Your cupcakes saved our daughter's life: a note about fundraising

Our first bake sale was such a great success and the love and support we felt far outweighed any dollar amount we could have collected.  That being said, we did want to let you, our friends, family and in some cases, strangers, know exactly what you really purchased when you walked away with your box of cake truffles or bag of cookies.

Where Melissa is from, children with special needs are often deemed ‘defective’.   Abandonment is acceptable and often preferable if a child is born with challenges and many of these children end up in orphanages shortly after birth. Around the age of four or five they are then transferred to mental institutions.  These children live in inhumane conditions and many die within the first year of being transferred.  At age 5, Melissa’s community had decided she wasn’t worth much and she was facing institutionalization because she has ‘global delays/Cerebral Palsy’.  Not only was she up against terrible odds, she was doing all of it without the love and comfort of a family.

When a family begins their journey with Reece’s Rainbow, they are asked to fill out a form and contribute a financial ‘love gift’ to the child they are seeking to adopt.  Once this is done, the family is considered committed to her and the wheels are put into motion.   *With all of the money we earned with the bake sale, we were able to officially commit to Melissa!  That commitment likely saved her from being institutionalized!*  Hopefully, they will be able to keep her in the orphanage instead of transferring her while we get all of our paperwork and such in order to go bring her home!

With all of the good and bad news that I’ve shared on here, this post took the longest to write.  As uncomfortable as it is for us to ask for financial gifts, the fact of the matter is that the process of international adoption is a pricey one.  We still have a long road ahead of us and we have a lot of fundraising left to do.  We will possibly have another bake sale, possibly a raffle; the wheels are still turning…

We are able to take donations through our Family Sponsorship Page through Reece’s Rainbow.  Because Reece’s Rainbow is a charitable organization, any donation made to our Family Sponsorship Page is completely tax deductible and is put into a grant that means the money will only be used to fund Melissa’s adoption.  The only downside is we don’t get to know who donates through the page so we have no way of thanking you personally, which we really wished we could do! 

We’d love to find a happy medium that allows people to get the tax deduction while helping us thank and give back something to those that are helping bring Melissa out of the grips of a society that thinks she is defective and into the loving home she needs and deserves!  If anyone has any ideas or would like to help in any other way, please let us know!

And for those that attended in February, and bought some of these….

Here is your receipt… <3

A Birth Announcement of Sorts

There is a famous phrase that gets passed around in the adoption lingo world that I never really loved before.  In all it's variations, the quote basically says, 'you weren't grown in my body, but grew in my heart'.  I don't know why it was maybe my least favorite quote pertaining to adoption before.  Until I saw my little girl.  And all of a sudden--I get it!  

I'd never experienced anything like it.  An instant mama bear instinct to love and protect and cherish this child!

As such, I insisted on doing a birth announcement of sorts to declare our new addition that we will restlessly pursue until she is in our home, physically growing in front of our eyes, instead of just growing in our hearts.

Not flesh of my flesh, 

nor bone of my bone,

but still miraculously my own.

 

Never forget,

not for a minute,

you weren’t born under my heart but in it.

Introducing...our daughter!

Sometimes in life, there are things you just know.  We know that Melissa is our daughter!  Now we just have to go get her!

Melissa is a darling almost-6 year old in an Eastern European orphanage.  We'll suffice it to say that she is in an area that has not come far from their post-Soviet history and conditions for kids in her situation are not good and definitely not what she deserves!

  

When we saw her, there was a spark we couldn't ignore. 

This little girl belongs in our family!!

 

We have officially made our commitment through Reece's Rainbow, a fantastic organization that specializes in facilitating adoptions across the world for children with Down's Syndrome and other special needs.  Our little Melissa is listed as having "global delays/Cerebral Palsy" which could mean anything since CP is a spectrum diagnosis and entails a fairly large range of things.  It does not matter to us in the least--she is our daughter!!! 

At this point, we know very little.  She was facing transfer to a mental institution because of her age and her status as special needs.  And you now have as much information as we do! :)

As of Wednesday, we have our very own Family Sponsor Page on Reece's Rainbow where people can read another little post about our family and our story and inspiration for getting to Melissa.  It's also set up so people can make tax-deductible donations that go entirely to helping us go get our angel!  I will post the buttons and direct, cute links once I get them and figure out how!

