Lillyana Jayde's Story...

I have been wanting to blog about this for awhile but I never have gotten to it. I have had alot of people ask questions about how we got Lilly, ask about her birth parents, and ask us why she was put up for adoption. Well here it is...

After I was born, my parents knew that they did want another child but just not right away. The plan was to wait about 5 years before they tried to have a little brother/sister for me. Whenever I was 3, my mom had to have a hysterectomy due to some internal complications. This being, they knew that naturally having another child wasn't possible. My parents had thought a little bit about adoption while I was growing up...mom was 100% for it but my dad was a little unsure. He had the fear of not loving an adopted child as much as he did me. Because of this, they never seriously considered adoption. The year I turned 13, my moms best friend adopted a baby boy through domestic adoption. She and her husband were not capable of conceiving naturally. My parents followed the entire process and they were there the day she got her baby. This showed my dad the unconditional love that is felt to an adopted child and that it is no different than loving your biological child. Now...my parents knew that they were both very ready to begin the process to bring home a new little one! The first plan was International Adoption. We looked into it and right as we were just about to make the decision on Korea, my parents came across profiles for domestic adoption. My mom read the stories and fell in love with the idea and made the decision that we would begin the Domestic Adoption process.
Thats when it all began...
Interviews, homestudys, paperwork, and waiting..lots of waiting!!! We waited for almost 13 months before we were selected by a birthmother and when we finally were...it was a 14 year old girl who lived with her family in a small house about 4 hours away from us. Once we were contacted by the agency, we were able to meet the mother and we knew right away that we wanted to go with it and so did she! She was 7 months pregnant at the time and she didn't know what the baby was (which made it even more exciting!!) We would visit Lilly's birthmom 2 weekends out of the month for the next 3 months and went baby shopping and did all the fun baby preparations!
Then finally...
the day came that the baby was due! It was September 26, 2006 and birthmom was induced to begin her labor. It was a very long day but then finally at 7:22pm...I got the news! It was a baby girl. A sweet, perfect baby girl who we would call Lillyana Jayde! I will never forget the first time I saw her. My perfect baby sister!! Two days later, we brought her home and it was so hard to take her away from her birthmom. She cried and cried and kept saying that she wishes there was some way she could care for her but she knew there wasn't and that it would be best if we took Lilly and give her a successful life. We were willing to have an Open adoption but Lilly's birthmom said that she would rather close it up and end it now :( That was when we took Lilly home with us and we fostered her for a little over 1 month and then the adoption was finalized by the court. It was such an amazing expierence and I enjoy every minute that we have sweet Lilly Jayde! She is just perfect!!!