Pics with Santa Day

20 Weeks

Priceless

Thankgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving at my parents house. Reese had so much fun with all the kids.
I always love getting together with everyone. And then on Sunday we surprisingly spoke in front of our whole church. Every Sunday after Thanksgiving the church has members share what they are thankful for and this year they asked us to share. This has always been my favorite Sunday of the whole year, people share their stories and it always makes me cry. And so crazy that we shared this time, I never thought that would happen or that I would agree to such a thing. I don't even like giving announcements to 50 Junior High kids on Sunday morning, I always make sure Cody or one of the other leaders do it. But when we were asked to do this, I couldn't help but get excited. Only because God has given us such a cool story. One of the first things I thought after I found out I was pregnant, (after the shock settled in) was that I want to tell the whole world what God just did. Anyway, I thought I would include our talk on here. We were so so so nervous, but God got us through it.

Shana
After Cody and I had been married for one year, we were ready to start a family. But that didn’t quite happen like we thought. For the past 5 ½ years we have been trying to get pregnant. We’ve had doctor visits too many to count, we have had gone through months and months of being on fertility medication and we have had five fertility procedures. I had two pregnancies in 2006 while on medication but sadly they both ended in early miscarriages. All of this of course came with many prayers and many tears. But God gave us hope and a new direction because He led us to the world of adoption. And last summer we adopted our beautiful daughter Reese. Holding her for the first time as our daughter was a moment I’ll never forget. Adopting Reese is a whole other story in itself. No doubt God has been there with us throughout this journey so far and being blessed with Reese has been the most incredible experience.
Cody
But it has still been our hearts desire to have a child of our own. So after praying for direction and having a peace from God, in January we did an Invitro fertilization (ivf). Not only did that fail but we were also told that our best chances to ever achieve a healthy pregnancy would be to use an egg donor. We were devastated and what was already a five year long challenge now seemed impossible based on what doctors were telling us. We would love to adopt again but we also had a huge longing to experience pregnancy and have a biological child. But we wondered if that would ever happen.
This past summer we decided to go to another doctor and do another IVF. We were also told by our adoption agency that we could begin the adoption process again for a second child. This was exciting and since paper work does take a while with adoption we went ahead and filled out an application knowing we had time to also do an ivf procedure. We started praying about it and I wanted both of us to get the same direction from God. What I wanted was to move forward with IVF. After praying for about two months, we believe God was saying “this is what you want, but it is not mine will”. And even though it was hard and we didn’t know or understand why, we had to obey God. So Shana stopped all medications that she was on and called the doctor to say we were not going to go through with the IVF. Shana started training for a sprint triathlon but days before the event she found out….she was pregnant. My first words were “how accurate are those pregnancy tests”. She said for her, very accurate. So she did not participate in the triathlon. WOW, no doctors, no medication, no procedure. We were amazed and in awe of what was happening. This isn’t supposed to happen according to doctors. We needed an egg donor remember. But God didn’t need our help.
I stand here before you thanking God and our Lord Jesus that Shana is pregnant, but much more than this, God still speaks to us today as we read in the bible.
Luke 1:37 says “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Shana
We didn’t get pregnant because we adopted and we didn’t get pregnant because we were relaxed, we are pregnant because God opened my womb and performed a miracle despite what doctors believed to be impossible. Even in those days when I would cry myself to sleep and I didn’t understand why God was putting us through this, He had a perfect plan and a perfect timing. It definitely wasn’t fun going through the tough times. In fact there were times when I was miserable. Times when I was extremely sad and extremely depressed and heartbroken. But because of these times God has strengthened our marriage and He has strengthened our relationship with Him and our faith in Him. He obviously knew that we needed it. And we can say now that we wouldn’t trade these past 5 ½ years for anything, they have made us who we are today.
As we think about what we are thankful for this holiday season, we are thankful for these two children and how God brought them into our lives in a very special way. We are also thankful for God’s faithfulness in His Word, we are thankful for His comfort during the hard times, we are thankful for His direction when we didn’t know what to do, we are thankful that God is God.
Ephesians 3:20-21 “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us.”

Our Sweet Reese

She's growing up so fast. She so precious and so much fun!

And we found out this week that she will be a big sister to a baby GIRL!! YAA!! We are very excited!

Our 18 Week Ultrasound

My little bump!

10 Week ultrasound

12 Week Pic

16 Week Pic

I can't believe I actually have a pregnancy pooch! It's so much fun. I have been feeling good, my nausea has pretty much gone away except for every now and then I may feel it for a short time. I go in a couple of weeks to find out the sex of the baby, so we are excited about that. YAAA!

