ADOPTION STORY: AUSTIN AND MELISSA 2.0

Can I let you in on a little consultant insider secret? I genuinely love the adoptive families I work with and through the emotional roller coaster of adoption, I get to watch intimate details of their story unfold. We start the process as strangers and by the time their adoption is over, I consider them friends. We often email multiple times a week and when their little one is home I celebrate BIG! But, selfishly, I miss our frequent chats and emails. So, when a family comes back for a second adoption and I get to walk alongside them again, it is such a blessing!

Our daughter Milli turned one in March of 2018 and about the same time, our hearts were feeling called to adopt again. Austin and I started talking about how we wanted to approach our second adoption. Did we want to try something more local to try and save expenses? Did we want to go with the same route as Milli – something that worked and we were comfortable with? After some research, we knew we wanted to sign back up with Leah and CAC. It was so comforting to be back with someone we trusted and who cared just as much about our family as we did.

We started with updating our home study and became an active family with CAC at the beginning of July. When you have already adopted once, some parts of the process are much less daunting because you have already been there. We were so comfortable with our social worker and updating our home study, comfortable with updating our profile and knowing how the general process of adoption worked. We’d done this before. It should be much easier this time around. But, fear started creeping in pretty easily. One of our fears was that we had already blessed with a very young daughter, will any expectant parent want to choose us? How long will the waiting process be with one child already?

Leah was such a blessing to us during this time of uncertainty in the waiting process. She prayed a lot for us. With Milli’s adoption, we only were an active family for two months. Once two months hit our second time around, second-guessing and fear started creeping in… the fear of our dreams not coming true, our family not growing as we prayed so deeply for. But Leah was there for us, she kept reassuring us that God had child in mind for us. I can’t remember exactly how many times we presented our second time around. I do remember the complexity of some of the situations and how knowledgeable and reassuring Leah was during those times. One phrase that always stuck with me while deciding to present or not is, “God will not let you miss your child.” Adoption can be scary, with so many uncertainties, and we felt out of our “comfort zone” many times. I know we could not have done this without Leah’s support and experience.

On October 31, 2018 our second beautiful daughter Elli Isabella-Mae was born. What a beautiful little peanut she was and what a wild and crazy ride it was bringing her into our family.

We were chosen by her beautiful birth parents in mid-October with her due date around Thanksgiving. The weekend before Halloween, we traveled to Florida to meet her birth father and mother. What a blessing it was to meet both birth parents. We spent the weekend learning about their lives and how they became the people they are. We spent time at the beach and learned what they planned on naming Elli when she was born. They wanted to name her Isabella. As the four of us talked and walked along the beach, we stumbled upon a name written in the sand — “Isabel”. We were in complete shock as the beach is very large and the chances of us walking upon that name could only mean it was a sign from God. It was a beautiful moment that I will never forget. That moment gave us all a little sigh of relief, and I knew right away that Isabella needed to be part of sweet Elli’s name.

We returned home on a Sunday and three days later on Halloween little Elli was born. Once again we dropped everything and in complete chaos made it to meet our sweet Elli for the first time. One thing my sweet daughters have taught me is you can travel half way across the country in a day with little to no planning! We may not have been able to be there for her birth, or have the most perfect outfit to take her first pictures in, but what we do have are memories to last a lifetime.

Adoption is hard, messy, but so so worth it. Adoption made our family and we feel so blessed. I would not change one single thing about our journey, not even the infertility, the debt, the anxiety, or the sleepless nights because our daughters are our life. They have changed us into better people than we were before. We have extended birth family that we love with all our hearts, and we have been given the gift to be parents to these two?beautiful girls.