Our Story

Our Story: Mark and I met in 2001, talking online at first and then we met. We bought our first house together four months later. We got engaged in 2002 and married in 2003. In 2005, we took the training and became licensed to be foster parents. We also started seeing a doctor for fertility issues. In 2005, we had our first foster son and found out we were pregnant. On January 4, 2006, we had our son Daniel, who was born too early to survive. We continued fostering in MN until 2007. In the Fall of 2007, we moved to WI. We took a break from foster care. In October 18, 2010, we found out that I was pregnant for the third time at the age of 42. When we went for a ultrasound, we found out that I was losing the baby and had many tumors in my bladder. I started chemo, ended in 2011 and in March of 2011, I had my bladder and uterus surgically removed. I had a fake bladder built inside of me (an Indiana Pouch) and now I catheterize through a stoma in my tummy. We became foster parents again in 2012 and had two long-term placements, both of whom went home to family eventually. In 2014, we decided we wanted to give the thought of having our own child one last try. We contacted an adoption agency, had our home study completed on October 23. Met an awesome adoption placement agency online called "Special Angels Adoption - Advocates for Special Needs" On Friday, November 14, we were matched with our baby girl Teresa Katherine (Tess). Tess has a lot of special medical needs, but nothing we don't handle gladly. She is the love of our lives and will finally become our FOREVER daughter at the end of May. What's YOUR story? http://www.postcrescent.com/story/life/2015/01/04/life-fragile-baby-adoptive-parents/21201719/

Miss Tess Updates

Miss Tess has an appointment today with her pediatric cardiologist. Hoping everything is still looking good. The dietitian has changed her feedings. She went down in calories per ounce but up in overall feeding volume. The hope is that she will have less throwing up and less acid overall in her bowel movements. This will hopefully help her skin issues. We are now using regular diapers with cloth inserts to protect her skin. We are also using our fourth prescription cream and on top of that we're using stoma powder. So far, so good! Tess's paperwork is in the hands of the cardiologist at Duke. The surgeon has gone over everything and is, in my understanding, just waiting for word from cardiology to let us know that Miss Tess has been accepted. Then we begin the fights with insurance. End result, we should be in NC by end of April. I have had a few people ask what they can get for Miss Tess. We will keep this one registry open and up-to-date for a while. I think that most everything we need/want for Tess (other than her new Thymus) is on this registry! https://www-secure.target.com/gift-registry/myitems?registryId=_Qnw2wNY77NuRu3QxF_lkQ&accessedOn=1423237263523 Thanks again!

Going, going, gone!

Last night ended all of Tess's baby showers online. We had one with four different stores: Kohls, Target, Babies R Us and Baby Depot. Tess received some amazing gifts from friends and family. Probably more so than she would have with a normal baby shower! Gifts aside, Tess has also received some wonderful cards with beautiful words. All of these are put away in her memory box for her to one day read and appreciate. Just as her parents have. To the people who couldn't/wouldn't/didn't bother with any acknowledgment at all....no cards, no gifts, no phone calls, no words at all? Yes, we're saddened that the adoption of our child, after years of trying, three lost babies, many foster babies, failed adoptions, wasn't important enough for you to join in our happiness. It costs nothing, but means everything. We're certainly not keeping a running list of how each and every person in our lives reacted (other than the list we had for sending "thank you" notes). But we know, and Tess will know once she can read her memory box. And so, thank you so so much to everyone who had something to do with Tess's joining in our family. It meant a great deal to all of us. We're so very thankful.