We Received A REFERRAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am NOT joking!  I am totally serious!  It happened!!!  We got “the call” on Monday night.  I am still in total shock.  Last time this happened I realized the fact that I would be a mom for the first time.  Now, as I live the reality of my dreams parenting M I am more in awe then ever that God would count us worthy to add a second blessing to our family. (If you want to read our M referral story, click HERE.)

For those of you who want the short version, I will give a brief summary first.  She was born in Feb of THIS year!  That is right folks, she is only 5 months old!  You shocked?  We sure were!  She is a sweet little doll with huge brown eyes, perfect skin, lots of thick hair, and chubby cheeks. I think she will be a great sister for M and he has big plans of all he will be teaching her. 

So...
We learned last Friday that the “shared list” was coming out on July 23rd (Monday night).  I called our agency and talked through all the needs we listed.  She told me generally how many people were waiting with various needs.  I was shocked to hear that even through we just had a LID of 7.12 we were at the top of the list for several needs.  We talked a lot about more complicated heart defects that we were ready to handle.  Brandon and I did a lot of research and networking about these heart defects and felt ready on Monday night to answer the phone. 

M didn’t know what was going on with the shared list, but that night at bed he prayed such a sweet prayer for baby sister (unprompted). 

My stomach was all in knots as I came down from putting M to bed.  We decided to watch an episode of the Waltons which we figured would end before 10:00 and then go to bed with the phone ringer on in our room.  As we started the show I talked about how crazy it is that some shared list we are actually going to get a call, our phone will ring.  We didn’t really expect to hear anything so quickly so we settled in a watched.  Half way in to the episode the phone did ring!  Wow... this is really happening!!!  E told us that she had a little girl locked in for us, but that she wasn’t sure if the needed lined up with our list. She then told us about her needs and we were willing to move forward. Her need is something that we honestly knew nothing about. At some point I am guessing I will post about her SN, but this time we are just celebrating our little girl.  E told us about a spectrum with this need and several syndromes that are related to it.  She told us how young this girl was and asked if we would like to look at the file.  We said YES!!!!  We have since learned that this list was very small and there were very few girls.  God truly led us to our child and set her apart for us! 

After hanging up we talked a couple of minutes and prayed and went to the computer.  We met our daughter and read all about her.  Such a sweet time.  We emailed the amazing Dr. Feldman (well respected Intl. Adotion Dr. totally worth the steep price) who responded right away and set up a consult with us for 9:00 EST Tuesday night.  At this point it is way late, so of course I stay up even later to research the SN.  This was dangerous as I read a lot of scary stuff.  I only slept about 3 hours on Monday night.

 All day Tuesday I prayed and processed and researched while M napped.  I didn’t really eat much as I was so nervous.  I tried to avoid her photo as I didn’t want to grow close to her until I knew we could handle things.  We even waited to tell our parents.  Finally the call came and we got GREAT news!  She is doing far better than all the scary stuff we read.  We rejoiced after the call and knew we were ready to say yes! 

Last night we called our parents who were more than a little thrilled by our news!   Since sleep is over-rated we wrote our letter to China so we could proceed with the referral and sent that to our agency last night. 

Today has been filled with phone calls and chats and hugs and JOY!  God is so good.  We are hoping to travel in January or February to bring her home.  I will post more about the process from here soon. 

We will not be posting and photos at this point, but if you are around our family we will be excited to show your our copies.  Our parents and soon grandparents will have copies also. 

July has been a great month for our adoption adventure!  DTC 7.3  LID 7.12 Referral 7.23!!!!!  Thanks be to our God!!!!