“And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.”
Matthew 18:5
Our whole family is so excited to share the news that we’re awaiting a baby sister to join our family through adoption! (Applause and wild cheers here!) We’re happy you’ve come to check on our adoption adventure and come alongside us to help bring our baby girl home. We can’t wait to meet her and share all the joys of parenthood with you all over again! If you’ve come to see how you can help, please check out Our Financial Goals page and Fundraising page as they’ll guide you to all the current opportunities we have going on. Also read through our Blog for a full update on where we are in the process and how it’s been so far.
How this all got started…
We were married in 2007 and decided a couple years later we were ready to start a family. We became pregnant only to lose the baby before our first OB appointment at 9 weeks. We were devastated and weren’t given any reason for the loss other than it just wasn’t meant to be.
We went on to have two healthy boys, Jackson and Harrison, born only 17 months apart. When we decided to add another to our team, it was at our 15 week OB appointment that we found our baby no longer had a heartbeat. This seemed to be a harder blow to recover from because we were past the worst chances of miscarrying and didn’t see it coming at all. Our OB doctor decided to try some different medications to help sustain our pregnancies and we ended up having Emerson over a year later.
When we thought we were finished, God opened our hearts to the idea of having a fourth child. We tried and lost another baby at 9 weeks. There was so much heartache that we had experienced up to this point but we decided we wanted to give it one more try as we already had our hearts set on being a family of six. After some tests were ran, we found out Katie has a slight blood clotting disorder that could have caused the miscarriages so she got started on a baby asprin and some other medications and we were became pregnant once again.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Jeremiah 29:11
Right from the beginning it wasn’t a normal pregnancy though. Katie hemorrhaged around 9 weeks and had a very painful pregnancy that ended abruptly at 13 weeks when the hemorrhage became so large it caused the miscarriage. The miscarriage caused Katie to lose a lot of blood and led to two blood transfusions, an overnight stay at the hospital, and over five weeks of building up her strength again just to do normal daily activities. She was told she was lucky to be alive. At our follow-up OB appointment after the loss, we were told by our doctor it was too risky to get pregnant again as it could be life threatening yet again to Katie – her body could no longer carry a pregnancy safely. It’s so hard to think after a total of seven pregnancies and losing four sweet, tiny babies that there would be any luck of growing our family further.
We still felt the pull to grow our family further though so after much thought and prayer, God has put adoption on our hearts. Although this baby won’t be of our own bodies, she is already a part of our hearts as we pray for her and her mom and dad daily. That’s why we love this name, “Family Redesigned,” for our website. It wasn’t the design we had in mind for our family, but God is redesigning it to be even better than we could have ever imagined.
“Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.”
Proverbs 19:21
Why a girl? Haha, although it might be a little obvious, we have three boys already and we all agreed it be great to have a little more girl power in the house. 🙂 Katie dreams of the dresses, tutus, and bows this little girl will wear and hopes she likes cupcakes!
For our four little boys (we just assumed they were all boys) that we lost before we got to hold, we miss you. You are not forgotten. We look forward to day we get to meet you in Heaven!
Paxton Malachi, was due August 22, 2010
Samson Josiah, was due June 26, 2015
Grayson Noah, was due May 16, 2018
Carson Samuel, was due October 10, 2018