Introducing Brantley Robert Horton!

We are finally a family of three! Brantley Robert Horton was born on 4/2 weighing 7 pounds and 15 ounces! We are so in love with this little guy! We are adjusting well to life with a newborn. He is perfect and we know that he was always meant to be our son. More later… Baby snuggles await!

Still waiting…

Well, we have officially passed our birthmom’s due date…  I guess baby didn’t have the same countdown calendar to 40 weeks that I had on my phone…  We did have a false alarm on Saturday night when we got a call that she was headed to the hospital around midnight.  I waited and waited for an update only to be told around 4am that they had sent her back home and told her that she had only dilated to 1 cm.  She had her weekly appointment on Monday where she was told that she was still at 1cm and had made no real progress since Saturday.   If she has not had him by Monday, they will induce her then.  Although it is nice to have a date of induction, we are still praying that he will decide it is time before then.  Maybe the Easter Bunny will have a cute little present for us this year!

We are so fortunate to have developed such a great relationship with both birth parents.  Out of respect for their privacy, I won’t go into much detail, but I can honestly say that I am so glad we decided to move forward with an Open Adoption.  They are so brave and we admire their strength and courage.

Also, a HUGE shoutout to the best friends a girl could ask for who gave us a baby shower fit for a celebrity!  These girls went ALL out!  I knew it would be amazing but I felt like I was at Kim Kardashian’s baby shower!  The shower included a 6 foot chevron striped banner with his monogram in the middle of it, cupcakes with a cute little B on them, chevron striped straws to drink from, Hershey bars with the “HE” on the wrapper colored in blue for guest favors,  beautiful flowers, enough food for a small country including sandwiches shaped like onesies, and so much more.   I was in total shock at the generosity of our friends and family.   We are so blessed to have so many special people in our lives.  My house is seriously babyland now!

I am off to bed to hopefully get some rest before our little guy arrives….  Please keep us and the birth parents and their families in your prayers in the days ahead..

Love and Hugs to all!

18 days!!!

We are getting so close to our birth mom’s due date and trying to get so many last minute things done.  When we first were introduced to her, she had just entered her third trimester and now we are 18 days away from her due date…  The nursery is about 90% complete and we have done our first loads of baby laundry.  Why is baby laundry so much more fun to do?  🙂 

Some of my very best friends are having a baby shower for us in two weeks and I am super excited.  We are so lucky to have such wonderful friends who are so excited for us.   My invitation came in the mail and I just couldn’t stop looking at it.  I am finally going to be a mom!

We ask that you keep Rob and I, as well as the birth parents and their families in your prayers through the next few weeks.  I cannot imagine how hard this will be for them.   I know that the day we bring our baby home will be the happiest and the hardest day of our lives.  So happy to finally have the family we have always dreamed of, but so sad that these two young people have had to say “goodbye” to someone they love so much.

WE ARE MATCHED!

We are matched with a birth mother and couldn’t be more excited!  We wanted to share this news a few weeks ago but decided to give it a little time to make sure things were going well.   Rob and I went back and forth on trying to decide if we wanted to make an Adoption Facebook page.  We just weren’t sure we were ready to invite the entire world into such a personal space.  We had started the page so many times and then never actually “published” it.    On the night of December 30th, we finally made the page live and in what seemed like minutes we had over 100 likes…  It was really nice to see so many of our friends and family share the page and say such nice things about us.   The next afternoon before heading out for New Years Eve, I checked the page and saw that I had a message from someone who left their phone number wanting to talk to us.  Fast forward about two weeks later and we were matched with a birth mom!  We met her and the birth father in our agency’s office about two weeks ago and things are going really well.  They are from NC, so we are hopeful that we can be there for the birth or shortly after.   In North Carolina the birth mother can change her mind up to 7 days after placement.  So, we are cautiously optimistic.   We debated sharing the news here since anything can go wrong but figured there is such a small group (mostly family and very close friends) of you that know about this blog and we need the prayers and positive thoughts!

It is a boy, and his estimated arrival date is March 23rd!!!  Just about a month and a half away!!   We have been painting and getting the nursery together.  We ordered a car seat and a stroller and my best friend let us borrow her crib, changing table, and glider.  So, we have the essentials, but have been busy getting things ready.   As soon as we get the curtians up in the nursery, I will add a picture.   Prepare to be impressed with Rob’s painting skills!  🙂

Please keep us as well as the birthparents and their families  in your thoughts and prayers.  As excited as we are about this, we know that this will be so hard for them.

Still cannot believe this is really happening….:)

WE ARE LIVE!!!

So excited to let everyone know that we are finally LIVE with our agency’s adoption website…. which means we are available for birthmother’s to choose from!!  I was so excited to see our online profile today!!  Even with a 102 degree fever and a terrible case of Strep, it was quite emotional just to see our picture there!   You can view our online profile by visiting the link below…

http://www.iheartadoption.org/users/robandlesliehorton

I will update more when I am feeling a little better, but couldn’t wait to share this news!!!

