Tag Archives: baby

Countdown: Adoption Style

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It’s January 14, 2015.  The countdown has moved down to six days.

Six.  That’s less than a week!

It’s crazy!  In six days (if not before) my wife and I will be holding our first child.

Writing that sentence makes me lose my breath just a bit.  It’s totally surreal in fact!

The reality of this countdown has been pretty insane.  Here are some of the things that have been going on lately in the Barnes house:

  • We have our bags packed just in case we need to hit the road quickly.
  • We have a diaper bag packed and ready to go.
  • We have a couple of bags of baby stuff packed and ready.
  • Our dog is packed and a sitter has been arranged.
  • We have an infant car seat installed in our car.
  • Cloth diapers have been prepped, washed, and dried.
  • Baby clothes, towels, blankets, swaddlers, etc. have all been washed, sorted, and stored away.
  • The nursery has been finalized, minus a few things that we don’t need until later.
  • Baby-proofing of the house has ramped up significantly.
  • There’s a ton of baby food in our house, thanks to our wonderful friends.
  • I’ve become very well acquainted with the baby aisles in Target.
  • We’re learning how to swaddle, mix formula, use cloth diapers, etc., etc.
  • We’ve had a thousand conversations about parenting.
  • We’ve prayed for Wendy, our birthmom, our child, and this whole process a ton.
  • We have leaned on on friends and family in ways that we never have before.
  • And we have seen God’s faithfulness to us like we never have up to this point.

This countdown has changed our lives.

Once the countdown goes to zero our lives will be changed again!  Baby Barnes will transform who we are as a couple, as individuals, and as followers of Jesus.

So, please keep praying for us.  Pray for the adoption process to continue to be smooth.  Pray for our nerves as this countdown keeps ticking away.  And pray that the good news of Jesus and his kingdom will be lifted high through all of this!

If you’d like to read more of our adoption story and/or if you’d like to find out how you can support us, please follow this link: https://www.continuetogive.com/mattandalida.

And if you want to follow our continued adoption saga, enter your email in the subscribe box near the upper right hand corner of this page (or near the bottom of the page if you’re reading this on your mobile device!).

 

 

Ultrasound of Our Future

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Ultrasound

An ultrasound machine like this one granted us our first look at a face that will forever change our lives.

 

Ultrasound of Our Baby

My wife and I have been having a lot of life-changing days lately.  This is due to the fact that we’re in the process of adopting.  You can read some about it at this link, this link, or this one.

Yesterday was another one of those days — I was blessed with the opportunity of going to our birthmother’s ultrasound appointment.  It was a complete trip!  I was so excited to see the face of our child for the first time, thanks to the ultrasound machine and technicians; all while getting to have a wonderful conversation with the child of Wendy, our birthmother (who is also my cousin and her daughter will be our child’s cousin and biological sister).

While the whole scenario was certainly surreal, like much of this process has been, the reality of the situation began to sink in more and more fully.  I was looking at pictures of our child on the ultrasound monitor after all — his or her feet, hands, legs, heart, organs, brain, eyes, arms, face…

It was beyond belief!

Want to see the star of the show?  Here you go!

ultrasound

1.2.840.113663.1500.1.374244462.3.55.20141117.143326.406.d86ae41b23b.0000000000 1.2.840.113663.1500.1.374244462.3.56.20141117.143330.656.d86ae41b23b.0000000000

 

You may be able to see that our baby is resting on his or her hand.  I don’t know why but this little detail of the ultrasound photo really stands out to me, but it does.  I guess it humanizes the photo some.  I mean, I do that — I rest on my hand!  And here’s our baby doing the same thing!

I wish I had words to encapsulate how I felt in that moment…but all my words are inadequate.  I’ll try anyway: I was excited, nervous, happy, scared, hopeful, anxious, and joyous.  Ultimately I would say that in that moment I felt blessed: blessed to be there, blessed to have this opportunity to live out the life of Jesus within my own family, and blessed to be entrusted with this little life which is being knit together in Wendy’s womb and in our hearts.

Ultrasound of Our Future

But the other side of the blessing coin is being a blessing.  There’s a biblical principle, found in the covenant with Abraham in Genesis to the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels, that those who are blessed by God, in whatever capacity, are expected to be a blessing to others.  To hoard the blessing of God is nothing short of utter selfishness and is ultimately sinful.

Thus, when looking into the monitor at the face of our baby, I could not help but begin to imagine all that is going to unfold over the next months and years.

It’s not often that we have the opportunity to see a face that will forever change our lives.  I don’t remember first time seeing the faces of my parents and sister, but those faces certainly count.  And in 1998 I first saw the face of my wife, Alida, and my life’s never been the same.

Seeing our baby’s face for the first time yesterday was another one of those moments.

All our prayers, all our decisions, and all our conversations for the rest of our lives will be different because of the face looking back at us in these ultrasound pictures.

And we, my wife and I, have been blessed with this opportunity.  It’s our job to steward, or to care for, this blessing well, while always being prepared to share it with others.  It’s our God-given mandate to share the blessing that we are receiving in this moment.

I haven’t the slightest idea of what that will look like.  But I know this for sure: this child isn’t just ours.  He or she belongs to God and God will do with him or her whatever he sees fit.

It’s our job to be a blessing to this child and to be ready to share him or her with the world.

 

If you’d like to support my wife and I during this process, that would be great!  Please pray that everything continues to go smoothly and that all the little details that need ironing out will get ironed out.  For more ways to support us, click here.  Thanks!