We have partially completed the homestudy and paperwork is in full swing, so now we are just continuing to get all of our forms together and hopefully do some fundraising.  (Another bake sale anyone?)  We were told that optimistically we could have her home with us around the end of Fall!  That just makes my heart skip a beat!  We are just so excited we can hardly do anything else!

We are so excited that you stopped by to find out about our miraculous news and can't wait to share in this journey with all of you!  We are absolutely elated to go get our daughter and bring her home to the love and family she deserves! <3

How we got where we are going to...(yes, I know it only makes sense to me!)

When we started talking again about adding to our family through adoption, we had a lot of options laid out in front of us and very vague ideas about what any of them truly entailed.  We knew that there were healthy kids, sick kids, young kids, old kids, local kids, far away kids, and on and on, all that needed and deserved to be loved and be part of a family.

We were eager to start the process though we didn’t know exactly what path we’d be taking so we started out looking at the different sets of procedures and regulations.  In searching about homestudies, we found out about the Utah Foster Care Foundation training course.  We decided it was a good idea and here is the biggest pat on my own back, but we were right! J  We LOVED this class!  So completely incredible to learn what we did—and to do it surrounded by such caring, loving individuals!  It was 32 hours of training and all of it was a great, realistic look at the journey we were about to embark on, not to mention fantastic information for all parents and caretakers of children in general. 

At the end of the month long set of classes, we were given our Utah Foster Care Foundation Pre-Service Training Completion Certificate and wound up armed with a lot of new information, but back where we started in trying to figure out what route to take to our special little son or daughter.  Whatever the path, we knew it was going to take some cash, so we started our fundraising effort with a Valentine’s Day Bake Sale.  It was an amazing event and really opened our eyes to how much support we have around us!  (We would not be able to walk this path if it weren’t for the friends and family around us that are willing to walk with us and hold our hands along the way every once in a while!  We cannot express our gratitude for each and every one of you.)

As we went through the classes, we kind of got a better idea of what we would and would not like to do.  We wound up with an opportunity coming into our lives that seemed to be a very clear, quick option.  Robert’s mom does Christian ministry through the State Prison and had facilitated a couple adoptions through the ministry in the past.  Basically, if an inmate gives birth while serving her time in prison, someone must come forward and take either temporary or permanent custody of the child.  After the bake sale, it just happened to come up that there was a young woman in the prison who was due in a couple months that was looking for a family to adopt her child.  The doors seemed wide open for us, so we decided to pursue this option and see what came of it.

After a few months of following this path, we decided that all that we would take from it was a learning experience, and not the sibling for Silly Lily that we’d been looking for.  There were too many obstacles and it never quite felt like we were in it all the way.  Yes, there was a lot of hope there for a while, but it turned into a situation that we did not want to work through and was not the best option for us, our family or for the birth mom.  It was very tough to make that call, especially getting so close to the mom’s due date, but we did not feel comfortable with the short or what we felt would be the long term results of this relationship. 

The only remorse I have about how the prison option ran its course was that I forced back some of the bad and tried to just show the good of the situation, thinking that in the end, we would just have our shiny, happily ever after and no one would have to know the trials and doubts that we faced.  When we parted ways with the birth mom, it caught many of our loved ones by surprise and it still feels as though they are disappointed with us. 

Though it seems like an extremely quick turnaround, we have been putting a lot of thought and prayer and hope into another route that may come to fruition soon.  Though we had some hesitations, this option just FEELS right.  The most normal comparison I can make is when we discussed trying to get pregnant again after our situation with Jackson.  Though there were things that scared us out of our mind, we both just knew that it was right and it was going to turn out right.  This choice was more about what we wanted and less about trying to please others. Though I can’t make any official announcements yet until it is a little more confirmed, it is a little more true to what we’d imagined when we first spoke of adoption years ago and it feels like the best choice for us.   I can't full explain it, but I’ve just got a feeling that this is what we are supposed to be doing.

Because I feel that this is where we are headed, I feel compelled to share a great quotation and dedicate it to our newest addition to our family.

“By choice, we will become a family, first in our hearts, and finally in breath and being. Great expectations are good; great experiences are better.”

