I tried to get on Babycenter yesterday, the website with the great support groups and discussion boards, but there was a glitch in the system. I had to get a new password and re-login. Right when I logged in there was a ticker at the top of the page that said, “Your baby- 3 months and 3 days old.” It took my breath away. Technically she should be three and a half months old, but they were close enough. I have purposefully not been doing the math to know how old she should be because the thought of it breaks me. Three and a half months, that’s all I thought about all day yesterday. I can’t believe she’s not here. It’s weird, I keep seeing myself in a vision of the life I should be living, with my sweet baby Lucy. That life seems more real than this one. Sometimes I can almost feel her on my hip as I do things around the house. Almost every time I get out of the car it feels like I’m forgetting something. I want to reach into the backseat and hoist Lucy’s carseat out, but it’s not there. All day yesterday I was shocked over and over again that she’s dead. Even almost nine months later, it seems so surreal. There are no baby squeals or cries in our house. My arms are so empty. My chest feels bare because it should have Lucy pressed against it. I know the exact size she would be and the weight she should be in my arms. She should be warm and soft and breathing. She should be stealing her Mommy’s attention from her older brothers. I guess she is, but in a morbid way that’s all wrong. Elizabeth McCracken lost her first baby, a son, when he was stillborn at 41 weeks. In her book, An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination she says, “At some point I imagined a kind of time that split into two or more directions when the baby died: on one track he lived and we took him home and somewhere in the universe at this moment we have a one year old and are ignorant, exhausted, cheery (or maybe only the first two); on the other track, the one I accidentally took, he died, and we left France.”
I’m slowly learning to accept this track that my life accidentally got stuck on. This is my reality, but I often find myself being drawn to that other life that was supposed to happen. That life where we are a happy family of five and we have our two boys and one girl. Where Liam and Asher get to kiss their baby sister every day and entertain her with their antics. Where they are learning to be Mommy’s big helpers by bringing me Lucy’s diapers and wipes. They’re learning to be gentle with their sissy and to be quiet while she is napping. In reality, I am learning to block that life out of my mind and my heart countless times a day. I’m trying to savor every moment with my boys. But when I see something that says, “Your baby- three months and three days old,” I am caught off guard and the weight of my loss feels like it’s crushing me. The other day I was cleaning out Asher’s changing table that he doesn’t use any more and I came across this:
A size 2 diaper.
I pressed it to my face and breathed it in. She would be wearing a size two diaper right now, but this old, crumpled one of Asher’s is the only one we have in the house.
I read two different blog posts this week by fellow baby-loss moms. Both posts are about restoration and they encouraged me so much. I read them a few days ago and yesterday when the darkness hit, I still had those words of restoration in my mind. It’s what kept me sane. It gave me the strength to feed my two children that I do have, to take them to Walmart and get them excited about our camping trip this weekend. It’s what gave me energy to play with them, to teach English to my Korean student, to do laundry, to keep living. I am promised restoration. I am promised a future with my daughter that will last forever. God promises that my lost joys will be restored. That doesn’t just mean that I will have joy with Lucy in the future. It also means that all of these joys I’m missing out on with my daughter will be restored to me. These Lucy joys are not lost, they are just postponed. Thank you, God, for this hope. Thank you Kalyn and Sara for your words of truth and hope. One day I will be in heaven and I’m going to hug baby Luke and baby Esther and thank them for how they enabled their Mommies to encourage me when I needed it the most.
As I mentioned in the last post, we were able to go back to Alabama for about a week and a half between appointments. Our time home was busy and productive and so needed. Usually at the end of the second trimester and beginning of the third my nesting instinct really starts to kick in. It is hard to be nesting but not be at home in my nest to get it ready for my baby bird. When I get to go home for visits my nesting instinct goes crazy and I basically use every free moment I have to clean and organize the house. This past visit I started having regular contractions every day, some even getting as close as three minutes apart. I went to my local OBGYN in Tuscaloosa to make sure I wasn’t going into preterm labor and thankfully I wasn’t dilated at all. He also did a fetal fibronectin test which tells you if labor will start within the following two weeks. Mine came back negative, so that was reassuring. The contractions have continued, even though I have been making an effort to stay off my feet more and stay hydrated. We got back into Houston on Mother’s Day and the next day I had my 28 week check up. The doctor checked me again to make sure I wasn’t in preterm labor and I still wasn’t dilated or anything. He thinks my uterus is just irritated from the last IUT. Sticking lots of needles into a uterus is an effective way to cause irritation. I’m a bit worried about the next IUT. Since I’m still so irritated from the last one will this next procedure send me into full blown labor? I guess we will have to wait and see.
