This day last year

I love Facebook timeline. It reminds me of what I did on this day in years past. Today I was reminded that on this day last year Husband and I took Ellie to court to gain custody of our sweet girl.

When you are in the depths of a trial things feel helpless, as if you are surrounded in darkness. The secret is to NEVER give up, to not lose faith. Luckily, I never lost faith, even on my darkest of days. When we got Ellie, it was as if the darkness was replaced with the brightness of 100 suns. This day, last year got even brighter as the judge granted us temporary custody until the adoption was final. I clearly remember sitting in the courtroom, the County Attorney asking Husband and I questions. I told the judge, “We cannot give her everything she will want in life, but we WILL give her everything she needs” (Of course bawling the entire time.) Since this day last year, life has only gotten brighter and brighter.

Happy Mother's Day for ALL!

Last Mother’s Day I had empty arms and a broken heart…fast forward to this year and I have an 11 month old. It is crazy how fast one’s life can change if you’re open to it. A few weeks back we had a lesson in Relief Society (the women’s group in my church) it was about being an instrument in God’s hands. I am forever thankful to the mothers that played their parts in Ellie’s life. They were truly instruments in God’s hands. Because of these two special mothers, husband and I have our beautiful, spunky, sassy little lady. This Mother’s Day both my heart and arms will be full and I could not be more grateful.

To Ellie’s birth mom and all the other birth mom’s out there Happy Mother’s Day to you. Thank you for being so completely unselfish. Thank you for being an instrument in God’s hands to help Him give me and all the other adoptive mommies their miracle(s). Thank you for doing what I could not do. Thank you for being willing to keep my baby alive. Thank you for NOT giving up. Thank you for realizing that the sweet baby you carried was meant to be mine.

To all the aunties, step-moms, foster moms, grandmas ...Happy Mother's Day to you! You play an integral part in someone's life, do NOT forget that! 

Ellie is BEYOND blessed to have AMAZING aunties that LOVE her almost as much as I do! 

Me with Ellie and her AWESOME Aunties!

To all the future mommies Happy Mother’s Day. My heart breaks for you. I know the pain of wanting a baby more than life itself. I know the soul crushing weight after each negative pregnancy test, with each passing month...

I know that adoption is not for everyone. However, adoption is an AWESOME option. It is a way for God to provide miracles. A way to get your happily ever after. A way for a motherless child to find a home, love, happiness, and their happily ever after. They need you as much as you need them! Do not give up, have an open mind and let someone be an instrument in God’s hands for you. 

Becoming a Mother!

I never wanted to be a mom. I used to hate kids. It’s amazing how our likes, needs, wants, and desires change as we grow older wiser. I remember the beginning of the change for me. It was early 2005, I was working at The Animal Kingdom at Disney World in Florida. The area of the park I worked in (Rafiki’s Planet Watch) was only accessible by train. It was getting close to closing time and the last few guests were waiting for the train to arrive. This couple from Japan was visiting with their toddler. She was running around me in circles and when I looked down at her she would stop and giggle. This continued, each time the young girl would do something more elaborate to catch my attention, the end result was always the same, the joyous sound of a child’s laughter. That day, my heart started changing, “Little kids are not terrible” I thought.

The next change came with a new job. I was hired as a youth center director. Me? In charge of a bunch of kids? I seriously didn't think I had it in me, I was terrified, but it was a good job so I went for it. I was in charge of an after school program of 2^nd and 3^rd graders. I had to feed them a snack, help with homework, and plan fun, educational activities. The other part of my job was supervising teens in the youth center in the evenings. This is where my feelings towards kids of all ages changed, however, I liked the younger ones better!

The change continued once again with yet another new job. I've had a lot of jobs in my life (about 23ish) they all played a part in shaping my destiny (yes, that was really cheesy.) This new job had me traveling around  to the schools in the county teaching kids (grades 2^nd, 3^rd, and 6^th) the dangers of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. This job did not only change my view on kids, but it also opened my eyes to my future. One day whilst teaching kids to not do drugs, I stopped, looked around the classroom and realized I needed to be a teacher!!! (Too bad this was three weeks away from me graduating with my bachelors in parks and recreation and hotel restaurant management, better late than never, right?) It was the perfect career choice, plus my fiancé (now husband) at the time was also a teacher. We would have the same schedules and be able to commiserate about the rough kids and celebrate the amazing ones together. I still didn't want my own kids but husband did, so we agreed on two (I REALLY didn't want any!!)

