Update and a picture!

13 1/2 weeks!

I am sorry that I haven't been updating as often as people have been requesting. From about week 9 on I have been very, very tired and resting a lot. I am now in my second trimester (hooray) and it all still feels like a dream.

We were able to hear the heart beat at our 9 1/2 week appointment and then again today at our 13 1/2 week appointment. The heart beat sounded so much stronger this time! Last time little baby Martin had a "whooshy" sounding heart but today it sounded like a real heart. The midwife said that each time it will sound stronger and stronger! Yay for strong babies!

My nausea is nearly all gone. I still have some strong aversions but I am hoping that those will subside with time!

We have been so busy just being excited. At the end of October we will be finding out if baby Martin is a boy or a girl. I really have no idea! Mitchell, on the other hand, is certain it is a girl.

Please continue to keep us in your prayers.

P.S. I just got my first "baby card" in the mail from Uncle Allan, Aunt Debbie, Nick, and Haley! It is super cute and has a baby stroller on the front! :)

Announcement!

Okay! So I have been gone from my blog for a while but I have a good reason, I promise!

The day after Grace left Mitch and I got a POSITIVE pregnancy test! That is right, after all of our praying and trusting God to make us a family and after believing that God would make our family through adoption only we are blessed with a belly baby!

I will be 11 weeks on Sunday! Last Wednesday we heard the heart beat for the first time. It was absolutely amazing.

I really believed that this was an experience I would never get to experience. I love that all my pants don't fit and that the smells in the kitchen send me running to the bathroom. I love that all I have energy to do all day is lay around and day dream about our baby (and waste copious amounts of time on hulu and facebook).

Back at the beginning of the month we got an ultrasound done that showed our little "seahorse's" heart beat racing fast at 153 bpm. At that ultrasound they gave us a due date of March 21 right between Mitch's b-day on the 19th and mine on the 24th.

God's timing is something that I will certainly never understand but I trust that it is good, even when painful, especially through this experience.

Having been through infertility and knowing how many times I would open up facebook and start crying because of people announcing pregnancies or posting ultrasound pics I am going to keep any pregnancy updates on my blog. Infertility is very painful and often dealt with all alone so I don't want to add to anyone's pain who is out there in facebook land. Thanks for understanding.

Please pray for Mitch and me as we transition into parents. We are about to start righting a family creed and I am sure we will have some deep and hard conversations as we try to plan (as well as one can) for the road before us. Pray that our little one continues to grow strong and healthy! Pray for the life that our little one will lead and pray that it brings glory to God.

Fun with Grace

Grace is here for a visit! She is my cousin and she is awesome. After we picked her up from the airport we headed home to eat some lunch. We quickly got our trip underway with a trip to the Carnegie Science Center.

Grace went for a spin with her new friend Olivia.

Then we toured a submarine. (If you can't tell that is Grace through the window)

She thought the sub was really cool, which it was.

I liked it too!

The first night we made tacos with homemade tortillas and got a little messy!

Grace really likes Theo and the dog that I "puppy nanny" for, Wilson.
She REALLY LOVES Wilson and he is pretty fond of her too!
We made chocolate Chip cookies too!

We just got back from a good hike at Schenely park. We came back muddy and exhausted. This is only half way through the hike and you can tell that Theo is having a fun time.

We also caught lightening bugs last night. Grace caught about 20. She said she would give me some pointers because I only caught a couple!

Check back periodically to see all the fun we are having.

On the agenda tomorrow: church, more hiking, and then the Justin Bieber movie in the park!

I STILL BELIEVE!

A realization hit me today. It was one of those crazy ones that I didn't know that I didn't feel this way until I did feel this way. Do you follow?

I was sitting at my computer playing minesweeper and listening to Pandora (yes I make great use of my time indeed). I realized, right here, doing nothing, pursuing nothing, just sitting, that God is still with me.

I didn't even know that I was doubting that. I didn't know that I wasn't certain where He was.

