In the beginning...

When we started the process to add to our family, we had no idea that the we would be led to adoption.

After many, many months of failed fertility treatments, we couldn't take anymore disappointment. We took our burden to the Lord and asked him what we should do. We really wanted to add to our family, but couldn't take anymore treatments.

I remember sitting in the temple asking the Lord what we should do, which direction we should go to add to our family. At first all I heard was a little whisper in the back of my mind, "Adoption." I tried to push the thought out of my head. I didn't think we were there yet. After a while, I couldn't concentrate on anything that was being said in the temple session because I felt like someone was yelling at me, over and over, "ADOPTION!" I finally realized that adoption is the road we were supposed to take, at this time, to grow our family.

We set to work, almost immediately. We dived into the adoption world head first.

Our first orientation meeting was with LDSFS, and we left feeling a little discouraged and not at all at ease. It just didn't feel right to us. We didn't know where to go next, so we set up a meeting with our friends at The R House to help us figure out our next step. I kept feeling a sense of urgency, but didn't know why. We still hadn't settled on an agency to work with, so we had The R House do our home study.

We got our home study and background checks done fairly quickly, but then had a hard time deciding which agency to work with. We did a lot of research and worked with a couple of agencies on some outreach situations before we finally settled on putting an application in to Heart to Heart Adoptions and Heart and Souls Adoptions. We continued to work with Amy at Adoption Center of Choice as well to find our baby.

We had several situations come up that we felt okay about, but nothing we really felt a huge push. That was hard for me. After 3 years of fertility treatments, and then months of filling out paperwork, only to have to wait and wait and wait some more! There was one situation in particular that I took rather hard. We were being asked by the social worker if we wanted to be submitted for two possible situations and I had the feeling, "Wait and see what happens with *Martha." So we passed on the second situations. I thought for sure this had to be it. This had to be our baby. It seemed like the perfect situation. A few days later, we found out we weren't chosen. That was a hard let down.

We set back to work filling out more and more paperwork to be approved by Heart to Heart and Heart and Souls. In the mean time, we were still working with the social worker at ACC. We had another situation come up that sounded like a perfect match. We had seen the situation before, but for whatever reason, had decided to not pursue it. She still hadn't selected a family, so Amy sent her information again. The birth mother wanted an LDS family, which apparently are hard to come by outside of LDSFS. We submitted our profile and waited. And waited. And waited. I finally called the social worker to find out what the timeline was like. She hadn't been shown our profile yet, but it was going to be shown to her that day. That afternoon, I got a call from Amy, and the birth mother liked us!! Amy explained that she liked us, but she wanted to make sure before she officially chose us, so she wanted to see a few more families. So we were playing the waiting game again....

During the time we were waiting for *Barbara to make her decision, we finally got our approval letter from Heart to Heart. That night, we got on their website to look at their available situations. The first one I saw made my heart skip a beat. A birth mom in Utah was looking to place her baby boy. The baby was due in 11 days!! She was looking for an LDS family and wanted a fairly open adoption. I felt an urgency to submit our profile to her for consideration. We emailed the birth mother coordinator, Kim that night and asked if she would submit our profile. I called the next day to make sure she got our email. And then we waited some more..