100c - {Decision to adopt}

Alright, so this one may be a long one...you've been warned.

When I was little I never dreamt about what I would be when I grew up or what my wedding would be like. I dreamt only of being a mom. I wanted lots of babies, and I wanted to stay home and take care of them. I never even figured a husband into the equation, it was all about the babies.

Fast forward and I eventually figure out a vocation might be a good idea. Though I still had babies in the forefront of my mind. So I decided on teaching. That why I could be home with the babies until they went to school, and then once they did I would have the same schedule.
Somewhere in there I met Husband. After our first date he went home and told his mom he was going to marry me. He told me the next day. I thought he was crazy...turns out he was right. By about our second week together we had our children's names picked out. Thankfully he wanted a big family as much as I did.

Fast forward again and we're getting married. We want a honeymoon baby. We did not get one. Nor did we get a baby in the following 8 years. During that time I had several doctors tell me my girl parts are broken. I apparently only have one ovary and have PCOS to boot. Good times. So the end result of the broken bits, is that without some pretty serious medical intervention there would be no baby for me. Talk about a kick to said broken bits.

As we began discussing our options, adoption came up over and over again. It was something we had discussed even before we knew about the issues because my brother's children are adopted. Watching his family grow when it might not have otherwise, was beautiful.

We looked internationally and found that we either didn't meet the country's requirements or couldn't come up with the country fees. We looked at agencies to help us, but again came to money issues. We then turned to the foster care system. People kept telling us it was the back door to adoption. It wasn't.

After that we went to hospitals, attorneys, friends, friends of friends. You name it, we did it. And when all of that didn't work, we gave up. For a really long time we didn't talk about babies. I thought about it constantly and more often than I'd like to admit, cried myself dry over it. But mostly we worked really hard at being okay with never having kids, with it just being the two of us. Wow...I just got all teary-eyed thinking about that again.

Then out of the blue, Husband goes into a restaurant to pick up some dinner and runs into an acquaintance, we'll call him D. He happens to comment that D appears stressed. D says I am, my girlfriend is pregnant (Husband is the first and only person he tells about the pregnancy). D then jokingly says, "You want a baby?" Husband says, "Yes actually, we do." At this point we had been involved in the adoption scene for about 3 years.

So Husband comes home, tells me this crazy story and says I'm sure we'll never hear from them about it again. We were wrong. We got a text just after midnight that night saying D had talked to his girlfriend and they wanted to talk to us about adoption. They came over a few days later and we talked for hours. The following Monday we were at the attorney. Then 7 weeks to the day that Husband ran into D, our sweet Pie was born. I was in the delivery room, I cut the cord.

I knew I would love an adopted child as if he or she were my own, but I had no idea what the depth of that love would be like. Pie has changed my life, changed me. I don't take a breath that isn't somehow lacking if it's not full of her scent. I don't have a thought that doesn't somehow circle back to her. She is amazing and complicated and the greatest person I've ever met. I am honored to be her mom.

PS - If you want to read the details of Husband and I meeting go here. If you want to read Pie's detailed birth story go here for part 1 and here for part 2.