Our Baby Girl is Here!

I Love Her!!!!







Yes, it all happened VERY FAST! We got the call Monday the 23rd (our two year wedding anniversary) that baby would be induced at midnight that night...so we booked a flight and flew thru the night! It was a long delivery and she ended up having a c-section the next night!! So... on April 24th at 8:16pm (California time) our baby girl was born. She weighed 7lbs and 10oz., and was 21 inches long!! :-) She has a head FULL of hair :-) From the time she was born we have been the parents and she has been with us (you know, staying in our room, us feeding her, changing her etc)!! :-) The doctor checked her out and said she was perfectly healthy! She eats great and is a very pleasant baby, only crying when she is hungry or needs to be changed.

Although it was believed that she would be discharged tomorrow (the 26th), after her blood tests today we found out she has an infection that is causing her blood count to be abnormal. She was moved to the Children's Hospital and now we are unsure of when she will be discharged. If the antibiotics work then it will be a few days more but if something else happens it could be longer, we are very thankful that the infection was caught this early. So please pray for her :-) And her mother... the c-section was rough on her.

I know, I know... we didn't mention a name... its because we hadn't decided on one yet. We sort of decided tonight but i want to make sure we stick with it before announcing it haha.

Thanks!!!

PRAY PRAY PRAY

Update! Going to be induced!!

Journal:

This past Thursday Kyle tells me that he just “has a feeling” that we will get a call on Monday (our anniversary) about the baby. Well Saturday, April 21^st, we get an update on the young mother and baby - the doctor said that this will be a May delivery – which is what they anticipated anyway. Over the weekend we spent time with my side of the family hanging out. My sister had prom so I got to take pictures of her and both she and my brother had games (soccer and softball) that we got to go to. Monday (April 23^rd) was our two year wedding anniversary! We knew that at some point in the next few weeks we would be traveling to California for baby so we decided not to do anything big on our anniversary because the Cali trip would be our anniversary celebration! J Kyle still wanted to do something sweet so he got up extra early and ran to town to get me some flowers for me to wake up to! It was really sweet and nice to relax with him in the morning before he had to go to work. We had a nice lunch together – I made a pizza and we had an hour to spend time together just having fun. Around 3:30pm I was watching Dr. Phil and I saw that I was getting a call from the Southern California area. I knew the woman we had been working with from Project Cuddle was going to be out of town so she told me about the other woman who would be taking her place – Jenann. I assumed that Jenann was calling to introduce her self and give us another update since our young mother was going to start going for appointments three times a week. Anyway, so she introduced herself and we talked for a minute and she said something like “Well they will be inducing her around midnight tonight so if you can get a flight as soon as possible that would be great!” WHAT?? I was floored! So goes on to tell me that she went in for her appointment and her blood pressure was up and she had levels of Toxemia in her system so they wanted to induce her before it got serious. WOW! So I call Kyle and remind him about his “feeling” of getting a call on Monday our anniversary! I jump online and look at last minute deals and call United. They previously told us that we could use the “emergency flight” to get a discount but now they were saying since she wasn’t a blood relative it didn’t apply! Ugh!! So we book two tickets on a one way flights from Chicago to Los Angeles and we book a car rental near the LAX airport to drive to the Hospital in Orange, California! Our flight leaves at 10:10pm in Chicago (11:10pm in Indiana) and arrives around 12:45am in Los Angeles (3:45am in Indiana)! We get to the car rental place around 1:15am (4:15am in Indiana) and drive to the Hospital – we arrive there around 2:00am (5:00am in Indiana). We park in a parking garage and walk for like 5 blocks trying to find the right part of the hospital – there were these huge Hospital buildings all over the place, it was so confusing and I was so tired!! We finally found where we were supposed to be and met with Julie. We were able to stay in the Family Waiting room and after about a half hour around 2:30am Julie brought our young mother’s mother in to meet us! It was very nerve racking but we decided that it is only as awkward as you make it, so when she came in I gave her a hug and we started talking. We talked for about 2 hours about so many different things (about her daughter, their family situation, and the way they have overcome these circumstances with Christ’s help). It was so encouraging to talk with her and hear her heart. So many people that find themselves in terrible situations react negatively and turn away from God – but these situations have brought their family closer to God and they are leaning on him in this difficult time. Our young mother was induced at midnight and the baby was expected around 7am, but now they were telling us that they expected the baby around noon. Around 5:30am (8:30am in Indiana) we head to get something to eat at the nearby Carl’s Jr. We get back around 6:30am and our young mother told the Project Cuddle worker that the nurses at the hospital said we could use the “bonding room”! So we were able to go and sleep for a while … a long while… It was hard to sleep real well but I slept off and on from 6:30am to 1pm which really helped me feel better. Kyle was only able to sleep for about three hours because it’s hard for him to sleep without a fan. They told us that they would come get us when things started progressing. It was around 1:30pm when we walked to get some lunch. When we left they said she measured 5 cm dialation. We stopped by CVS after eating at Taco Bell and then stopped at a baby store. We got lost again on the way back to the hospital – but we made it. Now its 5:15pm on April 24th and baby still isn’t here. We are hanging out in the bonding room and Kyle has been watching the Deadliest Catch marathon on Discovery channel. Wow! So the last 48 hours has been absolutely crazy!

