Our lives changed forever on April 1, 2020 when we heard the devastating news that our baby girl did not have a heartbeat. I had just entered the second trimester and was starting to feel better. We picked out the name Liv Carlieze and in all my excitement, I’d already ordered outfits with her initials on it.
Less than two weeks earlier, I had cut into a big slice of cake to reveal the pink edible beads falling out as I watched the awe on my daughter Lily’s face- “it’s a girl!”We exclaimed to our crowded living room full of parents, siblings and cousins. A group of friends on FaceTime cheered and we all laughed and tried to imagine our growing family- two girls and two boys. Lily had been praying for a sister since she was old enough to name her baby dolls so everything was falling into place like we dreamed.
No heartbeat. There are no words to relive the devastation of the days, weeks and agonizing months that followed. I believed in my heart I was going to have another little girl and for the longest time, the emptiness and pain we walked through after that caused me to believe I must have missed it. We lost another baby, our sweet boy Jettson John Michael just before Christmas in a similar unfolding chain of events and our hearts were broken when we quietly moved his presents from underneath our Christmas tree.
When Judson Rock, our double rainbow baby arrived in November 2021, there was a deep sense of gratitude for the sanctity of human life that came with it and a desire to help others on their journey to bring a child home.
Each year in late September, the month Liv was due, we held a 5K walk in her honor at Yellow Creek Park to raise money for a local family who was trying to adopt or a local non profit such as Carenet or the Right to Life Safe Haven Baby box. This year, we completed our fourth t-shirt sale since 2020, raising just over $1,000 for a family who is trying to adopt.
This year, that family is us.
Even typing that seems surreal. We are the family who is adopting and it’s a little girl due September 27 just like Liv. Three years to the day after we expected our precious little baby girl, we will hold her in our arms.
The last month and a half has been full of paperwork and email threads, phone calls and number crunching. It’s been full of laughter and tears, excitement and anxiety. It’s been full of lots of prayer and unsung heroes along the way. It’s been full of epiphanies like the one I had at church last week during worship.
Two times I carried a baby I did not get to keep earth side,— I gave birth and I wept and I healed and I grieved. And I walked through Target avoiding the baby aisle and I ran out of my best friends baby shower to hide in the bathroom to ask God “why.” I visited my children’s graves in far stretched sporadic time periods, sobbing uncontrollably at the sight of their names beneath the willow tree. But this time, I’m about to keep a baby earth-side that I did not carry and somehow that’s the most beautiful restoration of all. I will not give birth to her, but even as we speak, we are rearranging, decluttering and making changes in our lives to make room for the most unexpected miracle we could have ever dreamed of.
Please pray for our precious birth mom and our little girl in the weeks and months ahead. They are both a part of our testimony forever.
