My motherhood journey - not what I expected!

Hello everyone, I hope this post finds you healthy and blessed. Last post ended with our daughter being born... Now, let's go back to that day, how we managed to get through it and wait two full days before the birthmom consented to the adoption. The day our daughter was born was exciting and scary at the same time. My husband and I decided to fill our day with errands. Anything to just keep us busy. Yet, no matter how hard we kept busy, it was hard not to think about it. We both kept checking our phones constantly. Later in the day, we visited friends who graciously gave us some baby items. As I was catching up with our friend, my husband received a call and left the room. He came back quickly and said:"We have to go." ... and so, we left. In the car, he let me know that our daughter was born, that she was okay and healthy and now, we had to wait... We had to wait two full days to know if she would be ours. We had already waited so long to be parents, another two days wo...

Hello everyone, I hope this post finds you healthy and blessed. Everyone has a story - dating story, engagement story, wedding story, loss, adoption and any story related to an important life event. For this reason, I have decided to start a six-part series on our adoption journey. The posts will recount the events that took place before and after bringing our children home. As a disclaimer, this is our story and it may look very different from yours or the story you have heard from a friend. So, let's begin! In 2017, we received our Green Card. For those of you who are not familiar with this, it is essentially a government issued document that provides you with permanent resident status in a country. As Canadians living in the United States, this Green Card - who is actually green - you need this to work in the country. In our case, we also needed it to allow us to proceed with an adoption. I will never forget the day it arrived in our mail box. I, literally, ran back to our home ...

Hello everyone,   I hope this post finds you healthy and blessed. We often hear about women experiencing postpartum depression, after giving birth. But what about adoptive mothers? Do they experience something similar? This is today’s topic. I will link down below the online blog post that inspired me together with the book that I read on this matter.   When we started our first adoption process, our social worker gave us a couple of books to read about adoption. The nerd in me was extremely excited to start reading them – which I did. One topic caught my attention: post-adoption depression or also known as the “Baby Blues”. I found it interesting that even if a woman does not experience childbirth, she can still undergo some sort of postpartum depression.   I would just like to preface that postpartum depression is serious and should not be dismissed. It is not just a “sad” moment in a mother’s life – it can become dangerous if the mother does not get pro...

Hello everyone, I hope this post finds you healthy and blessed. Was planning on posting about another subject, but it was not flowing easily as I was drafting it and so, this is today's topic: unknown medical histories of your children via adoption. There is a huge misconception about adoption and health. Many think you only adopt children who are sick - terminally sick. While it is true that you can adopt a child that may be sick, the same can happen when conceiving naturally. In addition, when you start an adoption process, you are asked if you are open to children with a variety of medical conditions. To say that only sick children get adopted is a lie and this myth will be dispelled in a future post. When we started adopting, we were open to any child. This meant that race, gender and medical history were not a concern for us. Yes, we were a bit scared about having a child that had medical challenges, but we also knew that no matter the child, God would grant us the grace to ta...

Hello everyone,   I hope this post finds you healthy and blessed.   I decided to do something a little different for today’s post. I picked out ten questions, from various websites, that people often ask about adoption and will be answering them from my perspective and experience. I will link the articles that I took the questions from below so you can check them out.   Here we go!   1)     Why did we choose adoption?   We chose adoption because we wanted to be parents. I always wanted to be a mom and he always wanted to be dad. Since we were not able to conceive naturally, we knew that adoption was right for us.   2)     When do you plan on telling your children they are adopted?   To be honest, they already know. Now, do they fully understand, being that they are three, almost two and one? Probably not! Still, I started telling them they were adopted from the moment they were brought home. Whet...

Hello everyone,   I hope this post finds you healthy and blessed.   When adoption became real - when we knew it would be the only way to grow our family - I would be lying if I said I had fears about it. I honestly did not. Sure, there were concerns and apprehensions, those were a normal part of the adventure. Yet, there were no fears. This is today's topic!   Before I start, I want to make it clear that this is my story. While I did not experience any fears about the process, it does not mean that someone else will feel the same.   For me, fear occurs when I am not comfortable and feel an imminent danger with whatever situation or person around me. It paralyzes me and renders me unable to go along with normal activities. If I base fear on my own definition of it, then, I can honestly share I had no fears when it came to adoption.   What I did experience, as I mentioned earlier, were normal concerns. For example: what if we ...