Update #3

We got another update from Julie today :-) Our baby's mother had another doctor appointment yesterday! She has only a slight level of Toxemia and her blood pressure is good! She measured at 1 cm dialation. Julie reported that the doctor wants to start seeing her three times a week until the delivery (so they can keep a good eye on her I suppose) but she was gonna double check on that because it seemed like a lot to her. Today or tomorrow our young mother will be meeting with the staff from Project Cuddle to talk with her and see how she is doing and feeling about all of this.
Things are getting closer and closer! Its so hard to believe that this is actually happening!! We are just getting so excited! Kyle came home today and said: "I have a feeling she is gonna have the baby on Monday - you know, since its our anniversary." Yep, it will be our two year anniversary on April 23rd!! Its weird because we last year we had all these plans - I surprised Kyle with a weekend at Ohio visiting the NFL Hall Of Fame (a place he has always wanted to go), staying in a hotel, and buying our first car together! Now... for our second anniversary we are making plans for a baby!!! Crazy isn't it!? We are going to visit my parents this weekend and Kyle was talking about getting his clothes and he said "We may get the call about the baby while we are down there so I better pack the clothes that I'll want when we go to California." Its so true... any minute we could get "the call". We are hoping it will be at least a couple more weeks so baby can develop and not be in any danger... It will be good to hear how the next appointment goes!!!

Update #2 -

We got a call from Julie from Project Cuddle on Friday, April 13th about our baby's mother. Apparently she had missed the last two appointments with the doctor so Debbie from Project Cuddle talked with her mom to make sure she understood the importance of them. Her pregnancy is a "high risk" pregnancy because they found out so late into it that she was even pregnant, so until March 27th she didn't have any prenatal care. She is also young which plays a factor into it. Anyway, so she went to her appointment on April 12th at the doctor's office and they pushed her due date back from May 4th to May 12th. They still think that she will be delivering two weeks early though. We are so excited!!! It feels like its coming up fast but then part of me feels like its just dragging along.

She also had a meeting with the counselor from the agency that we hired out there. She really liked the counselor and had a good session so we are happy about that! She was also asking more questions about us and asked if she could have our Dear Birth Mother Letter that we had written to her (it is what she based her choice of parents on). She also asked if she could have our picture :-) We are excited about that too :-) We can't wait to meet her and her mother at the hospital with our new little baby!!

I'll be updating again on Thursday or Friday after her next doctor's appointment!

preperations...

(pic on left is me w/ Jon and Tammy)...... (pic on right is the guest house)

It has been two weeks to the day since we got our first contact call from project cuddle. SO much as happened and I can't believe how fast things are going! We are going to be using Bethany Christian Services for our agency out there which we are really excited about! We have our attorney here figured out, our car rental situation figured out and where we will be staying! My aunt Tammy & uncle Jon who live near San Diego said that we could use their guest house for our time there. We will have to be there about 7-10 business days, which isn't bad considering where we will be staying!! It was be wonderful to see them and spend time with them all to ourselves! Usually we have to share them with all my family so this will be great!! We also may get to see a few friends while we are out there (Jenna and Sylvina) and some of my family down in 29 Palms!!

Originally we thought Kyle may stay and work and my mom would come out with me instead, then my dad thought about coming and then my brother Johnny (he is 21) wanted to come. We were gonna make it a big family thing haha. However, the more we thought about it we decided that it would be just Kyle and I - it is going to be so special for us both to be there for the first two weeks of our baby's life!!

So now... all we are doing is waiting!!! I am trying to finish up my counseling at the Addictions Recovery Center and at the High School so that way I will be completely done before we leave. I don't have any more papers or tests until finals which makes things less stressful!

Julie from Project Cuddle said that there is a possibility that they may set a day to induce her since it would be "convenient" for the doctors, so that would be great for us... other wise we will have to wait for the BIG call telling us she is in labor!! She is due May 4th, but they think because of her age that she will deliver around April 20th... we will see!! our 2nd wedding anniversary is April 23rd so this will be our big present!!!

We got THE call!!!

We found out on Tuesday, March 27th that Project Cuddle would be presenting five families to a young mother in Fullerton, California, and if we wanted - we would be one of those couples. We said yes and the next day we found out that she really liked us and chose us to adopt her baby! Not so fast... because she was so young, they wanted her to be certain of her choice, so they said they would show her five more families. They did, and the next day we found out that she still was set on us!!! We are so excited about our chance to become parents!!

We are unsure where to go from here... We can't really get plane tickets since we don't know when she will be having the baby for sure. We will need to stay in California for several days until all the paperwork and legal stuff is done which is great because we have family out there about an hour from the hospital! Now we just need to get all the details together!

We are scared, excited, nervous and ecstatic about everything! Our lives are about to change and we couldn't be happier! God has really blessed us and this whole situation!