A few years, two more job changes, and a Master’s in Education later and I was a certified teacher! I had taught both first grade and kindergarten and I LOVED kids more than I ever thought possible. Now that we had been married a couple of years and I was in love with kids, seriously all kids, I wanted my own, and I wanted them now!! Bad news: husband wasn't ready. So I waited…

A year went by and I started bugging husband about wanting a baby, he’d just shrug it off and say something along the lines of, “Not yet” or “Once we've paid off your masters (I STILL haven’t paid that dang thing off!) So I waited, and waited, and waited…After a few years of waiting, I finally said, “I've waited long enough! I want to start trying, on average it takes at least a year.” Secretly, I expected to get pregnant immediately.  Thus began the beginning of two years of disappointment and heart break. 23+ pregnancy tests later, because yes, I thought that every month I was in fact pregnant, and after the first negative test of my cycle that I just took it too early for it to be positive and had to take another one. I was long past baby hungry, I was baby starving! 

When becoming a mother, women have time to prepare, let’s figure most  women find out that they are pregnant at 6-8 weeks and most pregnancies last 38-40 weeks.  That gives the average women 32+ weeks to prepare. I had 48 hours, seriously, two days to do what most do in 32 weeks! However, being a mother came naturally to me. I was killing it (not the baby, the act of being an awesome mom!) I am so lucky that Ellie and I bounded immediately, I think it is because we both needed each other. She also sleeps like a dream, the first few days I was so sleep deprived it hurt. However, Ellie quickly got on an awesome sleep schedule and stayed there. In part because I learned what she needed during the day, she liked to eat every 1.5-2 hours during the daytime, but would then sleep 8-12 hours a night if I swaddled her. I got to know her so well I could anticipate her every need. What I didn't anticipate were my feelings of inadequacy. I felt like I didn't deserve to be a mother. I didn't sacrifice my body for her, I wasn't able to create and grow her inside of me. I didn't go through the pain of birthing her. The hardest for me to handle was the fact that I could not breastfeed my baby. It broke my heart that I had to feed her formula.

If you Google Mother this is what you get: “a woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth. Ouch, thanks a lot Google.   What gives me the right to be a mother when I didn't give birth to her? It took a few months of struggling with this. When one day, I thought to myself about all the reasons I wasn't a mother. The inability to breastfeed at the top of my list. This went away slowly over time, when I realized there are so many woman who want to but simply cannot breastfeed for whatever reason. There are also lots of women who choose not to. Being a mom is making sure your child is fed, doing whatever it takes!

There are countless grandmas, sisters, aunts, friends, step, foster and adoptive mothers in this world that have stepped into the role of a mother to care for a child in need. They do it because they love the child(ren) that they care for. They became mothers without giving birth, so why am I any different? My own insecurities got in the way, I felt like I shouldn't be a mother. This attitude discredits non-tradition mothers everywhere, and that is not fair to them, or to me.  Let's face it anybody most women in the world have the ability to give birth, but NOT everyone has the ability or desire to be a mother.

I will never be able to change the fact that I didn't birth my baby, however, I have done all motherly duties since we brought her home from the hospital. I quit my job to take care of her full-time. I put her needs before mine. I find joy in caring for my sweet girl

I know Ellie better than anyone else in this world. I know when she’s hungry, tired, happy, bored, needs to poop (this is an easy one because he eyes bug out and turn bright red, it seriously looks like she just got punched) I know how to make her smile and laugh. I know how to wrap her up comfortably and rock her to sleep. I know that she likes music and dancing and dance with her around the kitchen daily because I like to see her eyes light up as she looks at me with the most adorable smile. I know that she likes hands and feet because they move and wiggle, she likes to chew on my straw because it’s squishy and feels good on her gums, and I let her because I would give her anything and everything she needs. I know all this and more because I LOVE her, because I am a mother, because I am Ellie’s mother!