Infertility & Adoption Support, Inc.

Before my husband and I got married, we had known infertility issues. We both wanted children and knew that adoption would be the best route for us to start our family. About 5 months after we got married, we started looking into adoption. At the same time, we heard about IAS’s Adoption Support Group and started attending the monthly adoption meetings.

We loved going to those meetings and learned so much about the adoption process from other couples who were currently going through it or had already adopted. It was very comforting to be able to talk, vent, and share our hopes, dreams, and worries with other people who “got it.”

We researched agencies for a month or two and then started the homestudy process. After our homestudy was complete, we began “the wait” for domestic newborn adoption. During the wait, we got our future baby’s nursery ready, went on a few trips, and enjoyed date nights and sleeping in. After being in the waiting phase for 6 months with no potential matches, we looked into embryo adoption. We decided to try embryo adoption and put our profile on hold for domestic adoption. We jumped through a few more hoops to be approved for embryo adoption and then quickly matched with a donor couple. We had two frozen embryo transfers – one resulted in an early miscarriage and one didn’t take. We had been so hopeful that the transfers would work that it was a hard time for us emotionally.

Instead of trying another transfer, we decided to go back on the wait list for domestic newborn adoption. We realized that it didn’t matter if I carried our baby or not, but that we just wanted to be parents. About 1 month later, we were matched with our daughter’s birth mom. She was only 3 months pregnant at the time. We spent the next 6 months getting to know her through texts, phone calls, and visits and also prepare our home for a baby! Our daughter was born in March of 2013. We love the open adoption we have with her birthmother!

In July of 2014, we started the adoption process again. We figured that since we already had a child that it might take longer for our second adoption, so we wanted to start early. We started the second adoption with the same agency we used when we adopted our daughter. After waiting a year with them and no matches, we decided to also work with an Adoption Consultant to expand our options and allow us to be presented to more birthmothers/parents.

A little over a month after we started working with the consultant (in August 2015), we were matched with a birthmother due in October with a baby boy. We talked with the birthmother and visited her once before the baby was born. The baby was born early, so my husband and I flew down as quickly as possible to the birthmother’s home state. After three very emotional days, the birthmother decided to parent. We were devastated. It’s hard to even put into words how we felt and how we managed to come back home and get back into the normal routine without a baby.

The holidays had their ups and downs but we kept faith that the baby we were meant to parent was out there. On a Tuesday in February of 2016, we were told of a baby boy born the previous day whose birthmother was making an adoption plan. We said we’d like to have our profile presented. We found out late Tuesday evening that we were picked! We quickly made travel plans and were able to meet our son on Wednesday. It was a whirlwind but we wouldn’t have had it any other way!

Our adoption journey to grow our family has has been emotional, exciting, and difficult at times, but sitting here holding our son and watching our daughter play makes me realize how truly blessed we are and how these two were without a doubt meant to be our children.