This week I also had my one hour glucose test to check for gestational diabetes. I failed the test, so I have to take the dreaded three hour test on Friday. I also failed the one hour test when I was pregnant with Asher but passed the three hour test easily. Hopefully the same will happen this time. I really don’t want to add even more risk to my extremely high risk pregnancy. I also don’t want more intervention and things to keep up with (like my blood sugar.) I will be so thankful when this pregnancy is over and I have my Nora girl in my arms. I have been feeling weary lately. I am always a bit stunned when returning to the Ronald McDonald House because I am reminded of all the suffering. There are up to 50 families living here who all have a child with a life threatening illness or disorder. Suffering is all around. There is something extra heart wrenching about a child suffering. There are kids here with cancer (some terminal), kids waiting for organ transplants, babies with severe heart defects, babies with spina bifida, children with rare, unknown disorders…the list goes on and on. The people here are some of the kindest I’ve ever met too, which makes it even harder for me to accept their suffering. It makes me feel weary deep in my bones sometimes. I am also tired of so much intervention and stress with this pregnancy. It’s like a roller coaster that I can’t get off of. After Nora is born she will probably need a lot of intervention as well. It is such a different pregnancy experience than I had with my boys (before I had anti-kell antibodies.) Those pregnancies progressed smoothy week by week and month by month as predicted…baby all safe and snug in the womb like he should be. How I wish Nora could be safe like her brothers were. How I wish she did not have to suffer or be in danger. Thankfully, it is hard to feel sorry for myself for very long while I am here at the Ronald McDonald House. There are so many others who are hurting even more than I am yet somehow they still smile and they strive forward through the pain. I wonder if my two healthy boys make some of the other families here feel sad and make them question God’s fairness. It’s not fair that one boy gets to be healthy and strong and the other boy has to face so much pain and anguish. Everyone has their own hard place, their desert of weariness. Thank goodness there is One who supplies unending strength and living water. Usually when I start feeling weary and the self pity comes to settle in my heart I realize that I haven’t been spending enough time with God and haven’t been reading His word enough. If I turn to Him for strength and comfort He will satisfy my desires, even when I am in a scorched place of suffering.
Isaiah 58:11 And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
Isaiah 40:27-29 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God?” Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength.
Sorry for the delayed blog post…we were able to come home to Alabama for a visit and I’ve been kind of overwhelmed with all the things that need to be done in a very short amount of time. I finally have a few minutes to sit down and complete a blog post.
I will say it again, even though you all are probably tired of hearing it…I can’t believe we have made it this far! I’m 27 and a half weeks pregnant which means I have made it to the third trimester. It feels wonderful and surreal. Nora’s kicks sometimes feel like tiny dynamite explosions, somehow hitting me way down in the crotch and high up in my ribs at the same time. Unless she’s feeling anemic, she is very active like her brother Liam (he moved so much in the womb I thought he was having seizures.) She’s very big like her brother Asher, who also was somehow lodged way down in my pelvis and high up in my ribs at the same time. On the 3D ultrasound pictures Nora’s mouth looks so much like Lucy’s, Beautiful. I can’t wait to meet her. It’s wonderful to have this hope shining in my heart every day…I might get to keep my daughter. I am able to go about my day to day life with a buoyancy that I haven’t felt in years. I told the boys this week that Nora will probably be able to come home with us and be our baby here on earth instead of going to heaven. They were thrilled. I remember way back in November when I got that shocking positive pregnancy test and I thought several times a day, “If we can just make it through April, this baby will probably live.” Here I am a week into the month of May and my KELL POSITIVE baby girl is doing dynamite explosion kicks inside my womb 🙂
I just wanted to thank all of you for celebrating our Nora with us on this journey. I know its hard to see ultrasound pictures and baby bumps for many of you. Sometimes it’s even hard for ME to see those pictures. I probably would not be putting as many of those pictures up if I knew Nora would live. Throughout this whole pregnancy we have not been able to predict how much time we might get with Nora so we decided at the beginning to celebrate every day with her that we do get. I wish I had celebrated Lucy more when I had her. Thank you so much for joining in our celebration so far, especially those of you who are not in a “rejoicing” stage in your life. I think one of the hardest things in life is celebrating with others while you are in a time of mourning or hurting in your own life.
We were able to travel back to Alabama for a week long visit and when I got here my sister had arranged a surprise shower/get together. It was so fun to celebrate my girl (and to see everyone in their Team Nora shirts!)
It feels so foreign to be the one CELEBRATING something (although my heart always aches for my Lucy.) I know exactly how I would be feeling right now if Nora had been stillborn. The difference between this May and my May of 2013 is astounding. I read back through some of my journals and the grief was so heavy. Although we have moved out of the deep mourning we were in two years ago, we still grieve for Lucy all the time. When I came home from Texas (the first time) I was so thrilled to see Josh and Liam, it filled up two gaping holes in my heart. It was like heart balm to see Josh with his littlest son again.