Journey #2

From one journey to the next journey...from one trail to the next trail...from one blessing to the next blessing. That pretty much sums up our road to parenthood. I've shared in my previous blog what we went through for many years to become parents the first time ending with the amazing adoption of our daughter Reese. Well now as we have desired a second child, God has taken us through a similar struggle through infertility yet this time much shorter and has ended with a miracle pregnancy. Let me start at the beginning...

This past January we felt led to begin with a new doctor and go straight for an InVitro Fertilization. But quickly that ended in disappointment when it didn't work. My doctor suggested that our best chances to get pregnant would be by using an egg donor because I have poor egg quality. So now, not only do I have PCOS (polycystic ovaries) and Endometriosis but I also have poor eggs. Great, just what I needed to hear. Considering using an egg donor was the scariest decision we ever had to face and we were not sure what God thinks about it either. As we looked into it and prayed about it we were not comfortable with doing that, but instead we looked into using an embryo donor or embryo adoption. But still on the edge about this whole thing, we were not even ready to make this decision yet; we didn't want to give up just yet. So around May we went to another doctor, now my third Reproductive Endocrinologist, to see what she had to say. She was confident that we didn't need any donors and that we could try an InVitro with her. But we still needed to pray and make sure we had a clear direction from God to move forward. We prayed about it for about a month or two. At the same time as all of this I was contacted by our adoption agency that we used with Reese and was told that because Reese was now one year old we could start the adoption process again. This was exciting news so we begin praying about this as well. We figured since it takes a while before we would have a home study we had time to do an InVitro too. So we updated the adoption paper work, filled out the application and turned it in.

Cody and I were both reading a book called Discerning the Voice of God by Priscilla Shirer which was perfect for us at this time. We really wanted to hear God tell us to yes, do this IVF or no, do not. We have always prayed about each of these big decisions and always felt at peace about them. While we waited to hear from Him we still continued seeing the doctor and getting ready with prenatal vitamins and a couple other medications. Cody went off as a counselor to J-high camp and the day he came back we talked about it again. Up until this point we still didn't know what God wanted us to do and it was frustrating because we truly desired to follow His will. But on that day we realized He was not giving us the green light. We both felt like we wanted to do this because WE wanted to and not because it was God's will for us to. We both did not have a peace about it. Within minutes of talking about this we agreed that we should put this IVF on hold. We didn't understand why but we had more of a peace because we knew it was from the Lord. We thought maybe God would direct us to do an IVF later this year or we were just supposed to adopt our second child. So as soon as we called the doctor and told her we were putting this IVF on hold, I begin training for my first mini triathlon. I had always wanted to do one and there was one coming up in six weeks so I stopped talking all my medication and I got ready training for this event.

Five days before the triathlon in August...I find out...I'M PREGNANT! It was the biggest shock. Never in 5 1/2 years have I gotten pregnant on my own. I had two pregnancies in 2006 but I was on fertility medication and they both ended in an early miscarriage. This doesn't happen to me. I'm infertile, I have bad eggs, bad everything. TO GOD BE THE GLORY! Luke 1:34 " For nothing is impossible with God." I've had so many people tell me stories about how they know someone who this happened to and I believe with all my heart God still does miracles. But I wasn't going to hold out for the rest of my life that God was going to allow this to happen to me. He could have chosen not to allow this. But for some perfect reason He did.

I am 14 weeks along right now. I have to admit I have been scared; scared that I'd loose this baby too and scared of the loss; the heartbreak. But I've had to just trust the Lord each day. I want to enjoy this pregnancy, it may be the only one I have. We are so so so excited and still in awe of this that the Lord is doing. Mark 12:11 "This came about from the Lord and it is marvelous in our eyes." As I start showing I will post some belly pics...wow I can't believe I get to do that!!!!

1 Year Old!

11 Months Old and we can't believe it!!

10 Months Old!

9 Months Old!

8 Months Old!

7 Months Old!

Gotcha Day!

Not only did Reese turn 6 months old this past month but we also had her finalization day/Gotta Day on Friday. The adoption is final and she is really ours. It was a very special morning; we had a great judge and lawyer that are adoption friendly and the judge gives out teddy bears to the adoptive children. All of our immediate family was there to celebrate with us which was really cool. It is a great feeling knowing that Reese is officially our little girl now. She is just so precious to us and boy are we blessed!

GOTCHA DAY!