My Journey To Motherhood

This morning, at 5:30am, with my entire body aching, I texted my mom while rocking and feeding my daughter, Bara Faith: “Please tell me this sleep deprivation thing is a temporary part of motherhood.” After not being able to fall asleep until 2am, to then be woken up for a 3am feeding, and now 5:30am, I was about to lose my mind.  She had gone from sleeping 12 hours a night, I was finally getting full night sleeps again, to now, suddenly at almost 10 months, this sleep regression thing. Waking my own momma up at the crack of dawn…

When we stood at the beginning of our adoption journey, one of my biggest stresses was “How are we going to be able to afford to adopt?” My faith told me “If this is what God has called us to, He will make a way,” but my fear told me “Adoption costs more than some people make in a year, I hate how expensive this is, how are we ever going to save up all this money before the baby arrives in 9 months?” In the end, my faith trumped my fear and that’s what won in the end. But…

Three months ago today, on April 26, 2016, my sweet daughter, Bara Faith (pronounced bear-ah), arrived into the world a month early, and last week on July 21, 2016, we stood in front of a judge vowing to love her forever as we finalized her adoption. Up to this point my blog entries have been about my journey to motherhood during the tear-filled grieving waiting seasons of our infertility struggles, and during the journey of our adoption process.  But now I can say it, what I have longed to say after 5 years of the wanting and waiting… I. Am. A. Mother….

One of the things I used to grieve the most with our infertility struggles was… missing out on the excitement of pregnancy.  That joy of seeing a positive stick.  That joy of the first heartbeat, the first ultrasound, watching a little peanut grown into a watermelon, feeling the kicks and watching the bump grow.  I so often felt in my previous struggles to conceive that that significant chapter of my life was robbed from me, and it felt unfair, often questioning God, why I wasn’t allowed to experience those same joys that seemed like a God given right for every…