What a difference 4 days makes! I am still in awe of how our story is playing out and I am amazed at the goodness of our God. It is still hard to believe that when we left our house on Saturday we were a family of 4 heading to the aquarium, and how one phone call changed all that. In our last update, we shared about how we had received a call about a baby with Down Syndrome who needs a forever family and we said yes. That yes started the whirlwind that has been the last few days.
We spent Monday and Tuesday of this week running around and finalizing our paperwork to get an approved home study. God has been orchestrating each moment of this story and it has been so evident as the pieces have fallen into place. One of my favorite moments happened yesterday. We had met with our counselor to get the recommendation letter for the adoption and decided to take the kids to the mall to grab some lunch after. I took the letter in with me so I could scan it and email it to our case worker, because this was the last piece of paper we needed for the home study. So I send the email and we eat lunch, then as we are walking out, we see our case worker! She was there running an errand so we were able to hand deliver the last document that was needed. It was such a crazy God moment in the midst of many crazy God moments.
Then this morning, I was on my way to work when I got a call from our case worker, R. R told me that she also had the baby's case worker, B, on the line and that she wanted to conference in Aaron as well. Once we got Aaron included on the call, R asked us if we wanted to go meet our baby today. I was completely floored. I never imagined when I woke up this morning that I would be meeting and hold my baby girl this afternoon. Our case worker finished our home study and hand delivered it to us today so that we could take it with us to the hospital. (Speaking of our case worker, she has been AMAZING through all this - being our loudest and strongest advocate and working tirelessly over the past few days to help us make this whole thing possible).
So at 12:30 PM today, Aaron and I got into the car and made the drive to the hospital to meet our daughter. It was the most surreal thing. We were able to hold her and feed her and talk to her doctors and just love on this beautiful, perfect little girl. While she will remain in NICU a little longer than we originally thought, we were told that we have been put into the system at the hospital as her parents and that we can come see her as much as we want, we can even spend the night at the hospital with her. We signed the acceptance agreement today, making this all official (or as Aaron put it, we called "dibs").
Everyone in the NICU was so excited to meet us and so happy that our baby girl has found her forever family. She is loved and adored in the NICU, as she should be because she is so very precious and perfect. I am still a bit in disbelief of how quickly this has all happened, but I have said that when I have allowed myself to dream, this was almost the exact scenario that I saw playing out.
So what's next? We are working hard to raise the funds to pay for all of this. We have applied for a grant and an interest free loan, and I have also reached out to an organization that provides adoption grants for families adopting children with Down Syndrome. We also have our GoFundMe page where anyone can make a donation to help us bring home our sweet girl. I am will be going back and forth to the hospital as much as possible over the coming weeks to build the bond.
I can't share pictures of our little girl yet, but I can share the first name we have picked out. Our little girl's name will be Eliana. We chose this name because it means, "God has answered my prayers" and that is exactly how we feel. This is the baby we have been praying for and God has answered our prayer. Since Eliana's brother and sister will not be allowed to go to the hospital (with it being flu season, kids are not allowed in the NICU), we took Elias and Sophia to Target and let them each pick out an outfit for their baby sister. I can share pictures of those precious outfits.
Please continue to pray for us over the coming weeks. It was very hard to leave Eliana at the hospital tonight. I will be going back and forth as much as possible until she is discharged. Pray for the big kids as this will be hard, having me gone a lot and knowing that they cannot go to the hospital too. Pray for Eliana - she has some medical concerns, one of them being that she has been struggling taking her bottles lately. When I fed her today, I was able to get her to take a full bottle and hopefully she will continue to do so. Pray that we will be able to get the funds together quickly so that when she is discharged, she can come home with us.
We spent Monday and Tuesday of this week running around and finalizing our paperwork to get an approved home study. God has been orchestrating each moment of this story and it has been so evident as the pieces have fallen into place. One of my favorite moments happened yesterday. We had met with our counselor to get the recommendation letter for the adoption and decided to take the kids to the mall to grab some lunch after. I took the letter in with me so I could scan it and email it to our case worker, because this was the last piece of paper we needed for the home study. So I send the email and we eat lunch, then as we are walking out, we see our case worker! She was there running an errand so we were able to hand deliver the last document that was needed. It was such a crazy God moment in the midst of many crazy God moments.
Then this morning, I was on my way to work when I got a call from our case worker, R. R told me that she also had the baby's case worker, B, on the line and that she wanted to conference in Aaron as well. Once we got Aaron included on the call, R asked us if we wanted to go meet our baby today. I was completely floored. I never imagined when I woke up this morning that I would be meeting and hold my baby girl this afternoon. Our case worker finished our home study and hand delivered it to us today so that we could take it with us to the hospital. (Speaking of our case worker, she has been AMAZING through all this - being our loudest and strongest advocate and working tirelessly over the past few days to help us make this whole thing possible).
So at 12:30 PM today, Aaron and I got into the car and made the drive to the hospital to meet our daughter. It was the most surreal thing. We were able to hold her and feed her and talk to her doctors and just love on this beautiful, perfect little girl. While she will remain in NICU a little longer than we originally thought, we were told that we have been put into the system at the hospital as her parents and that we can come see her as much as we want, we can even spend the night at the hospital with her. We signed the acceptance agreement today, making this all official (or as Aaron put it, we called "dibs").
Everyone in the NICU was so excited to meet us and so happy that our baby girl has found her forever family. She is loved and adored in the NICU, as she should be because she is so very precious and perfect. I am still a bit in disbelief of how quickly this has all happened, but I have said that when I have allowed myself to dream, this was almost the exact scenario that I saw playing out.
So what's next? We are working hard to raise the funds to pay for all of this. We have applied for a grant and an interest free loan, and I have also reached out to an organization that provides adoption grants for families adopting children with Down Syndrome. We also have our GoFundMe page where anyone can make a donation to help us bring home our sweet girl. I am will be going back and forth to the hospital as much as possible over the coming weeks to build the bond.
I can't share pictures of our little girl yet, but I can share the first name we have picked out. Our little girl's name will be Eliana. We chose this name because it means, "God has answered my prayers" and that is exactly how we feel. This is the baby we have been praying for and God has answered our prayer. Since Eliana's brother and sister will not be allowed to go to the hospital (with it being flu season, kids are not allowed in the NICU), we took Elias and Sophia to Target and let them each pick out an outfit for their baby sister. I can share pictures of those precious outfits.
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