One of the aspects of my life that I am most appreciative and feel the most blessed is being able to be a Mom to my 2 girls. I like the fact that I’ve been able to experience the ‘natural’ way and through an adoption process.
It’s not easy being 230 lbs and telling you OB GYN that you want to start a family, especially when you know you had been trying unsuccessfully for a couple of years. All I can say is my doctor was sent from Heaven above. I love that woman! She was the most kind, compassionate, loving, friendly, and approachable doctor I have ever known. She knew I had struggled with my weight my entire life and that weight poses a higher risk for pregnancy, but she knew how bad I wanted a family. She was also close to my Mom, who was a maternity nurse, and knew how bad she wanted to be a Nana. So she prescribed Clomid, an oral drug that helps kick the egg out of the ovary. It took several months to calibrate the right dose and after about 6 months that damn pregnancy stick finally read positive.
My pregnancy went perfect, considering my weight. I had some morning sickness in the 1st trimester, fatigue in the 2nd, and success in the 3rd. I got up to 265 lbs. My water broke at 1:30am and by 12:30pm the next day (11/23/2001), my beautiful daughter Katherine Anne (aka Katie) was born. I did end up having a C-section when my labor did not progress, but I was fine with that! No pushing hard labor for me! My mom was in the operating room while my husband watched from the room next door. The nurses, all her friends, called my mom over to cut the cord. Then she showed me my girl and handed her off to her dad who walked her to the nursery. My mom gave her a bath and my dad took pictures. My sister and best friend were also there for the celebration. Now we were a family of 3.
Fast forward 4 years, I was still overweight and desperately trying to get pregnant again. I did the 6 months of Clomid with my doctor and then was referred to an infertility specialist. This was very difficult for me because I thought for sure he would take one look at me an lecture me about my weight, but I had to do it because we so wanted a sibling for our daughter. I set aside all my anxiety and insecurities and went to this doctor. Surprisingly, another caring, compassionate doctor. We went through the battery of tests and then more rounds with Clomid with no success. The next step would be fertility injections, but I just could not go through with it. I was 225 lbs and I just could not put my body through the hormonal roller coaster anymore. This was my decision to make and my husband was not happy. My daughter was now 5 and the day we put her on the bus for the 1st day of kindergarten, my husband was depressed that we would only experience this once. I told him it does not have to be this way. We can always adopt… and so started our journey to our second daughter.
Our decision to go internationally to adopt was based on 2 things… 1) we felt there was less emotional risk of trying to find a birth mom and 2) we love to travel. I know, I know… but why not have fun on this journey? After starting the process with Russia, then Kazakhstan, we finally chose China. Originally we wanted to search for a boy, but then realized it would be a girl from China. At the time, China had the smoothest process. They had been doing it for a number of years, mainly because of their 1 child rule. It was no longer illegal to have more than 1 child, but families were charged a high tax for it. Poor families could not afford, so if the 1st born was a girl, she was usually placed in an orphanage. Boys were considered valuable because they would tend to support parents in their senior years. At the time our paperwork was logged in on 3/6/2006, the estimated time for placement was ~ 14 months. Well that all changed! The wait time grew exponentially over the years. Every month, we would check to see how close they were getting to our group, but every month it would get slower and slower. Some blame the delay on politics and some on China’s preparation for the 2008 Olympics. They even changed their adoption requirements, including parents could not be obese or have any physical limitations. I was obese at the time we applied and my husband has a paralyzed left arm – double disqualification! Fortunately, we were grandfathered. We had to redo paperwork and home studies several times as they expired after a year of so. Our agency in Arizona even went bankrupt 2 years into our wait and we had to sign on with another one out of Kentucky.
It was a painful wait. On 4/3/2009, we got the call! We were driving to meet a friend of ours for lunch. I pulled over and we found out that we had been matched to a 14 month old girl. An e-mail with pictures was sent and we couldn’t wait to get home to see (no smart phone!). I fell in love with her immediately! The next several months was a whirlwind of preparation… travel plans, visas, gathering perfect uncirculated $100 bills (only thing China would accept). Just before we left, the H1N1 (remember the swine flu) hit! We were in danger of not being allowed to travel to China. Fortunately China decided not to close adoptions at that time and on June 4th we started our journey to the East. I did manage to get my weight down to 150 lbs temporarily due to a fast I did in 2007, so I was feeling pretty good. We met up with 11 other families from our agency that had the same login date in Beijing. Saturday, 6/6, we spent the day seeing the sights in Beijing and then the next day we flew to Janxi to meet our daughters. We checked into our hotel around 1pm and were told the babies would be there around 4pm. At 2pm, we got the call to go to a conference room because the babies had arrived! We were so excited!! On 6/7/2009, we held our second child, Michelle, for the first time! Now we were a family of 4 like we had always envisioned.
So today, June 7th, is the 4th anniversary of our ‘Gotcha Day’. We celebrate it as a family, but also with our extended family – the 11 families from our agency. On August 5th, we will be putting our little 5 yr old girl on a bus to her first day of kindergarten. I am so grateful that I did not let my weight get in the way of pursuing our dreams of a family. All things are possible!
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