God Has Answered
I’ve been keeping a HUGE secret from you guys and it’s been SO SO HARD! It’s so hard to keep something so private when you’re dying to shout from the rooftops! I know so many of you have been invested in our infertility and adoption journey and you’re going to want to know all the details so I’m going do my best to fill you in on the last 4 months! You can skip to the bottom if you aren’t interested in the back story 🙂
I’ll start from the beginning. Most of you remember the week we lost our two babies. As you can imagine we were absolutely devastated and not exactly sure how to move forward. After taking some time to grieve and pray, we decided to continue on with the adoption process since we felt so strongly that the Lord had called us to adopt…remember my road sign?! You can read that story HERE if you missed it.
The end of May we were approached by our lawyer about a birth mom that was looking to place her baby up for adoption. We were especially nervous to enter into the risk of adopting again. The first time we skyped with her I instantly felt different about her than our first birth mom. She just had a warmth about her and I can’t explain it but I just felt bonded to her in some way, like if we had met in other circumstances we would have naturally become friends. We were officially matched in early June and the baby was due the end of July. After our first failed adoption and since the baby was due so soon we decided to keep this one a little under the radar and only telling close family and friends…which is why you haven’t heard any updates and the only way I was able to keep this private for so long!
On July 13th we got the call that she was in labor and we rushed home and packed as quickly as possible to head on the LONGEST road trip to get to our baby. If you recall – we had done this once already. It was the longest 9 hours of my life knowing that our baby was born and I wasn’t there. There were tears and all kinds of fear and emotions during that drive…just praying and begging God that we wouldn’t have a repeat of last time.
FINALLY after the 9 hour drive (that seemed like 90) we got to meet our DAUGHTER!!!!! It was such a surreal moment full of so much excitement, relief, love, appreciation and still fear and worry. Our birth mother was absolutely amazing, she was so respectful of her being “our baby” and such a sweetheart. We spent several hours in her room together before moving into a room of our own. The truth is I had been so worried about all of the details surrounding our adoption and over the next few days spent not only with our daughter but with her first mom also, the Lord answered every single little prayer. We got to spend a lot of time with her first mom and I can’t even express the amount of love and respect I have for her and I will always cherish that time we had together getting to know each other.
So.. I know you’re all dying to get to the good stuff and the pictures…so I’ll skip forward to where we are today! I’m sure you’re also wondering why this has been kept a secret for 4 months! WELL…the legal process around adoptions is complicated and we had some hiccups and delays in the legal process. We thought we’d be able to announce her a couple weeks after she was born but now here we are and it’s finally all finalized and she is officially a HAMBY!
So if you’ve read all of that, I’m sure there is more I’ll share later about the past 4 months but I’m finally able to introduce you all to our daughter…Eliana or “Ellie” for short!
Ellie – 3 weeks
We didn’t know the gender until she was born! For the past year-ish we had a boy name picked out but hadn’t talked/agreed upon a girl name. Two weeks before she was born we were searching for girl names so we were prepared no matter what gender and we ran across the name Eliana and added it to the “maybe list”. After narrowing down some options my husband looked up the meaning and it means “God Has Answered”. I cried when he read that and we both knew if we had a daughter this was her name! I just can’t imagine a more perfect and suitable name for our baby girl. It has been years of praying and crying and more praying and trusting the Lord’s plan and promise for our family and she is definitely an answered prayer for so many just like her name says!
Photo by Magic Moment Photography – Ellie – around 1 month
We are all so excited and relieved to finally be able to share our story and the blessing she is with you all! It’s safe to say you’ll be seeing and hearing more about her! I’ve got so many things I want to share with you all and have been waiting for months!
Ellie’s excited – can’t you tell 😛 – 3 months here!
We couldn’t have made it through this rollercoaster of a journey without all the love and support we received from all of you. I know we were covered in prayer by SO MANY people and so many of you helped make this happen financially which we couldn’t have done without the help! So thank you for being such a wonderful support system, we appreciate you all more than you will ever know!
Here are a few of my favorite pictures of our sweet gal from the past 4 months!
Ellie – 3 weeks
Ellie – 2 months
Ellie – 3 months
Ellie – 4 months