Getting closer…

We are still waiting, but think we are getting really close to being available for birth parents to choose from!  Our social worker sent the rough draft of our home study about three weeks ago.  So weird to read an 11 page report about your life and how this person who you have spent a few hours with at most is reporting on your ability to parent a child.  The good news is that she thinks we will be great parents!   The report is now in the hands of our agency’s branch manager waiting for her final approval.    We were also given approval to order our “Dear Birth Mother” letters from the printer.  They arrived on Tuesday and we had to sign 100 of them and get them shipped off to California.  Once the letters arrive in CA and we get the final approval from the branch manager, we “Go on the Books”, and will be available for birth parents to view our information, see pictures of us, and request a copy of our letter.     We are hopeful that this might happen before Thanksgiving!  Please keep us in your payers as we move forward with this exciting journey!

I also wanted to share that there is a new show on The Logo TV called “The Baby Wait”.   Each show follows a couple through their adoption journey.  The first couple worked with the same agency that we are working with.  It is a great show that so far has really done a great job at capturing the process and real emotions and relationships.  I am going to try and include a link for the show.  If you have the time,I think you would enjoy it!   If you end up watching it, let me know what you think!  KLEENEX will be necessary!  🙂

The Baby Wait, Episode 2

Waiting….

Our second Home Study visit went well.  The social worker asked for a quick tour of the house.  She wanted to see that we had a bedroom that would be used for the nursery and that we had the necessary smoke detectors, etc.   She wanted to see the backyard so we stepped out on the screened in porch where our cat Rainey resides.  (For those of you who know Rainey, you are most likely thinking the same thing I was… “Please God, do not let Rainey be in one of her moods and ruin this entire thing for us”.  She must have taken my threats seriously because she didn’t even hiss at us.  The social worker even commented on how sweet she was. 🙂  The social worker told us that she would be in touch soon and would send us the report of her visit by the end of October.

We rewarded ourselves with our first official baby purchase.  We found a great deal on a pack and play on Amazon in a nice neutral green and brown.  Since we have no gender preference, the shopping is a little harder (which may be a good thing).  It was still a huge deal and we were super excited!

This home study report is all that stands in between us and being available for birth parents to choose from. They say the hardest part of adoption is the wait… Especially when  EVERYTHING is out of your control.   I AGREE!   We waited to be sure this was the right decision for us, waited for the class with our agency, waited on the backgrounds, and marriage license copy to be sent to us, waited for our Adoption Coordinator to assign our home study, waited for the social worker to contact us, waited for the social worker to schedule both of the required visits, and now we are waiting for her to write the required report so that we can wait on our agency to approve it, so that we can wait to “be on the books”… That will be when the REAL wait begins!

Please keep us in your prayers as I am sure the waiting game only gets harder from here.

 

Home study is underway!

Our Home study is underway!  I had started to get a little impatient since it had been almost two weeks since our Adoption Coordinator told us that the Social Worker would be in touch within a week or so.  I sent her a note on Friday to let her know that we hadn’t heard from her yet.   I figured she would eventually call and we would schedule a time for her to come out, giving us at least several days to get some projects done around the house and get everything shining…  WRONG!   On Saturday afternoon around 3pm our Social Worker called and said she could come out to the house on Sunday… (Sunday as in less than 24 hours notice!)  EEEEEK!!!!  She said she could come out on Sunday and then do the second visit a week later.  As much as we would have liked a little more time to get things done we jumped at the chance of being that much closer to “being on the books”.

With everything shining and our stomach in knots, we were anxiously awaiting her arrival on Sunday afternoon.  Just as we had been told, the anticipation was much worse than the actual visit.  We found her to be very nice and rather easy to talk to.   She did individual interviews with both of us and then a joint interview.  She will be back next Saturday for the second visit and will take a tour of the house while she is here.  She then has 45 days to prepare her report and submit it it IAC.

So, if everything goes as planned, we should be “on the books” by the middle of November!  Woohooo!!

Our Home Study has been assigned!

We received an email last week letting us know that our FBI background’s had been completed and were in route to IAC.  HORRAY!   We had originally been told it would take 13 weeks for the backgrounds, so we were thrilled that it only took 5.  Our Adoption Coordinator contacted us yesterday to let us know that she had the results and that she would assign the Home Study to one of their Social Workers.    We just started this process in June but so much has happened already and we are excited to be one step closer to having our child placed in our arms.  I am already having such a hard time resisting the urge to baby shop… I think I have talked myself into not doing anything until the Home Study is complete… We will see if I can really stick to that 🙂

As I was typing this, I got a note from our Adoption Coordinator giving us the name of our Social Worker and saying she would be contacting us in the next week to set up the times for our visits and interviews…  Let the scrubbing of floors and dusting of baseboards begin!  🙂

IAC offers monthly support group sessions for Adoptive Parents and I am planning to attend tonight.  I am going to meet another future adoptive mother  for dinner before the session.  It has been nice to have someone local to email and chat with who is going through the same process.

Happy Tuesday!