We're Adopting!

...So the cat is out of the bag and I can’t think of a better way to start our week than to share the great news that we are ADOPTING!!! This has been over a two year journey of surgeries, blood work, infertility treatments and negative pregnancy results but I know out of all that pain has brought us where we are today for a reason…God has a plan for our family! From our first failed IVF cycle, Roger told me, “one way or another, we will have our baby.” It has been a struggle at times but through adoption, I do see a light at the end of this tunnel.

     I will go into more detail about our infertility issues and how we came about our decision to adopt in a later post but right now I want to ask for your help. We need you to help us spread the word that we are looking for our baby and birth mom. When first researching about adoption I really did not know what to expect. There are a few ways to adopt; private adoption, international adoption and adoption through foster care. I read blogs, looked over adoption agency websites, talked to some people who adopted but I wasn’t sure what route of adoption we wanted to take. As we were working on the best adoption plan for us, we also decided to do some remodeling to our house. Even though I have a design background we wanted to hire a designer to come in and help us so we could focus on the adoption. Our designer (Beth) was a referral from a friend so she came over one night to see our house and talk about some ideas. While Beth was here, I told her why we needed her assistance. She congratulated us on our decision to adopt and said she designed for an adoption attorney (Thomas Taneff) in Columbus. Now I am a person who believes in God Winks, that moment when God randomly places you in the perfect spot at the perfect time and he was winking loud and clear on this one. I got his information and called him the next day.

     We met with Thomas Taneff a couple weeks later and he gave us the A to Z process of adoption. What he told us, was really surprising and as we have shared our news with family and friends they seem to be as shocked as us. Unfortunately there is no one place for people looking to adopt or birth moms looking to place their child in adoption to go to. Just like how we found Mr. Taneff, it is word of mouth, online searches, referral from your doctors or even the phone book. What surprised us even more was when he told us the best way to find our baby and birth mom is by how much work WE put into looking for them. Along with the paper work you have to fill out to adopt, he wanted us to create a photo book to share with birth moms that walk into his office. He wanted us to start a blog (Ta Da), Facebook page, Twitter page, Instagram account, YouTube page and any other social media site we could connect to (all of these are connected to our blog). He also wanted us to create postcards to mail out but also pass out to people at our gym, our waitress, our co-workers and so on. He said what most adoption agencies won’t tell you, is that you can do this work yourself and not have to pay them. We consider ourselves somewhat of a private couple. We share information with close family and friends but not all over Facebook. Open adoption forces us to be out there with all of our information. All be it a little uncomfortable, we understand the more people that know we are looking to adopt, the better the chances are we will find our baby!

     So this is the biggest favor we could ever ask anyone, please LIKE our Facebook page. Please press SHARE every time I update my status. Please follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Please re-gram or re-tweet anything we post. Please read our blog as I share information about our family and our search for our child. You may not know someone looking to place their child in adoption but your friends may know a friend who is. This process may take up to a year so the more people we reach the better.

     Most of all please pray for our birth mom and all birth moms out there. She may not even be pregnant yet, she may be just finding out she is pregnant or she may be struggling with the decision to place her baby with a forever family. She is the reason we can grow our family and we can never thank her enough! Her and her child already have a huge place in our hearts and in our family and we can’t wait for the day when we meet them.

     Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, to LIKE, SHARE and FOLLOW our pages. Thank you for your prayers. Our baby and birth mom are out there and we will find them all because of your help!!!

Sincerely, Roger and Angela