the adoption story

my baby girl- back before she was mine

Writing David's birth story got me thinking that I haven't written Audrey's story here. And since my ultimate goal with this blog is to make it into a book for our family, the story of Audrey coming to our family is definitely essential. And so, here we go.

I've written multiple times about our struggle with infertility. When I look back on those two and half years they are mostly blurry, thank heavens. That time is a section of my life where I know that I wasn't the greatest wife, friend, daughter, or sister. Unfortunately, I was mostly focused inward on myself and my problems...hurting. But, there are stark glaring moments during that time that stay with me, and probably always will: the afternoon that I went to the gynecologist and was diagnosed with PCOS then called my Mom and burst into tears, the empty, alone feeling I was left with that one time that I was sure that I was pregnant and then the test showed one lonely line, the palpable jealousy toward anyone else who was pregnant or had a baby that I'm sure I didn't hide well, the crying that I tried to keep from Justin late at night- it was a hard time for us.

One night Justin and I were sitting on a bench outside our little house in Twin Falls and he told me he was done. He'd had enough of the scheduled intimacy, my emotional roller coaster, the pressure, the stress. He was done trying to conceive. I was glad it was dark so he couldn't see my face, although I'm sure he heard the tears in my voice. However, I agreed. We'd give it a break. The stress was hard on our marriage and we'd run out of money for more doctor's appointments anyway.

Although I was never able to put it out of my mind we stopped talking about trying to have a baby, stopped actively pursuing getting pregnant. A few months after that in November 2006 we moved to Boise and the move helped a lot. It was great to be in a new house, in a new town, and we focused on exploring Boise and making plans for the future- a future that included just the two of us. One day in May of 2007 I was talking with my Mom on the phone and she brought up the idea of having a big family fast for Justin and I to have children. It was a great idea and so we asked our parents, and a few other selected family members to fast with us on the first Sunday in June.



That Sunday came and went, a few weeks went by and for personal reasons Justin and I decided not to attend his annual family reunion. We went to the Oregon Coast instead and had a terrific time. When we came back Justin's brother, Marc, had sent us an e-mail that had an interesting little line at the very end of it:


"p.s. Tarl is getting a divorce and they're thinking about putting the baby up for adoption. "


Tarl is Justin's second cousin who had also been at the reunion. His family lives in Utah and we hadn't seen them for a long, long time.


We'd thought about adoption, of course, but I had always assumed that if we did adopt it would be after we exhausted all fertility treatments and that we would take a more traditional route, through an agency. When I read what Marc had typed I immediately dismissed it. There were multiple reasons to: we weren't sure that we wanted to adopt, if we adopted from a family member it would be too messy, we didn't want to get in the middle of a divorce...on and on. Then a quiet thought came to my mind: "You just fasted and prayed for a baby."


With that calm, quiet feeling in our hearts we called Tarl's mother and asked what the situation was. She explained that yes, Tarl and his wife Megan were getting a divorce and they had talked briefly about adoption but they had decided against it. We told them we couldn't have children and asked them to keep us in mind if adoption came up again. A few days later she called back and said that they liked the idea of us adopting the 7 week old baby and asked if she could send us pictures.


I remember the next day vividly- sitting at the desk in our townhouse in Boise, opening the attachment on the e-mail she'd sent and seeing a tiny baby laying on a blanket. There were 3 or 4 pictures but the one that haunted me was the picture at the top of this post. We printed it out and I carried it around with me and stared at it constantly. She was beautiful. Right then I knew that we had to see where this adoption thing could take us.