New Blog

In the name of privacy, I am starting a new blog and keeping it completely separate from our names. I didn't like having to make everything private... I know our story helped people and I want to continue to tell our story and help people through infertility and adoption and everything that goes with it.

If you would like to know the new blog address, email me at: infertilemom@gmail.com

Thanks so much!

Home.

Christopher is HOME! Stella's Daddy is back in the states for good for a little while and we are a family again!

We've been counting down to November 16th for a couple of months now, and time seemed to drag on, but finally, the day came and we got to bring him home!

His flight didn't get in until almost 10pm after a couple of delays. I was on pins and needles all evening waiting for the plane to arrive. I got Stella all dressed up and ready to go and then Liz, Tim, the babies, and I headed to the Norfolk airport. We waited and waited and waited and finally, his plane arrived.

I saw him walking up the hall and out into the main part of the airport and I got so anxious! I felt like everything was moving in slow motion... and then finally, he was there in front of us! Stella saw him and grinned the biggest grin I've ever seen... I burst into tears! She knew who he was (which means Skype is an AMAZING thing)!!!! She was SO excited and happy and went right to him!

He hugged us both first and then I handed her to him and I dont think he let go of her the rest of the night. She did fantastic with him... she ate a bottle for him and then fell asleep in his arms.

I cant describe how it feels to actually be all together again. We've been waiting on this for forever. For five years we've waited to be a family of three and here we are, finally! It is amazing to see Stella and Christopher together. She loves him and knows him and its like no time has passed at all.

A whole slew of things...

So yeah, its been a while, a long while, since my last blog. What can I say, being a Mom is a full time, never ending job! One that I love, but one that makes the days fly by before I get a chance to sit in front of the computer and type out something witty and cute for the blog.

A couple of weeks ago Stella and I hopped in the car and headed up to Virginia for our very first solo road trip! Our friends Liz and Tim (and their new baby Carley) were already there from England settling in to their new duty station, so we decided to go up there and introduce the girls to each other and try and find a place for Christopher, Stella, and I to live in the Hampton Roads area.

The first time the girls met, it was SO cute! They both just stared at each other trying to figure out who that other baby was. Once we put them down next to each other on the play mat, they reached for each other's hands and held hands! It was so sweet! We had a great time in VA and we ended up finding a house that's less than 10 minutes away from Liz and Tim!

We celebrated Stella's 4 Month Birthday on the 22nd. On the 27th, we went for her check up and she weighs 13.6 pounds (50%) and she's 24 3/4 inches tall (75%). We're battling a lovely case of reflux and I swear, as much as I really like the pediatrician down here, I feel like we're just playing a game of chance in trying to help Stella clear it up. She was on Zantac for about 10 days and that helped, but not a lot, so she put her on Prevacid. That stuff didn't really help at all, so I switched her formula to something that's got partially broken down proteins for easier digestion and I switched her bottles. So far, those 2 things seem to be helping more than anything.

Our countdown to seeing Daddy is at 16 days! A little over 2 weeks and our little family will be reunited!!! Its hard to believe that its been almost 5 months since we've seen Christopher... Stella has changed so much and I cant wait for him to see her and see all the things she's doing now!

Gotcha!

Today is a very, very important day in our lives... Stella's Adoption Decree came through and everything is FINALIZED!

We knew that this day was coming. All of the paperwork was filed and we were just waiting for the required 90 days that you have to wait before the Clerk of Court can finalize everything. Sunday was 90 days. So, we knew that sometime soon we'd be getting that phone call.

I cant describe the sense of relief and just happiness that I feel. I mean, this whole process is done. Finalized. Complete. Its been a roller coaster of emotions. For the most part, I have to be honest, its been pretty easy. You hear stories all the time of lengthy adoptions or horror stories of things happening before the papers are finalized. So, even though she's been ours since she was born... even though we've had her since the absolute second she was born... its an amazing thing to be able to say that she is totally and completely, irrevocably, and forever OURS.

In the adoption world you get to celebrate birthdays and "Gotcha" Day or Adoption day... its a special day set aside to honor the day the child was adopted. So even though we've had her since her birthday, we're still going to celebrate October 13th as her "Gotcha" day... the day that everything was finalized!

Here we are getting the most important piece of paper of our lives from our Lawyers Paralegal, Angela!

And then we came home and I got her all dressed up and snapped some shots of Miss Stella and her Decree!

Our celebratory glasses of Champagne (and Stella's celebratory bottle)

I'm me again.

Christopher and I were skyping today and he told me that I'm ME again. I'm his wife again. His best friend again. I'm ME again... finally.

Its no secret that I spent the better part of this year battling depression. Stella's birth didn't magically make it all go away either. I've still dealt with the tail end of a nasty ride with depression. Looking back on my life over the past few years, I can tell you for sure, I'd been fighting it A LOT longer than just the few months I was on anti-depressants. I know a lot, if not most, of my depression was situational, but the darkness of the things that we've been through is something that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life.... I know that as time passes, that burden will get a lot lighter, but I know I'll never completely shed it all. And a part of me wouldn't want to. What we went through brought us to where we are now. And I will never forget that. There WAS a purpose to our pain and reason that everything happened. And I'm more than okay with that.

