The Decision To Adopt

    For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted a big family...6 kids. It never crossed my mind that people struggled to get pregnant. It wasn't until I struggled to get pregnant that I found out there are so many that have this struggle in one way or another. When Nick and i got married (Nick was 28 and I was almost 27) we wanted to start fairly quickly to grow our family, especially if I wanted to have 6 kids by the time I was 40. Right at the start of our marriage, (and I do mean the start, we left our honeymoon early) I had some unexplained pain. We went from the airport to the ER and I had a CAT Scan. They found a cyst that ruptured. I kept getting pain and cysts. My doctor concluded that I have endometriosis. I had my first surgery in September, 2 1/2 months after getting married. My doctor found moderate - severe endometriosis, but said that we shouldn't have any problem getting pregnant. Six months later, March 2009, I had gallstones and had to have my gall bladder removed. The pain kept coming and getting pregnant was not happening. December 2009 I had my second surgery for endometriosis. After recovering from that surgery we went to a fertility specialist. We started with IUI and it worked on the 2nd try! The day I could check to see if it was successful, I got up at 4:00am! I was so excited when I saw the + sign that I woke Nick up to tell him. The next 9 months were amazing! I was pain free from fibromyalgia and endometriosis.

    July 23, 2011 was the 2nd most amazing day of my life. It was a stressful day and by the time I had to push (12 hours later) my epidural stopped working! But the second I saw my long, skinny, little baby boy my heart filled with so much love and joy! 

Parenting is not easy, but it is filled with so much joy and love for this little child that is in our family. Jackson teaches us so much every day and we can't imagine our life without our little miracle boy! 

    When we decided to try to get pregnant again we went straight to fertility treatments. We tried IUI 4 times and none of them worked, so we went on to IVF. We got all the tests done, all the medication ordered, and we were good to go! I started the shots and on the 4th day I had a checkup. They did an ultrasound and noticed fluid where it shouldn't be, so they told me to stop with the shots. They said I could start again in a month. For some reason Nick and I didn't feel it was right to try again. I was in constant pain and taking the hormone drugs didn't help any. I had a talk with my doctor and after praying and going to the temple, Nick and I knew that getting a hysterectomy was the right thing to do. Getting a hysterectomy was something that my doctor said would be in my future, we just hoped we would be able to have a couple more biological children first. On July 3, 2013 I had a hysterectomy. Even though I knew it was the right thing to do, it still didn't make it any easier. I see friends or family that are pregnant, and even though I am so excited for them, I am still sad that I won't be able to be pregnant again. 

When we decided to get a hysterectomy we knew that the way we were going to grow our family was through adoption. We are so excited for this process, even though we know it won't be easy. We are so grateful for the choice of the expectant parent(s). We can only imagine the heartache and sacrifice they go through in placing their child, but we hope they know and understand that by choosing us to be their child's adoptive parents, that we are going to love that beautiful child so much! They will be apart of our family, just like Jackson is apart of ours.

Please follow us as we live our day to day lives, waiting for that fantabulous call that we have been matched, and what comes after!