But soon after we were reunited I realized there was still an open wound aching for Lucy. She was not here waiting for me, my sweet one and half year old who should have been running into my arms. I will never see her with her Daddy. I wept for her and grieved deeply knowing that she will never run into my arms on this earth. That gaping hole will throb and hurt until the day I enter heaven. Our family will never be complete. It is a hard reality to come to terms with. It is strange to be in a state of such extreme celebration and deep sadness at the same time. Just as important as the ones celebrating, the ones who mourned with us when Lucy died are the people we appreciate so much. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, to all of you who grieved with us and did not push us to “heal” before we were ready. To the people who showed empathy and sadness weeks and months and years after Lucy died, thank you. It means more than you know. And to the ones who mourned with us even in a time of celebration in your own life, we are forever grateful for such a gift. Thank you to all of you. I hope I can learn to grieve with others when they are hurting and smile with those who are celebrating like many of you have done for us. 💜
I just realized that I never updated the blog after Nora’s post IUT appointment. They checked her the next morning and she looked great on the ultrasound and was very active. I told the doctor that she started moving a lot sooner after the procedure than the first time and he said, “She actually started moving DURING the procedure when we were putting blood into her belly!” I vaguely remember the doctors’ voices seeming surprised and slightly alarmed at some point during the IUT. Now I know what the problem was. The doctor said he thinks they gave her less sedation/paralyzing medication in proportion to her size which is why she started waking up too soon. I am thankful they were still able to finish the transfusion safely. Dr. Moise decided that he wanted to wait three weeks until the next transfusion instead of two this time. This means her next transfusion will be on May 19th when I am 29 weeks pregnant. I have a regular OB appointment next week and will have my gestational diabetes test then too. Thank you all for checking in on us regularly and praying for little Nora. Also, thank you to everyone who has bought a Team Nora shirt! I feel so astounded and humbled by the support we have been shown. My best friend’s mom is a sixth grade teacher at American Christian Academy in Tuscaloosa and her classes have been praying for Nora this whole semester. I went to visit them and there were so many kids wearing Team Nora shirts! In each class a student came up to the front and prayed for Nora and me. Most of these kids have never even met me before! So sweet. Here they are showing off their shirts:
And here are Robin, Hunter and Noah, who all ran an inflatable 5K in support of The Ronald McDonald House and Nora, of course:
More cute supporters:
If you have a picture of you or your kids wearing your Team Nora shirt I would love to share it on my blog! Just email your picture to [email protected] and if you are still interested in buying a shirt you can find the information at the bottom of this blog post- Team Nora T-shirts!
We finally have a treatment plan in place to try to save our baby. We worked on this for several weeks with our MFMs (high risk OBGYNs), with other women who have gone through the same thing and with the main expert in this field, Dr. Kenneth Moise from Houston, TX. We feel very confident about this treatment plan and we are so thankful that all of our doctors are on board since it’s kind of a new (some even say experimental) type of treatment.
Sorry if this is a repeat for some people but I just wanted to give you the basics on why our baby is in so much danger. After I gave birth to Asher I developed anti-kell antibodies which will attack blood that has the kell antigen in it (kell positive.) Josh is kell positive (not dangerous to him at all, just a blood type.) All of our children have a 50% chance of being kell positive like Josh or kell negative like me. If the baby is kell positive, my anti-kell antibodies will attack the baby’s blood, making him anemic and eventually possibly killing him. Babies start making their own blood some time at the beginning of the second trimester. Before the baby is making his own blood, there is nothing for my antibodies to attack, so the baby is not in danger. Right now I am nine weeks pregnant and the baby is safe because he isn’t making his own red blood cells yet. If the baby is kell negative, like me, my antibodies will have nothing to attack and it will be a normal pregnancy. Usually, the antibodies get stronger with each pregnancy. My antibodies are extremely aggressive so it is terrifying to think that they might be even stronger with this pregnancy than they were with Lucy.
The only way to know if the baby is kell negative or kell positive is to do an amniocentesis around 16 weeks. The amnio comes with a couple risks that we don’t feel very comfortable with. About 1 in 500 women who have an amniocentesis miscarry as a result of complications from the amnio. Also, some doctors think that doing the amnio could increase the aggression of the antibodies (sticking a long needle into the belly could mix blood and make the antibodies have a stronger reaction.) That would be really bad for us since my antibodies are so aggressive already. Josh and I are still trying to decide whether to have the amnio or not, but right now we do not feel good about adding even the slightest extra risk to this already extremely high risk pregnancy. The doctors can still monitor the baby closely with MCA scans (a special ultrasound to see if the baby is anemic or not.) Honestly, I think if the baby is kell positive we will find out pretty early because the anemia will probably show up on the scans, like Lucy’s did.
