly said all of those were good signs. The plan was for Kelly to head out there in the morning with the papers and a car seat so whichever decision she made Bethany would support it.

We were caught off guard by this news, but we made the decision to stay positive. We were disappointed that we missed our daughter's birth, but more than anything else, we just wanted to bring her home. We spent Wednesday night putting the finishing touches on our home to prepare ourselves for our daughter's arrival. Then spent a long time in prayer for our daughter, Alicia, and ourselves. We went to bed excepting to pick up our daughter at 2pm from the hospital.

Thursday morning Kelly called early in the morning to tell us that things "weren't looking good" -- what did that mean? She said that Alicia was not taking her phone calls and that usually meant the birthmother had changed her mind about the adoption. That was it. We hung up and couldn't believe what we heard. We prayed and prayed that the outcome out change. We waiting and waited by the phone. Nothing. Finally, around 3pm -- after the time we were to pick up our daughter... we called Kelly back asking if she had heard anything else. She said, "yes, Alicia left the hospital with the baby." At that point it was final that the adoption wasn't going to happen. Gut wrenching doesn't even describe what we felt. We were in the depths of grief. We had lost our daughter.

As we started sharing the news... we were struck by how unsympathetic some people seemed. Of course not everyone... but there were more people who didn't seemed phased by our loss. We had a lot of friends who meant well when they said, "but you're pregnant" "guess it wasn't meant to be" -- and while those comments hurt (because our biological baby in NO WAY replaces the daughter we just lost) we know they were said by people who were trying to find that silver lining. But there have been others who have simply disregarded that we're even grieving... expecting us just to be okay that it didn't work out because this was an adoption and not a biological child. That has been crushing. We can't express how more more real and painful this loss has been than when we lost Elijah. One of our best friends, Janet, said it perfectly when she said,
"i just can't imagine
how you guys are feeling. to say that the loss of
this little girl is not as "significant" as a
biological child is of course absolutely insane, so i
pray that those words will not penetrate your heart.
your anticipation of her arrival was intentional, with
so much heart and emotion poured in--no less then that
of waiting for a biological child...we watched friends
of ours adopt their son 8 months ago, and there was no
question that their joy and love was any less then if
he had been their biological child. so the reverse is
true--the pain felt at the loss of the child is the
same."

Her words were so perfect in describing how we feel and how real this loss it. Just wanted to share it with you all! We'll post again soon with how we're doing.

Heartbreaking News....

We are very sad to say that our adoption didn't turn out as planned. At the last minute the birthmother decided to keep the baby and not allow us to parent the baby. We found out for sure yesterday (the 22nd), but had an idea on Wednesday night. We hope to type the whole story out soon, but right now we don't have that much emotional enegry. Please be praying for us and we are heartbroken. We lost our 2nd child... loosing Elijah, in many ways, was easier than this has been. We went to bed Wednesday night thinking we would bring our daughter home to the house/nursery we prepared for her. Instead, we came back to life without children. While this baby was not a biological baby -- it did grow in our hearts over the past several months. We haven't even pictured our biological baby without it's older sister. We had named her and everything...

We can't even describe the pain we are in. To say we're heartbroken is a start, but there is so much more. We just selfishly ask for your prayers... we need them all!

Thanks...
J&D

Update

No baby yet!!!! As we are anxiously awaiting the birth of our first child I thought I would take this moment to just update everyone on the adoption process, where we are, and how the pregnancy is going.

The adoption process is going well. We met with Alicia again last week as well as the birthfather and his family. We feel so blessed to be matched with them! I can't express how much we love Alicia (and Leanord). The doctor still thinks that Alicia will deliver at any moment so we've been sure never to be too far away from the phones. As soon as she goes into labor we will get the call and join her at the hospital. I (darby) get to be in the delivery room with her as she gives birth. I am also going to be the first one to hold the baby per the request of Alicia. Jason and I will get our own hospital room for the duration of the baby's stay -- which is typically 48 hours. Alicia can't sign the adoption papers until 24-48 hours after birth so I know those will be stressful hours for us as we wait for the adoption to become official. Please be praying for us to be a light and comfort in the hospital as well as just really flexible.