Anyway, back to now. In the past couple of days I have been one big ball of creative energy. I have made Stella's Halloween Costume, an Autumn wreath, a mobile to go above her crib, baked an apple pie from scratch, and made one hell of a batch of Eggplant Parmesan. And I can not make my brain shut up with all the creative ideas... I laid in bed for an hour and a half last night running through all the things I want to do and create and design. Seriously. I could not shut it down... it was manic.

I joked with Christopher today that I have creative bi-polarism. That there are sometimes I have zero creative energy and dont do anything for a while and then wham! A creative mania hits and its all I can do to keep up with my brain. He looked at me and said, "Um, its not creative bi-polarism... its you. You're YOU again. You're MY wife again... you're my best friend again... this is YOU. This crazy, manic, creative energy is YOU." And I guess it is. I guess I just forgot? I've spent the past, realistically, 3 years in kind of a fog. Yeah, I've had happy moments.. its not all been dark clouds and sadness, but as I've said before, I've kind of been a shell of the person I used to be.

But now? Now I'm me again... well, I'm not the same person I was, but I'm the better version of me. I'm happy and creative again. I'm joyful and at peace and in love and so unbelievably blessed. Me.

Its funny how things work out...

So, its been an entire since we found out about Boudie. Its not quite been a year since we lost Boudie, but I dont particularly want to count down to that shitty, shitty anniversary.

We never really found out a specific due date for that pregnancy. If I look it up on any of the pregnancy websites it says I should have been due at the beginning of June. But, I seem to remember in the haze that is that time last year, at our first ultrasound where we saw our first heartbeat, that the due date was June 22nd.... which is an amazingly awesome thing, because that's Stella's birthday.

I have it figured out that if it wasn't actually June 22nd and there's no tie-in there, about the time we were losing Boudie, Stella was being conceived. Now that, my friends, is pretty amazing.

Maybe all that sounds kind of like I'm reaching... maybe its morbid? I dont know... I personally find it kind of comforting. This year... this anniversary is the very first "anniversary" of a loss that we actually have a baby in our arms for. I always tried to console myself with each miscarriage by telling myself that maybe around our due date we'd be pregnant and my heart wouldn't hurt so much... and it never happened. Until my beautiful Stella. Maybe God heard that promise to myself over and over again and said, "Okay, I got this... no worries..." and then He gave us Stella. Either way, my heart is so filled to the brim with love that its pushing out all the darkness and the hurt and replacing it with light and love.

I am a firm believer (as I've said many times before) that everything happens for a reason. And most of the time, later on down the road, I can see the reason. Going through our 3rd miscarriage, no matter how many times I said I was okay, I really wasn't and it was not an easy thing... and I couldn't see any light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.... but that light is sleeping next to me and is a beautiful, shining, amazing light.

So, now, around Boudie's anniversary and all the shittyness that was last October, I see the big picture and the reason it all happened... and its beautiful. I think that we had to have that 3rd miscarriage to really start down the final stretch of our trying to get pregnant journey. Because I really dont think any of this would have happened if we hadn't given up. I think that was all part of it... I think we had to literally and figuratively throw our hands into the air and give it all up before Stella could be brought into our lives. We were on our way to healing when she was born... we weren't so filled up with all that dark and twisty crap we'd been filled up with... we were finally ready to become parents... we needed her as much as she needed us.

But again, I could be reaching....lol.

3 Months

3 months ago I was sitting in a hospital room in Caldwell County falling in love. Today, I am sitting on the sofa next to my mom who is holding the tiny little love of my life.

I ran into my old boss from the job I worked when Christopher and I got married yesterday, and while it wasn't the greatest run-in of my life (so not getting into her history of crazy...lol) it made me step back and realize how crazy life can be. How little insignificant moments in life can turn out to be not so insignificant.

I was working at Bath and Body Works (which sucked, by the way) one afternoon when a woman walked in and was looking for gifts for her bridesmaids. I helped her out and showed her some of the products and when she went to leave she handed me a business card and told me that if I ever wanted a new job to come see her. The minute my shift ended, I hung up my red apron and marched my happy ass over to Zales and told her I wanted a job. A couple of weeks later, I had one.

When I worked at the jewelry store, I worked a lot of shifts with Stella's birth mom. While we didn't become super close, we became friends. We kept in contact through the years and then, as we all know, the rest is history.

I cant help but be amazed at the way things work out. I NEVER would have thought in a million years that my walking across the mall and asking for a job at a place I had never thought to work at in the first place would have affected my life the way that it did.

It wasn't the best job I ever had, in fact, after a couple of months of working there, I pretty much hated it. But I worked there for what has since turned out to be a very important 6 months of my life and I cant help but be very thankful and seriously in awe of how things worked out.

Without further ado... here is my beautiful 3 month old baby girl!

Stella sporting her new I Love Daddy onesie and her anchor leggings

3 Month Photo Shoot