So, back to our treatment plan. Even though we don’t know if the baby is kell positive or negative, we will begin treatments at ten weeks and will assume the baby is kell positive. If we wait until we know for sure, it will be too late to start the treatments. On January 9th I will have a “permacath” or a “port” surgically placed (I think it’s going in my chest, but not sure yet.) On January 12th, 14th and 16th I will have three rounds of plasmapheresis done. The antibodies are found in my plasma, so these treatments will remove the plasma and the antibodies (until my body makes new ones.) The next week I will have my first round of IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin.) I’m still kind of confused about how all of this works, but supposedly the IVIG blocks my antibodies’ ability to attack the baby. I will have weekly IVIG treatments until I’m at least 20 weeks along (hoping I make it that far.) We will start MCA scans to check for anemia at 16 weeks (although I’m still kind of pushing the doctors to start at 15 weeks.) If the baby starts getting anemic, the doctors will have to do an IUT (intrauterine blood transfusion) on the baby. If the baby needs one before 20 weeks, I will be sent to either Cincinnati, Ohio or Houston, Texas to a hospital that is better equipped and more experienced with IUTs on babies so tiny. The smaller the baby, the harder it is to stick a needle into their tiny veins and get fresh blood to them. My doctors here in Alabama feel confident about doing an IUT after 20 weeks because the baby is bigger. They tried one on Lucy at 18 weeks and she died a week later.
If the baby is showing no signs of anemia, we might consider doing the amnio to make sure baby is kell negative. If he is, we will stop all treatments and I can enjoy the rest of the pregnancy. If we still feel nervous about doing the amnio, we will just taper off the treatments and monitor the baby very closely to make sure he isn’t getting anemic. If the baby is kell positive, we will stop the plasmapheresis and IVIG treatments sometime between 20-24 weeks and just treat the baby’s anemia with blood transfusions. Right now, I will be thrilled if this baby can just make it to 20 weeks so that he can get blood transfusions to save his life. I will be over the moon if this baby makes it to 26 weeks so that he can have a chance at life outside of the womb.
I think those are all of the basics. We are trying our best to stay hopeful about this baby and to trust God again. At times I feel like I am having dejavu, this feels so similar to how things were when I was pregnant with Lucy and then before I knew it, she was dead. We were told Lucy had an 80% chance of surviving the pregnancy. This baby has been given a 50% chance. God is not controlled by percentages, though, and just because that happened with Lucy, it does not mean the same thing will happen with this baby. I heard a verse in church a few weeks ago and I felt like it was for me. It filled me with hope.
Isaiah 43:19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
This baby is a new creation, a miracle in the making. This pregnancy does not have to mirror my pregnancy with Lucy and the outcome is not doomed from the start. God is doing a NEW thing and we can trust in His unfailing goodness and love. We have done our best in coming up with a good treatment plan, now all we can do is pray and trust that the doctors will try their hardest to save our baby and that God will NOT let us down, no matter what happens.
You can also play a BIG part in our baby’s treatment plan. You can pray. Specifically, please pray:
for the baby to have a good, strong heartbeat at the ten week ultrasound
that the placement of the port will go smoothly and that it will not get infected while it is in
that I will not get sick or have migraines (common side effects) while doing the treatments
that the baby is kell negative
that the treatments will work and the baby will live, even if he is kell positive
that the doctors will have wisdom while treating the baby and me
that our insurance will cover all of the treatments
that Josh and I will be flooded with peace and will be able to trust God to take care of our baby
that we will be able to love our boys well and still take care of them throughout the treatments and many doctor’s appointments, and that God will protect their hearts from more loss and tragedy
Thank you so much for sticking with us and praying for all of us. We couldn’t do it without you! We will keep you updated.
God has completely shocked us and blessed us beyond belief and it couldn’t have come at a better time. We desperately needed something encouraging to happen to us after losing Lucy, Jude, Pax and “Scarlet” in less than two years. I was steeling myself for yet another difficult Thanksgiving and Christmas without a baby in our arms or hope in our hearts. When I look at our Christmas tree I can’t help but imagine Lucy toddling over and pulling ornaments off, but it remains mostly untouched. I had envisioned this Christmas with our newborn Scarlet brightening up our family and had even thought through what I would buy her for Christmas, but once again there is no baby girl in our house to buy presents for. I was dreading this holiday season so much.
As many of you know, I had induced lactation to breastfeed Scarlet and had been pumping milk for a few months before October. Most women don’t ovulate when breastfeeding so I had not ovulated or had a period since May, right before I started the process of inducing lactation. Well, after the adoption fell through, I immediately started tapering off the pumping and eventually stopped altogether. I was waiting anxiously for my period to show up (sorry if it’s TMI for some of you guys) but it just wasn’t happening. One day I went to Target to stock up on tampons, thinking I would need them soon. While I was standing in the aisle, looking through the feminine products, my eyes wandered over and landed on the pregnancy tests. “NO” I thought, “surely not.” But I left the store with pregnancy tests and no tampons and quite a lot of guilt for wasting yet MORE money on pregnancy tests that would surely end up being negative. We tried to conceive for a whole year last year before pursuing adoption, so I have spent a lot of money on pregnancy tests. Well, I was completely SHOCKED when my pregnancy test was very positive.