We're pretty ready! The nursery is complete except for our glider which we have ordered - so hopefully it will be here soon. We have the pack-n-play set up downstairs and all of our needs for feeding, changing, and bathing the baby are complete! At this point I THINK we have everything, but am sure that we might realize a lot more "needs" once we actually bring the baby home. But, we're excited and trying to keep ourselves busy until the call comes.

As far as the pregnancy, well that is going well too! We're now 16 weeks and boy is my belly getting BIG! :) My jeans no longer fit me - but my dress, workout, and pajama pants are getting me through. For one of my Mother's Day gifts I did get a pair of maternity pants too! My shirts still fit fine.

I feel like my belly is HUGE, but Jason claims I don't even look pregnant yet. I disagree. :) However, no other part of my body has gained any weight yet. Just the tummy. Which is funny because in just the 10 weeks that I was pregnant with Elijah I gained 10 pounds (mainly in my legs and rear). But this time I haven't even gained 10 pounds yet and it is only in the belly.

We've been doing an ultrasound a week and all is looking good. The baby is moving around quite a bit and it is funny now that it has arms and legs I can see it sucking its thumb and kicking me almost constantly. I'm no longer sick to my stomach unless I don't eat often enough but I'm still pretty tired. There was one night last week where I slept for 15 hours! I'm trying not to feel guilty about that though because soon I won't be getting anything close to that again.

Well, Jason just finished grilling out our lunch so I better sign off so we can eat. It has been nice to just spend a lot of fun quality time together this month before the baby comes. Hopefully, the next post will include a new photo of our first baby!

Thanks for all your love and support!

Babymoon!

We spent the last part of April down in South Padre Island!! We called this trip our "babymoon" as it is our last Lovecation before the kiddos come! It was such a wonderful trip... the weather was awesome and the beach was incredible. Here are photos from us on the beach! We spent just about everyday on the beach until dinner time, went out for dinner and ice cream, watched the sunrises/sunsets, and traveled into Mexico one day. Overall it was just a wonderful time of enjoying each other's company.

To view all of our photos from this trip and more please visit our webalbums at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/darbyandjason

To see photos from Baby Shower #1 you can visit:
www.lightinghisworld.com/babydugger

Officially Sharing the News!!

Okay, so this post will come to no surprise to 98% of you who we have been lucky enough to see over the past month or so. But for the few that live a bit farther I apologize for updating this blog so late. I don't know where April went (more about that in my next post) and this has been on my "to do" list daily the entire month!

Jason and I are extremely happy and excited for the adoption of first child here in just a matter of days! We are also pleased to announce that we are also pregnant and due in October!

Here's the story:

On March 2nd, I asked Jason to bring home a pregnancy test. He asked, "why?" And I said, "I don't know... I just feel like we should take one. I know it is going to be negative, I just want to take one." He said okay. The reason he asked why is because we were no longer trying for a biological baby. After our miscarriage we felt strongly that God was calling us to adopt and I didn't want the emotions of adoption/pregnancy/miscarriage again. So we decided to prevent pregnancy for the first time in years!

That night Jason brings home a test and I go into our downstairs bathroom to take it while he's staying the the kitchen. As soon as I take it I see that it is positive!!! I didn't even wait 30 seconds. I was shocked and just yelled, "Uh, come here!" And Jason (who had actually forgotten that I had gone in the bathroom to take the test came to the bathroom excepting me to be out of toilet paper or something like that) walked in and I just pointed and said, "Is that positive?" We both looked like someone had knocked the wind out of us and he just shook his head yes.

We were quiet for some time. Then my first words were, "If we loose this baby... you might as well lock me up in a crazy ward." Jason didn't say much for a while and then he said, "I don't understand. This is so different from the first time we found out we were pregnant." I agreed. While we were happy... at the same time we were not only shocked (we asked how this happened several times) but also fearful. Loosing Elijah was such a trying time for us in every way. I was not ready to do that again.

