God Knows Best

Three things most people don't know about me....



1. I DID NOT want to adopt....until I needed to. Growing up with adopted siblings, neither of my sisters looked like me. A little background - deja vu...my parents were also told that they couldn't have biological kids so they adopted my two older sister and then, poof...I appeared! So, I always wanted my kids to look alike. After a devastating miscarriage and tons of fertility treatments, we were told that we wouldn't be able to have a biological child together - our "issues" just weren't compatible. So, we were running out of options and Brendan was finally willing to consider adoption - I had surrendered to adoption after the miscarriage but Brendan wasn't ready yet. Now, I'm so grateful for 401K loans, parent loans and God for leading us to our little Brady all the way across the ocean in Russia! We decided on international adoption because neither of us were comfortable with open adoptions which are now so common in the US...plus, I'm not that patient! It took a year for Brady to be ready for us but he was worth the wait. Who wouldn't love this face? This is the first picture we ever saw of him....it's the one our adoption agency sent to us in October, 2006 - I think they were amazed when we accepted the referral given his medical problems...

2. When we decided we'd get a second opinion, I was much more relaxed because I already had a child. IVF cycles are very long and involve lots of shots, ultrasounds, blood work, appointments, etc. Since I have PCOS, my ovaries completely overreact to the follicle stimulation drugs that are so common with fertility treatments so we came very close to wasting our time and ending up with a cancelled cycle. Toward the end of the cycle, my doctor had to let me "coast" because I was at risk of hyperstimulation which can be very dangerous. Unfortunately, I'm so sensitive to the drugs and so in need of them (or so we thought at the time) that coasting caused the majority of the follicles I had developed to kind of die off and my hormone levels completely dropped. Our genius doctor had a feeling we should go for it anyway so we did. I specifically remember standing in my bedroom, talking to him on the phone when he told me that he had another patient that had been in the same situation as me and she had ended up pregnant.....of course I told him that didn't mean it would happen to me and he agreed. So, the day of the retrieval, I expected them to get a ton of eggs - good or bad.....they only got 7. Given my previous IVF experience, I knew that the odds of any of those 7 being "good" were slim. When they woke me up and told me the results I was devastated - I cried the rest of the day. They called the next day to tell me how the fertilization went - only one of the embryos was worth even attempting to implant and, since there was only one, they wanted to do it the next day. So, we gave it a shot. During the implantation, I was awake but Brendan was out in the waiting room with Brady so I was on my own. I made a CD of relaxing music to listen to during the procedure - once they were finished I had to lay in the room by myself for about half an hour to give the embryo a chance to settle. So, I laid there listening to my CD and one of the nurses came in and gave me the little "dish" that the embryo had been in and told me that it was the baby's first crib. Then the waterworks started. I held onto that thing and laid there crying by myself in that room until it was time to go. I had no hope for that cycle - 8 months later, Zachary was born. We named him Zachary because it means "God remembers".....we thought it was totally appropriate since we had asked God for a biological child but he needed us to be Brady's parents first...but he remembered what we originally asked for...and He was right anyway!

3. A few weeks after Zachary was born, I realized that I wanted another baby. But, given all of our trouble, I figured we'd have to do IVF again which meant they'd probably want to implant two embryos (that's the norm for my age - but w/ Zachary we only had the one embryo that was "good"....really great)....I didn't really want (nor could we afford) twins at this point but I knew I wouldn't want to have to choose if we had more than one embryo so I was torn. I secretly hoped that by some miracle we would be able to conceive on our own - I didn't pray for it because there were more important things to pray for. I remember when I went in for my post-partum visit my OB asked what we'd be using as birth control. I reminded him that I had PCOS and he said, "oh, that's right" and that was the end of that converstaion. About 4.5 months later (while still nursing Zachary) I miraculously got pregnant with Easton. God is sneaky! :) Easton's middle name is Nathaniel which means "gift from God" which he truly is....we had no idea how much of a gift he was until we almost lost him....

I wouldn't change ANY of this for ANYTHING! We have a really interesting story and 3 amazing boys that we love dearly!