My tests with Jude and Pax never got that dark, the line on the left was much lighter with them, so that was a good sign right from the start. The best way to describe how we felt after seeing the test was straight adrenaline. I felt like there was an emergency, I literally ran around the house holding the pregnancy test, not sure what to do (saying words that I will not repeat on this blog.) I felt like my baby needed saving immediately. I felt like someone should be calling 911. I was also overwhelmed with thankfulness. I thanked God over and over again. For days afterward I would stop randomly, close my eyes and imagine myself running up to Jesus in the flesh and embracing him, tears flowing down onto his shirt. Thank you, Jesus. What a wonderful gift from God, and right before the holidays too.
I had blood work drawn and on Thanksgiving day I got the results that the hcg hormone was rising perfectly, showing that the baby was growing just like he should be. That was our first hurdle in this long journey of obstacles to overcome, and we cleared it without a problem. Right now I am a little over 8 weeks pregnant and we have had 3 ultrasounds already to monitor baby. He (I just know it’s a boy) is looking great so far. We first saw his little heartbeat at 6 weeks and Josh and I both wept. I COULD NOT believe I was looking at my own baby’s heart beating, and oh how I want it to keep beating. I so desperately want my heart to stop beating before that little heart does one day many years from now. I am tired of out living my children.
We know that this baby has been given a 50% chance of surviving the pregnancy because of my extremely aggressive anti-kell antibodies. They will attack the baby if he has his Daddy’s blood type (a 50% chance) and possibly kill the baby in the 2nd or 3rd trimester. If the baby is kell negative, like me, it will be a normal pregnancy. The baby cannot be affected by the antibodies until around 15/16 weeks at the earliest, so if we lost him before that it would be because of a normal first trimester miscarriage that many women (unfortunately) experience. Right now we are working with my MFMs (high risk OBs) to finish up all the details on my treatment plan that I will share in a future post. We are doing things a bit differently than we did with Lucy in hopes that even if the baby is kell positive like Lucy, he can still have a chance of survival.
Today we are praising God for this beautiful new life so healthy and strong. We are praising Him for the perfect heartbeat we saw on the ultrasound yesterday. We are begging God to let us raise this baby on earth. Please pray for our baby. Pray that he is kell negative and that the pregnancy will be normal. Please pray for our doctors, that they would have wisdom to know exactly how to treat the baby and me. Pray that Josh and I would be courageous and hopeful and that we would be able to trust God to take care of our baby. Thank you all for your continued support. We are so grateful to have so many wonderful people on this new, scary journey with us.
Here is our ultrasound picture from yesterday. Our beautiful little sea creature 🙂
This ache for her, this absence in our family, the missing her. It never goes away. Today I was at the playground with Asher and my niece and nephew. Right when we got there I noticed a baby girl Lucy’s age toddling around. My pulse began to race immediately and the anxiety started to grow. I didn’t want to acknowledge her, didn’t want to talk to the mom, didn’t want to see the cute skinny jeans she was wearing that looked just like a pair I bought Lucy that now sit folded in a box in the shed. The baby walked up in front of me and stared at me, hoping for some eye contact and a smile. I heard her mom call her, “Come back over here Lucy!” I felt the breath knocked out of me. My heart literally felt like it was breaking, it was a physical pain. I started crying and my fingers and hands started to tingle and go numb just like they did that one time I hyperventilated years ago. “I have a daughter in heaven named Lucy,” I said through tears, “She would have been her age. She was stillborn.” The mother was very kind and said she was so sorry and that she had recently had a miscarriage so she knew just a tiny bit of how I was feeling. Hours later I am still crying and aching for her. It is still so hard to believe that she is not here.
She will always be missing. I will always be losing Lucy, for the rest of my life. Losing all the moments on the playground and the Christmases and the chubby cheeks and the skinny jeans and the smell of her hair and her wedding day. The depth of the loss is just unfathomable sometimes.
I miss my baby Lucy. I miss having a girl. I miss pigtails and dresses and bloomers. I miss seeing my boys with their baby sister. I miss seeing Josh with his daughter. It feels like I just lost her yesterday, the pain is so fresh. It never goes away- my love for her and my want for her. The ache for my daughter, it just never goes away.
Many people have expressed their outrage and disbelief at Kailee and Peter’s actions. LOTS of you have asked that we share Kailee and Peter’s information on my blog so that people will be protected from them in the future (which I plan to do in an upcoming post.) Others have asked what kind of legal action we can take against them for their adoption fraud or breech of contract or whatever you want to call it. Theft with malicious intent is what I would call it. Some of you have suggested that we show up at her door and tell her exactly what we think of her. Another suggestion, since we always ordered pizza for her, was to have a pizza delivered to her door with a special message (that Josh strongly advised me not to share on my blog) spelled out in pepperoni (especially meaningful since she is a vegetarian.) Some of you have suggested that we get a good lawyer or go with an agency next time. The truth is, we have had a good lawyer this whole time and even if we had stuck with the agency, Kailee could have done the same thing to us. All of the bills and expenses we paid for her and her family were legal in Alabama, as long as we knew they were considered “charity” and were not given in exchange for the baby. We never gave her cash and we were careful to only pay for the things we were supposed to pay for a birth mother. There are lots of laws in place to protect the birth parents, but not many to protect the adoptive parents. We knew the risk. Many people, including our lawyer, told us over and over again that she could change her mind in the end and choose to parent the baby. We were fine with that risk and we wanted Kailee to make the choice she felt comfortable with. It was glaringly obvious to us, though, from the beginning, that she would not parent this baby. I never doubted that she would place this baby for adoption. Not once did anyone warn us that she could end up placing the baby with another couple right at the end. It never crossed our minds that she would be texting me one day and literally giving birth the next day and handing Scarlet/Ava over to someone else. We were not prepared for her to just completely cut off contact with us and leave us hanging.