The rest of the evening was spent just asking lots and lots of questions back and forth and then praying quite a bit. The next day we went down to the hospital and Jason did an ultrasound on me and yep, there was a little baby there. However, we were still early... 4.5 weeks or so. We then started talking about what we should do about the adoption. Bethany Christian Services do not allow you to adopt a baby if you are pregnant or have had a baby in the past year. We were to tell them if we became pregnant during the adoption process and our names would be taken off of the waiting list. We wrestled with "when" to tell them in case we lost this baby too. We were both a little discouraged because we wondered if we had misunderstood the Lord. Why did we feel so led towards adoption if that wasn't His will?

Those questions were quickly answered because the next day we got a call from Bethany saying that a birthmother had picked us! We were shocked! We told them that we were excited and wanted to continue with this adoption (after all we had been praying that only one birthmother would be interested in us) but that we had just found out that we were pregnant again. And with that, we were told we could not longer pursue the adoption. We were heartbroken and Jason really wanted to fight for this baby. So, we wrote a letter to three staff people at Bethany that we had been working with throughout this process -- and we shared our hearts. Here is an excerpt from our letter:

We cannot fully express just how excited.....and confused we are about the past few days. We were overjoyed last night to receive the call from Kelly. For many months we've been praying every day that a birthmother would choose us and that we'd finally get a chance to "match." Receiving that phone call last night was truly an answer to prayer.
However, most of you probably know by now that we are once again pregnant with a biological baby. We literally found out a few days ago when taking a home pregnancy test and Darby just went to the Doctor's office this morning for blood tests to confirm it. Please understand that we are very early in our pregnancy - approximately 4-5 weeks at most. If you remember correctly, you'll know that this is not our first time to become pregnant. We lost our last baby at about 10 weeks and it was a very difficult time for us. Given our past experiences we feel that there is no guarantee that we will carry this pregnancy to full term, but are obviously now praying for God to protect and nurture our biological baby in the womb.
We do not profess to know exactly what God's will is for us in this situation, but please know that we are still VERY eager to bring an adopted baby into our family and we do not feel that HE has made any mistakes in allowing Alicia to pick us at this time. We believe that we are prepared and capable of raising two infants at the same time in our home if that's what God has in store for us.
We are not pretending that it would be easy, though. After attending the classes on attachment & trans-racial parenting, and after reading so many books on adoption, we understand very well that our adopted baby will require and deserve more from us than our biological baby might need. We are dedicated to that purpose and we sincerely promise both Alicia and everyone at Bethany that we are suited to care for both an adopted baby and a biological baby in our home.
Most importantly, though, we wanted to be honest and forthcoming with all the details of our situation right now. We are trying very hard to walk by faith in this moment of uncertainty, but we are also very scared that we might have another miscarriage AND lose our chance to be matched with Alicia. In essence, it would be like two more miscarriages for us.

We asked for the agency to allow the birthmother to choose if she would still like to place her baby with us even though we are pregnant. They had a meeting (that lasted several hours) and then they came to the conclusion that they would allow the adoption to take place if the birthmother still wanted to press forward. We were thrilled, but we had to read several articles on what is called "artificial twinning" and write our responses for how we plan to handle the challenges of raising two biologically unrelated children less than 9 months apart. Our response was three pages long (single spaced) and after we gave that to the agency -- they passed it along to the birthmother who read the articles and our responses. After reading all of that she said she still wanted to place her baby with us!

We got the call on March 15th - a little over two weeks after our adventure began. This call was to inform us that Alicia, the birthmother, still wanted us to adopt her baby. The social worker on the phone said, "All I can say is that God really must want this baby in your house because this just doesn't happen." We were thrilled and really trusted that this is the baby the Lord wanted all along to start our family.

It was then that we started sharing the news of the adoption, but continued to keep the pregnancy a secrete for another few weeks. We are currently 15 weeks pregnant and all seems to be going well. We continue to be a little bit scared of loosing this baby, but trying to have faith. It is also nice to have our first baby (due this month) to take our minds off the worry. :)

We're not sure what God wants for our family, but we're excited for the prospect of these two children joining our family!