Tara - Infertility & Adoption

I'm Tara and I've been married for 15 years. I got married when I was 18 and we have 2 boys, a 9 year old and a 2 year old. The story I want to share is about infertility, miscarriage, and loosing what you thought you were going to be and have.

This all started 15 years ago when we got married. We wanted to start a family right away and have 6-9 kids. I wanted to be like my mom and be done having kids by the time I was 30. So we planned it out every 2 years to have a kid and we thought everything would work. We had never even heard of people having troubles having a family. We both came from families from 6 so we thought it was going to be easy.....and then it wasn't.

We didn't know we were supposed to see a doctor back then. Infertility wasn't really talked about. We waited 3 years before we saw a doctor, and we only saw a Doctor because I had ovarian cyst that erupted. After that I went and saw a doctor that cleared the cyst and then we started talking about infertility. So we started treatments.....so many treatments.... I did clomid and IUI's and then my husband got tested and he went on clomid. 

A year passed and nothing was working. 

10 years the U of U had a grant for In Vitro and we qualified. We had to do a home study and paperwork just like an adoption and we got accepted! We started the process and my body was not accepting it We did our first round of In Vitro and we were so excited! we had 16 eggs removed and out of those 12 were fertilized, but by the time the process was done only 4 had made it. So we put 2 in us and froze the other 2 but only 1 made it to freezing.

  I took a pregnancy test every day. And finally it turned positive! This was right before Christmas and we were so excited we couldn't wait to tell everyone at Christmas! In the middle of the night I woke up with severe pain and I was so hot. I had bad cramping pains that would come and go and I remember yelling to Sam telling him I hurt so bad. We went to the hospital the next day and found out I was miscarrying. That was Christmas Eve.

I just sat there Christmas Eve watching TV, I don't even know what was on. I was just numb.
We reapplied for the grant and luckily they accepted us again and we did the next round in June 2007. It didn't work. They tried all different drugs, but only 1 egg made it to transfer. We transferred the 1 and it didn't work. We couldn't reapply and we didn't have $10,000 to try it again. So we were done.

  In September Sam's cousin called us asking if we had an adoption profile with LDS services because she knew of a girl who was looking to give her baby up for adoption. We didn't have a profile, but I was an avid blogger so I sent her my blog. We got so excited and in December we had our first interview and we went home with a packet. We prayed that night to find out if we should do it and halfway through our prayer I got a distinct "NO". And I thought, well now what are we supposed to do?

3 days later we got a call from Sam's cousin again and she asked us again if we had a profile up. We said no we didn't and she said "well she chose you. I don't know what you're supposed to but she wants you to be her baby's parents." Right there in that phone call I got the strongest feeling of peace and this is where I'm going to start crying because in my mind I heard a soft voice say "See, when you do what I say your prayers get answered." And then we RUSHED!

It usually takes 6 months to get approved and the baby was going to be born in 3 months. He was due in March and it was December, Christmas time again. I was getting ready to morn the loss of my first and instead I was preparing for a baby that was going to be here in 3 months. We took classes, filled out paperwork and did the home study and got our approval letter the week before he was born.

We went up in March and met his birth mother and she threw us a baby shower. I have so many things I want to tell her that I don't have words for. I'm so grateful for her, and we are actually really good friends now and take our son to see her.

I was there in the room when he was born. I got to do the whole dad thing and be there and be the first to hold him and take him back to show his birth mom. He is now my 9 year old.

  
My second son was also adopted. Someone sent me a message in June of 2014 asking if they could send my profile to someone. The birth mom had told her friend to find someone for her and the friend loved our profile, called me and after we were done talking she said "So if you're ok with it, you'll adopt the baby." She gave me the births mom's contact info and told me to contact her.

What was I supposed to say? I wrote the birth mom and said simply "I'm Tara and I'm going to be the one who will adopt your baby." And she responded and was really happy. The birth mom was actually Native American which was hard because you hear so many horror stories of the Tribe taking the baby back and stuff. She was due in July and she wanted to be in Utah to deliver. We didn't know if it was going to be a girl or a boy because she hadn't had any ultrasounds.

In May we were up in Oregon and I was photographing a client's graduation and during the graduation I got a text from an unknown number saying "do you have a name picked out I'm in labor." At 10pm that night I got another text saying "he's here." We left Oregon as fast as we could and by the time I got to the hospital in Wyoming the birth mother was already gone. I went to the desk and said "I'm here for a baby." They pulled him out of the nursery and they put us up in the hospital and I got to stay with him for a few nights.

His birth mother actually passed away when he was 4 months old so he doesn't have the same relationship like our oldest has with his birth mom.

I will not lie I had a rough couple of years and didn't know how we were going to make it, how our marriage was going to make it, how I was going to make it, I was just done.

We've had 5 miscarriages that have all happened naturally. We had my husband retested and found that he has a DNA abnormality. The DNA is fragmented so we can conceive but at 6 weeks we always miscarry. I ended up having a hysterectomy this past December and it was sad to be done with that chapter of my life. It still kinda sucks.

I grew up thinking I was going to be a mom and I had/still have an identity crisis because I can't have kids of my own. What do I do? I'm not doing what I thought my whole life I was going to do. I was so mad for years, it was so ugly. My husband is so strong. And I do know that my boys were supposed to be in my family. There were so many miracles I can't deny it.

 I felt alone for years and I don't ever want anyone to feel that way because it sucks.   If I went back to my 18 year old self to deliver a message hope that would carry me through the next 15 years it would be:

"Be patient. Things will work out better then you thought. And there will be times where it will be hard, and life sucks, you'll have bad days, but you are not alone. Always look up, because there is always someone there who can help you."