Any time anyone decides that they want to be a parent, they put themselves at great risk, whether it is a biological baby or an adopted baby that they are trying for. We knew that we were putting ourselves at risk when we decided to pursue adoption. I still think she was worth it. I feel good that we gave her a chance and we gave Kailee a chance to place her baby in an amazing family. There are no legal actions we can take against Kailee and Peter since we can’t PROVE that they were getting money from anyone else while we were paying all of their bills and living expenses. There are no contracts signed in an adoption agreement before the baby is born (unless the birth parents say they want to sign the adoption papers ahead of time in front of a judge, which they didn’t.) Even if Kailee and Peter had signed the adoption papers before she was born, they had up to five days after the birth to change their minds. They weren’t bound to us by the law just because we were paying their bills. The thing they were NOT allowed to do was lead on several families at the same time and promise them all that they could adopt the baby while receiving money or gifts from them.
Even if we could sue Kailee and Peter, they have no money to give us. I know we all want to see them pay for what they have done. It is natural to want justice, but trust me when I say that their life and the guilt that they have to live with is punishment enough. They live in poverty and they struggle mentally, emotionally, socially, physically, relationally, the list goes on and on. Can you imagine what a depressing life you would have to have to spend so much time and energy deceiving other people and using your own child to make money instead of just getting a job? It truly is a sad existence. More than anger, disbelief or disgust, the main feeling I have towards Kailee is pity.
I don’t want this horrible story to deter anyone from adoption. I know there are even worse horror stories than ours when it comes to adoption, but there are so many more beautiful adoption stories that end with joy. All you can do is your best, which is what we did, and understand that opening yourself up to a child also opens you up to risk. And aren’t these babies worth it? I think so.
We have been so disheartened and discouraged lately, it is hard to believe we are back at square one. I still can’t believe all of the work we did and all of the money saved and donated did not end in our rainbow baby. Four times in the past two years we have opened our hearts to another baby and every time we have been bitterly disappointed. It is hard for me not to compare my story with other people’s stories. Most of theirs seem to end with a live baby. I wish that God could have put me on a forward moving track like all of the other baby loss moms. A track that leads to rainbow babies and healing and joy after the loss. Instead, it seems like He has us on this nightmare circle track that goes around and around with loss, loss and more loss. I am afraid of what He has waiting for me around the next turn. I feel skittish and nervous when I ask Him what He wants us to do next. I hate that. I wish I could hear Him clearly and know exactly what He wants us to do and then go do it with courage.
We were so close to our rainbow baby. I was so close to that healing feeling of a warm body nestled on my chest. Josh has recurring nightmares of working and working to build a high wall and right when he is about to put the final brick in the wall, someone comes and smashes it to pieces, the rubble falling all around his feet. I feel the same way, except now we are left with no more bricks and no way to build the wall up again. Kailee took them all. We feel incredibly low and defeated but we are not giving up. We are trying to decide what to do next in our family building journey. Our options are:
stop with our two on earth
become foster parents
try again naturally with a 50% chance of stillbirth
IVF with PGD
give adoption another try
use a sperm donor
try embryo adoption
How I wish I could just get pregnant again and have another baby. Each one of these options comes with a hefty price, some financial and some emotional. Each one comes with some amount of risk. We have looked at all of them extensively and we are praying a lot. Honestly though, right now we don’t have much confidence in our ability to hear what God is telling us since it seems like He leads us into disaster again and again. The IVF with PGD could bring us a healthy, biological baby, but it would end up being at least $30,000, so that is not an option for us. We don’t feel good about the sperm donor idea and we aren’t even sure if they could track down the sperm donor to test him for kell (kell positive blood type=stillbirth, kell negative blood type =normal pregnancy.) I don’t think we are willing to try adoption again since a birth mother could do the same thing to us again legally and there isn’t anything we can do to prevent it. Kailee has made it hard for us to ever trust another birth mother again. Thinking about it makes me feel sick. I don’t think I would be able to support a birth mother well through her pregnancy and birth. I would always be suspicious.