I was wondering when this lie started creeping in on me, the lie that God wasn't there or that he didn't care. I've been trying to get pregnant for over a year now. I one by one watched over 13 friends and family members get pregnant around me. I saw another friend who has been trying to get pregnant for 4 years miscarry. I saw several people around me get pregnant at the exact same times that I (or rather my body) failed to. I watched people around me post sonogram and ultrasound pictures. I saw their bellies slowly grow with life and hope while mine sat empty with a huge, neon lit vacancy sign, shining as a shameful beacon from within me.

Sometime during all of this, this lie, disguised as bitterness and protection from the hurt, started creeping up. It tried to swallow me whole. It made me skip church on Mothers' Day and avoid anything to do with Mothers' Day. It makes me avoid facebook for fear of another "announcement". This lie has kept from interacting with anyone pregnant or with young babies.

This lie, that God doesn't care, or that He doesn't have a plan tried to drown me.

But here is the truth. My God is BIG, He is POWERFUL, He is EVERYTHING I need, He has a plan for ME, He has a plan to make me a MOMMY. My God can see the next chapter. He sees our Christmas cards with smiling children and elated parents. He sees our car on family road trips with empty sandwich bags and crushed gold fish. He sees all of this and so, so, so much more. I am in His hands.

The song "Salvation is Here" by Hillsong United says:

"Cause I know my God saved the day
And I know His word never fails
And I know my God made a way for me
It's gonna be alright...

Salvation is here,
Salvation is here and it lives in me"

I know that my God saved the day. And I know that His word never fails and His word says in Psalm 113 that "He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the Lord." I know that God has made a way for me. I have no reason to doubt this. He has always made a way for me, why would he fail me know? He can't fail! Therefore, Cassidy, it is going to be alright.

God is with me! I still believe that God is with me!

I know that God is with you to! Find peace in the fact that even though today there may be pain one day there will be joy. And for those of you that find yourself with peace and joy in abundance encourage those around you. Lift them up and share your love for them.

Even more changes...

We just found out that the agency we are working with will most likely not be able to place us with an infant and truth be told we don't have money for an infant adoption and our agency just feels like the right place to be.

We are now pursuing an adoption for a child under 3. I am sad that we won't have the time period of infancy but I am getting excited about being the mother of a toddler.

I just found this fun site that has 101 things to do with a toddler. I am excited about taking our child on walks and making little boards for practicing buttons and snaps and zippers. I am excited about taking our child to the farmers' market to look at different vegetables.

Yes, it will be difficult. Yes, it will be hard. Our child will come to us already having experienced hurt, disappointment, neglect, and possibly even abuse. But I know that my Redeemer, my Savior, can transform anything. God can make beautiful things out of the dust.

Gungor "Beautiful Things"

Some of the lyrics are:

All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

I love the line "Could a garden come up from this ground at all". I feel like I am a garden... right now an infertile garden, that without God's grace cannot produce fruit. Yet God can make my barren soil a family. He can bring together people from different places and knit it together into a family. Some day our family will have so much joy, it will seem like a garden bursting into blooms!

God is amazing and I trust him through all of these changes and uncertainty.

Adoption

^{Romans 8}

¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” ¹⁶ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ¹⁷ Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

^{Ephesians 1}

⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will

So, after one terrible round of clomiphene Mitchell and I have decided to stop pursuing fertility treatments. We have now started the long paperwork intensive path to adoption.

There is a lot going through my mind as we embark on this path. Yet I have hope.

I trust that someday our house will be full of little foot steps. The child will not be from my belly but rather a child that I have prayed for and will one day meet, born from a different mother.

Please join us in praying for our future child. Please join us in praying for the birth mother wherever she is. It is hard not knowing anything. I don't know if my child is already born or even if the mother knows that she is pregnant yet. Please pray for peace within me and please pray that the process goes quickly.

New Paths

Through much prayer and searching Mitch and I have decided to pursue a new course. Please keep us in your prayers. I will share more info with everyone soon!

Thanks everyone.