An update on waiting

So, when I started this blog, my intention was to detail all of the steps of our adoption process.  I can't say I lived up to that promise to myself very well!
We've been in some contact with an expectant mother for the past month or so and, to be honest, it's been hard to find a line to draw about what I should and shouldn't be detailing to the people that want to know how our progress is coming along.  We definitely appreciate everyone's support and would love to sit down and pour out our hearts in each finite detail about what's going on, but out of respect for the mother, we've opted to only share limited information.
Because of this mother's situation, we are very limited in our contact with her and have yet to meet her face to face, though we hope that will be changing soon.  Almost all of our communication with her thus far has been third and fourth hand.  What we've heard seems to be very promising though and she's even gone as far as telling people that we are her plan for her baby girl, come June 9th or whenever that little angel decides to make her entrance into the world.
We are excited and my favorite new phrase has become 'cautiously optimistic'.  (I don't think I will ever feel safe and secure until final paperwork goes completely through!) We're counting the days, minutes, seconds, and always hoping to get more information and get ourselves more prepared to possibly have a newborn in 6 weeks!  That thought alone scares and excites me enough, regardless of the whole adoption process and it's ins and outs.
So, hopefully that sheds a itsy bitsy light on the subject for now.  We are preparing, but still guarded, and wearing our hearts on our sleeve has never seemed to have a higher price!  We're definitely taking it day by day--even though we are running out of days!
Hopefully I will have more definitive information to share soon!  Thanks as always for the love and encouragement along the way.

Now what?

Since the bake sale (and before) we’ve had a lot of people ask about the process that we are going through.  The most common question is ‘now what?’  To be honest, we have some idea, but no definite answers.  Such is life, I suppose.

We spent a lot of time looking at two main options—we could adopt through a private organization or we could do Utah’s Foster-adopt program.  Both have some big pros and cons from cost to time frames to regulations to being more or less in control of what kind of child you can take.  We’ve been contemplating this pretty hard for quite some time…and then a third option of sorts came up.  And fast.

My mother-in-law does Christian ministry through the women’s prison and periodically, there will be a female in there that is pregnant.  Depending on their situation, the mother may consider giving the baby up for adoption.  That’s where we come in...maybe.

When we first began really actively moving in the direction of adoption, we started out by taking the Utah Foster Care Foundation pre-service classes.  We figured that was a good step to get us oriented with their process, as well as getting a realistic look at the challenges ahead of us.  After that, we would decide how to work through the steps.  About the time that we graduated our class, Jeanette met a young lady through the prison that is due with a baby girl in early June.  She’d mentioned to some of the women that she was considering adoption and her and Jeanette eventually connected and she expressed her interest in the process. 

The way everything has come about so easily and quickly makes it impossible for us to ignore that this may be the right option for us right now.  The mother has not yet decided, but I believe we are a strong (and possibly the only) candidate if she does pursue adoption.  If she does decide that adoption and we are the right choice for her and the child, we still complete a home study and then most of the legal terms are done through a social worker and a lawyer.  All we can do on our end of things is complete the home study and communicate with the mother to our best ability. 

As for the technical process, we are about a third to halfway through the home study.  We’ve turned in about half of the paperwork, now we just wait for the background check to come back and the social worker will begin the interviews.

It’s been an exciting time for us as this has all come to be in the last couple weeks.  To think that we could have a newborn baby in 3 months, give or take, is thrilling!  At the same time, there is an instinct to protect yourself and your family from possibility of getting turned down or hurt in some other way.  We go from not wanting to talk about it almost as if we are afraid of jinxing ourselves, to wanting to start a baby registry and pick out names.

In the end, the risk is worth it.  If it works out, we will be elated.  If it doesn’t, it will be one more life lesson in appreciating the things we do have and what is ahead of us.  We can’t go through life too afraid of heartbreak to love and we can’t go into this or any adoption not willing to try 100% for fear of our own feelings.

A little bit about our story...

So, I realize that with my first post, I sort of jumped past the introduction and went straight for joining the ball game in the 7th inning.  After weeks of writer's block, I had to do something to get the pen to paper and get the ball rolling.  For those of you unfamiliar with Robert and I, check out the Our Story and Lily's Story pages.  Also, even if you are familiar with us, take a peek.  You may discover something you never knew! :)