So, what we’re left with is stopping with our two, trying again naturally with a 50% chance of stillbirth, becoming foster parents or trying embryo adoption. Right now we are leaning towards embryo adoption, since we still have a home study and family profile that could be salvaged. I spoke with a woman from the Nightlight adoption agency last week. She was so kind and she prayed with me over the phone. She said it would be easy to test the genetic parents for kell and that Josh and I sounded like good candidates for embryo adoption. I could have a normal pregnancy and be pregnant with my adopted child. How amazing does that sound? The only problem is that it would cost around $11,000 (which we don’t have.) I don’t have the heart to fundraise or ask anyone to donate since I still feel tremendously guilty about losing everyone’s money on our “adoption.” We will probably try to save up the money to try embryo adoption in the future. In the meantime, we are considering foster care. It is the one option we have never even looked into before now since it comes with such a high emotional risk. I don’t know how I could love and take care of a baby and then give her back, especially after losing Lucy. But lately we have been drawn to the idea. We have EVERYTHING we need for a baby- a complete nursery, baby girl and baby boy clothes (I still have all of Liam and Asher’s clothes) carseats, a van, two stable parents and so much love to give. It wouldn’t cost us anything except courage. A foster baby could end up being our adopted baby, but we would first have to do everything possible to reunify that baby with the birth parents. We are still praying about what to do.
This morning I was so sad and disheartened and completely overwhelmed with my life so I decided to run to God with my fears and questions (even though part of me wanted to just run away from Him.) I read Isaiah 41:10. If there ever was one verse for my life it is this one. God has brought it back to me again and again during scary times in my life. I remember reading this verse over and over when I was lost for three days in Tokyo and Osaka (long, ridiculous story.) I had this verse written on a notecard with me when I was laboring and giving birth to all three of my children. It has strengthened and encouraged me so much.
Do not be afraid for I am with you, do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
I have always focused on the “do not be afraid” part because I am usually in the middle of being afraid of something. Today I noticed “do not be dismayed for I am your God.” Dismayed is EXACTLY how I have been feeling.
DISMAY– To break down the courage of completely, as by sudden danger or trouble; dishearten thoroughly; daunt. To deprive a person of courage or the power to act as a result of fear or anxiety. A sense of helplessness caused by an awareness of the enormity of something.
Even though we have an underlying peace, we are feeling more and more dismayed with our situation as we try to decide what is next. God tells me not to be dismayed because He is my God. We are trusting Him to strengthen us and help us yet again while we deal with this new loss and all of the hurt that comes with it. We still feel strongly that God has more children for us. We are not going to let Kailee’s act of evil determine how our family growing journey ends. Please pray that we can trust God again and do what He wants and if it is embryo adoption, that He would show us how to fund it. Thank you again for your many prayers and kind words of support.
Dear Kailee,
Since you so abruptly cut off all communication with us I feel like I am lacking closure. I am hoping to find some with this letter to you. Since I’m pretty sure you are not checking my emails to you, maybe you will find your way to this letter on my blog. I have so many questions. Was this your plan all along? Did you pick Adam and Gary at the beginning or at the end of your pregnancy? Were you lying to us the whole time? Did you see our deep love for your baby and take advantage of our vulnerability? Did you see all of our pain after losing our babies and think, “They look like good targets”? Did you do this to another loving family last year with Ben’s adoption too? Are you going to do this again with a different, trusting family next year with another sweet baby? Did you make this rash decision to pick another family after I finally set up some boundaries and told you that no, I would not be able to buy you $40 worth of pizza at the end of September because we didn’t have the money. We had just bought a van and a house that month. We didn’t have money to spend on frivolity. Do you know that we don’t even order pizza like that for ourselves because it’s too expensive? We go get a frozen pizza from Walmart and cook it at home to save money. Was that the reason you picked someone else to adopt “Scarlet”?
It is interesting how different Gary and Adam are from our own family. It is hard for me to believe that you just suddenly had a change of heart right at the end and decided to go with a family that was the opposite of ours. If you wanted your daughter to be raised by Adam and Gary, why didn’t you just go with them from the beginning? What was the point of dragging our family into it? Was it worth a few months of free rent and gas money to you? Why did you want to meet my children and my parents if you knew they weren’t going to be Ava’s grandparents and big brothers? Thank goodness I never let my boys meet you.
Were you actually going to the doctor the whole time and sending Adam and Gary the ultrasound pictures and updates while I stressed out week after week about the baby’s wellbeing? Do you understand how many people you have hurt? You have made people question the goodness of humanity, the existence of God and the very practice of adoption. Why did you give Ava the middle name that I picked out to honor my Mama-E? I cannot wrap my mind around that one. Part of me hopes that every time you see Ava’s middle name you are overcome with guilt and your heart burns with remorse for what you have done. I have so many questions, so many. I know they probably will never be answered.
Words are powerful. Part of me wants to rip you apart with my words right here for everyone to see. I could. I know things about you that no one else knows since you confided in me and leaned on me for emotional support all those months. People want justice. They want to see you punished for what you have done. They want to see you hurt. But I won’t tear you down with my words because I serve a loving God and He tells me to LOVE people like you.