Hello everyone,   I hope this post finds you healthy and blessed.   When we started our adoption journey, four years ago, we were overwhelmed with all the paperwork, legal documents, pictures, stories, classes and the home study. It was during the home study that my mental health came into question. To give you a bit of background, I was diagnosed in the fall of 2016 with moderate to severe depression. I underwent treatment – anti-depressants – and therapy. When we were ready to start the process, my depression was under control and I had received a clean bill of health from both my family doctor and therapist.   I should add that we adopted domestically, meaning that our children were born in the USA. Why does it matter? Because when it comes to medical history, more specifically mental illness, where you choose to adopt can be the difference between an approval and a clear rejection.   As I searched the web for articles or anything related to both...

Hello everyone,   I hope this post finds you feeling healthy and blessed.   It is a misconception to believe that infertile women who adopt stop feeling sad about being infertile. Many have been surprised at the fact that, although I am the mother of three children, I still experience sadness in not having been pregnant. This is today’s topic!   In a coffee shop, I was meeting up with a friend. She had recently been married and already was facing infertility issues. It surprised her when I told her I still felt sad when others would announce their pregnancies. She thought I had “gotten over it”. It then got me thinking…why and how could one assume such a thing? At the time, I don’t think I knew what to answer. It took reading a few online articles to be able to sort out what I was feeling.   The one that caught my attention and could relate to was the article “Buying the Lie” written by Amanda Ackerman. You can find this article on the website of Adop...

Hello everyone, I hope this post finds you healthy and blessed.   Since the arrival of our daughter, who is of mixed race, we have learned a lot about skin and hair care and how to navigate sticky situations with family and strangers. These were things that although I knew would happen, were things I was not always prepared for.   During the adoption process, we attended a seminar on transracial adoptions. It opened my eyes to things and circumstances I never thought of. The people who had graciously come to share their experience, made us aware of what was to come and how we could prepare for it. For example, it never occurred to us that we needed to teach our children – two of mixed race and one Caucasian – how to interact with the police – should they get stopped.   There have been some bumps along the way – and more to come - but I have come to learn a few things and would like to share them with you. Here is my top five!   1)   ...

Hello everyone, I hope this post finds you healthy and blessed. I have been busy with school and was not able to post yesterday. We have three children via adoption. We chose to have confidential adoptions, meaning that physical contact is not possible. We are, however, obligated to provide pictures and updates according to a set schedule. These updates, provided via a web portal, allow the birthparent to look at pictures and read letters, when they are able and ready to. The birthparents can also message through the said web portal. Without going into details, there are some updates that are not looked at. It, initially, got me worried and my first thought was: "I must have posted a picture or said something in the letter that made them mad." It was after speaking with our social worker that it became clear, that this was not a "ME" issue, but a birthmom wanting to take their time in dealing with the adoption. The other concern that is more valid, is how to deal wi...

Hello everyone, I hope this post finds you safe and healthy. Weather is getting warmer, but we still need to do our part in stopping the spread of Covid-19.   It is very common to look at one’s children and find the similarities within the family. In our home, it is not possible since all three of our children are adopted. Furthermore, the rest of our siblings have biological children – such that our children are the only adoptees in our family. That is the topic of this post!   Oh, he looks just like Grandpa! Oh, she has the same nose as her aunt Lily! Things you hear when you look at pictures of the kids. But, when your kids are the only adopted ones, those comments do not bring much joy. Instead, they may cause alienation and distance between your kids and the rest of the family.   I completely understand the comments, because, I am the first to say them. However, with that being said, I have become more aware and conscious of how they may affect my childr...

Hello everyone,   Please accept my apologies for not having posted in a while. It has been busy with school and I was also recovering from a back injury – my oldest son decided to use my back as a trampoline…   I hope this post finds you well, safe and healthy. We are closer to the end of this pandemic but we still need to wear our masks, practice social distancing and wash our hands.   Ever since we told people we were adopting, we were bombarded with so much advice. Much of it, to be honest, came from people who never adopted. As for those who had, they would tell us about the downfall of adoption and, at times, it was not positive at all.   Don’t get me wrong: advice is great! However, advice is often based on one’s own personal experience. This is problematic because one finds themselves projecting their own experience on the other person – and realistically, you have no idea what the other person is actually going through. So, most of the advice,...