Tobi's crafty and a night owl
Corey's nerdy and athletic
Tobi is an artist
Corey is a nurse and graduate student
We have 4 fur babies named:
Nellie, Olive, Roscoe & Itzy
We have been trying to adopt for 8 years and unfortunately had 5 fall through.
We haven't given up hope
Life is good - we love our city and are surrounded by amazing family and friends
all that we are missing is our daughter, Ivey
The Whole Story
For a longer version of our adoption story......keep reading :)
The year was 2004 and my Corey and I were ready to start a family. We were trying for a bit to get pregnant, but then my business partner at the time went into labor and Corey and I both witnessed her "back labor". Corey immediately said he didn't want me to have to go through that with my existing back problems. (for those of you who don't know, I broke my back 13 years ago) We thought about it and decided to start adoption.
Story 1: We have a family friend who is an adoption lawyer - he introduced us to a young lady who was pregnant and wanting to give up her baby. She found out it was a girl and later decided to keep it.
*sidenote - during this process I had to have a hysterectomy because of fibroids and endometriosis - which was a easy decision to make since we had already decided to adopt.
Story 2: We decided to try international adoption, even after one failed adoption due to the birth mother we were intrigued by the idea of adopting from another country where there were no birth mothers to change their mind. After a lot of research we chose China. We knew the process was long, and we had to wait for corey to turn 30 before we could even try. So corey turned 30, we had started the process thought we were moving along and they changed all the criteria - and because of my multiple sclerosis we were shut out from adopting from China.
*sidenote - during this process we moved to Chattanooga to be closer to Ivey's cousins and to be in a new city with better opportunities. I also started Ivey Handcrafted as an adoption fundraiser.
Story 3: After waiting after heartbreak we wanted to try again. We decided to find a lawyer here in town and go with domestic. Through a friend on facebook we found a teenager out west that was pregnant with her 2nd child and she wanted to give up the baby for adoption. We went through the process, paid 2 different lawyer fees only to find out via facebook on thanksgiving (after we had been talking with her since January) that she was giving her daughter to her sister. This one crushed us....we felt defeated.
Story 4: Decided to try again - and a friend of mine from middle school found a beautiful young lady who was pregnant and wanted to give her baby to a deserving family. We met her, we all fell in love with each other and she decided we were the family for her. I went to her ultrasound and found out it was a boy. We were so excited. We went through almost her entire pregnancy. The only worry of ours was we didn't know who the father was. We had to wait till the baby boy was born before we could do DNA testing. Baby Boy was born, they did DNA and it was the father that we had the most confidence in. Only he met the baby and decided he didn't want to sign off. The mother kept the baby, is in college and working. We have been in contact. I still have such a love for her.......This one took a while to get past.......On a side note - they are doing wonderful.
Story 5: This was a short story. Over a 2 week period we found out an old friend of mine was pregnant and she didn't want to keep it. We didn't know how far along she was, turns out MUCH farther than we knew. She gave birth to a little boy and still wanted to give the baby to us but we insisted she tell the father. Even though she didn't want too, she did and he decided he wanted to parent. This was very short, but a very quick little heartbreak.
We thought and thought and thought......do we try this again? DO we do it even though we know that we could get our heartbroken? YES we want to be parents. End of story. We went back to the beginning and decided to try international. This is hopefully where our story begins.....we can't wait to bring ivey home.