If there is any one thing you remember from this letter I hope it is this:
I FORGIVE YOU
I forgive you for all the money you wasted and all the pain you have brought on my family, on my friends and on all the hopeful people around the world who have followed our story. I forgive you for all the ways you hurt me and my sweet husband and my little boys. I forgive you because God forgave me when I was nothing but a horrible sinner. I will pray for little Ava for the rest of my life, because that is what my Mama-E would have wanted me to do if she were alive today. Every time you see Ava’s middle name, Mae, I want you to remember that I forgive you and that God will too if you ask Him. I hope Ava grows up to be like my amazing Mama-E. I still love your children, J and A. They are so sweet. I will pray for them also for the rest of my life. And lastly, I will pray for you to find God’s peace and forgiveness in your own life. There truly is nothing like it. If all of this heartache ended with you turning to God and knowing Him and understanding His love for you, then it was worth it for me.
With love and unbreakable hope,
Bethany
Many of you have been wondering how we are doing after being devastated by Kailee and Peter and their cruelty. Obviously, we are sad, we are trying to adjust to not having “Scarlet” in our family like we thought we would. We are deeply hurt by what Kailee and Peter did to us and we have no idea what to do next, especially now that we don’t have any money left. We are still in shock and can’t believe people like this actually exist in the world.
But, we still have so much hope. My heart has been filled with the most astounding peace over the last few days, and more than anything, I feel deeply loved and highly favored by my God. With this one act of hate, came many, many acts of love and kindness afterwards by our family, friends and even people we have never met in person. People have lavished love on us through encouraging words, prayers, delicious meals, beautiful flowers, gifts for the boys, chocolate, cake, cookies, and more. Some of you who donated to the “adoption” have said you would be willing to help us again with another fundraiser in the future (which totally blows my mind!) There is even comfort in the collective outrage around the world at what Kailee and Peter have done. For some reason, it helps to know that others are just as disgusted and angry as we are.
Not only is there a sense of peace, but there is a huge sense of relief. We did all we could, we truly did our best. We asked God to show us what He wanted us to do and we obeyed. This is His story, and He is writing it and so much of it is out of our control. The relief comes in knowing that I won’t have to have a lifetime relationship with Kailee now. She can never affect my family again, and she won’t be the birth mom or first mom of my baby. The last five months have been EXTREMELY stressful for us as we tried to interact with Kailee on a healthy level, to manage the finances of the adoption wisely, to deal with Kailee’s strange behavior and try to protect the baby through all of it. There was SO much anxiety about whether the baby was ok, since Kailee was taking some serious drugs and not going to the doctor at all. She flippantly told us that it was a high risk pregnancy because of the medications she was on, but that she “didn’t have the gas money” to get to the doctor, even though we sent her gas cards. Also, we were anticipating a long NICU stay (I think the baby might still be in the NICU, probably detoxing.) All of these stressors have lifted, so there is a sense of relief.
I am slowly decreasing my pumping and still storing breast milk every day. I have decided that unless someone just drops a baby in our laps in the next couple of months, I will be donated all of this breast milk to the NICU or to another adoptive mama who wants to give her baby breast milk. The thought of another baby getting the breast milk makes me so happy. I feel happy when I think of the GOOD things that can come out of this betrayal. I am determined not to let evil win. I am even burning the candle I bought for Kailee and had ready in her hospital gift basket right now and it smells so good. I have no idea how I can enjoy it, but I am. I will also be enjoying the calming tea, bubble bath, lotion and book that is in “her” basket. Maybe God knew I would need to be pampered after this 🙂
One thought keeps coming back to me and it comforts me so much. At least I’m not her. She has to live with this guilt on her conscience for the rest of her life. She used her own daughter as a pawn, a way to make money, and she has to live with that. She lives in poverty and her children have hard lives. I have so much goodness and love in my life and my conscience is clear. I have a beautiful new house, my two healthy boys and a loving husband. We are supported by so many amazing, caring people who continue to show us the love of Christ. Our families are supportive and helpful. God assures us constantly of His love for us, even in this dark time. My boys seriously have the best lives. We are almost spoiled by the goodness and blessings in our lives. At least I am not her.
I think the thing that has helped us survive this loss the most is the enormous amount of prayers that have been said on our behalf. Every one of them makes a huge difference. Every one of you makes a difference. Thank you so much for your love, prayers and support through all of this. You have truly helped us and encouraged us so much.
Before “Scarlet” arrived, I repeatedly reminded myself that a new baby would not satisfy me or complete my life. I knew that if I expected her to do that I would be very let down. Only God can complete me and fulfill my deepest desires. Now, here I am again in this familiar place of loss. My arms are not heavy with the weight of my new, warm baby and I am ok. I am at peace.
Philippians 4:11-13 for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.
