My husband doesn't actually think I will do this...

My husband doesn't think that I will successfully keep up a blog about our lives. I have tried 2 times before this and have failed. Well...maybe the third time is the charm. I'm not even sure if anyone will read this but I think it will be a good way for us to remember this journey that we are on. Two weeks ago we submitted our application to Holt International to begin the adoption process! We are so excited to be working toward something positive.

For those who don't know we had a baby girl back in August 2006. Her name was Madelyn Rose and she was born at 37 weeks after a very long labor that resulted in a c-section. Everything went from happy to absolutely devastating the moment she was born. She had very serious birth defects which were the result of a genetic condition called Pfeiffer Syndrome Type II. She was whisked away to the NICU while I was being sewn up. About 3 hours after her birth and a very negative CAT scan of her brain (she had very little brain tissue), Patrick and I made the hardest decision of our lives and removed her from the ventilator. We took her back to our room and held her until she passed away the next morning.

It was a very hard recovery process both mentally and physically and a year later we found out that we were expecting another little one. Around 7 weeks I started spotting and went into my doctor's office "just to be safe". I had an ultrasound and they could see no baby, just a mass of cells. Again the wind was knocked out of me and time just blurred together as we started talking about mutant cells, cancer and a D&C. I had my D&C on Patrick's 29th birthday and waited anxiously for the results. They came back in a couple weeks as a Partial Molar Pregnancy which is where 2 sperm fertilized one egg at exactly the same time. It results in 3 sets of genetic material which is why the cells went crazy. I had to monitor my levels until they went to zero and then we had to wait 6 months from then to try to get pregnant again.

We started trying again in May but have still had no luck. There isn't anything wrong with either of us and we are still within the normal time frame for the "average" couple to get pregnant so you may wonder why we are adopting. The biggest reason is that we both always knew that we would adopt, we knew before we got married that adoption would be part of our family plan. What we didn't know was the timing of when we would adopt. We thought it would be after we had our biological children, but God had other plans.

So, on Monday evening 9/29 I submitted our online application to Holt. After Maddie died both Patrick and I started to see a counselor (she is just amazing) and it has helped us so much. Well, apparently Korea is a little sensitive to the counseling thing so we needed to get a letter from our counselor before we could be accepted into the program. She submitted that on 10/9 and I got a phone call from Don with Holt in Omaha and he said that we were ready to start.

We just got our packet in the mail today for the background checks and now we need to get copies of our birth certificates and marriage license and get our finger prints taken by the state police. The background check will take 4-6 weeks and, in the mean time, we will start our paperwork for the home study. The guidelines say the whole process takes 17-20 months from the time you submit your application to the time the child arrives home. So...maybe early 2010 we will be blessed with a healthy little one (or two) from Korea. We are willing to accept a sibling group and hope for twins!

If you could, I would just ask you to pray for us during this time.