A Forever Home

It is with sadness and JOY that we send Baby S to a new home today. To be clear, the joy outweighs the sadness by a very considerable amount.

S was such a blessing in the short time he was with us. He was incredibly sweet and fit into our family with ease. We connected with him quickly and there are things about him that we will never forget and fondly recall. As awesome as he was, we were not the right home for S. He needed to be in a home that would be willing to make him their forever son if he were ever able to be adopted. We're not that family. We're not an adoptive home right now and we're not sure when (or if) we ever will be. (As a side note, we're not closed to the idea of adoption as ultimately we don't feel it's our choice to make and God the Father will decide if and when it's right for us). For S, we're confident that his new home will be right where he needs to be. Can't go into a ton of detail, but knowing what we know, we can very happily let S go.

Thank you S for being such a blessing to us. Thank you for letting Mckenna carry you around like a sack of potatoes. Thanks for being such a great sleeper. Thanks for being Bennett's little buddy. Thank you for spending that special time with me when I fed you your bottle. Thank you for putting a smile on our face daily.

I hope you felt our love.

Sharpe: Party of 5 (for awhile)

So no one thinks this is a pregnancy announcement, I'll come out and say the punch line quickly....We have decided to love on another sweet foster baby for awhile. As of today, we are taking another placement.

We have, for awhile, felt like we needed to take another placement into our home. However, we have gone around and around regarding what age would be best. Mckenna will be 5 in October. Bennett will be 1 in September. We didn't know if we should take a kiddo between them in age, a newborn, or another slightly older baby. At different points over the last 6 months, we were "sure" one age was perfect, and then would take a respite child (short term placement to help another foster family) around that age, and realize that that age wasn't a great fit. But we still continued to feel called and convicted about another placement.

We got a call on Thursday about a sweet little baby boy, Baby S, that's 9 months old and needs a new foster home. For whatever reason, Baby S and his situation sat heavy on our hearts, so we decided to take the plunge and take him into our home. If you're paying attention, that means we essentially signed ourselves up for twins...gulp. But people handle that all the time, right? (That's what we keep telling ourselves...but I think it's about to get real in the Sharpe household)

Baby S gets dropped off today, and there's a lot of nervous excitement in our house. We all can't wait to see his little face and start working him into our family. We are confident that it will be stressful and chaotic at first, but trust that God has called us to this ministry and that He will provide what we need in terms of time, patience, and resources in order to thrive with Baby S under our roof.

Please pray first and foremost for Baby S. His sweet little world is being rocked. He has been with the same foster family since he came home from the hospital, and there is no doubt that he loves those two people who have been his parents the last 9 months. We may be a safe, loving, happy home, but we are not the home he has grown attached to and loves. So please pray for him to feel comfortable and loved in this time of transition. Pray that he quickly attaches and knows that he is loved beyond measure.

Please pray for our own kiddos. My biggest fear accepting another placement is that our own kids would feel it in a negative way/be negatively impacted. Mom and Dad's attention will be divided between a third, and my heart feels heavy wondering if we are doing the right thing, for them. We continue to remind ourselves that we are called to this, so we just need to be faithful, and God will take care of our kids' hearts throughout this. But pray that as parents, we do right by them day in and day out.

Please pray for Ronnie and I. Pray for sleep and patience. Pray for time to bond with each kid individually. Pray for good health so that we can stay under the same roof for awhile before Ronnie has to go in for a tune up.

And please pray for the system. Pray that his case progresses as it should and quickly, so that he can be where the Lord ultimately wants him.

Welcome "home" Baby S. We will love you deeply while we have you!

From the Top of the Rollercoaster

As you have probably seen scattered here and there in posts, we are getting licensed to be foster parents. I'm not sure what we shared about this, so I'll lay it all out there...

Ronnie and I have both always felt called to fostering. We talked about it while dating and continued discussions all throughout our relationship. I have family friends who have fostered and adopted a huge family, Ronnie's cousins have fostered and adopted several kids, and we have friends who foster. We always discussed fostering "when our family is complete." Even after getting pregnant and having Mckenna, it was always "when our family is complete." Even through the first year and a half of our IVF journey to baby number two, it was "when our family is complete."

Well after our failed cycle this summer, we both felt God was saying we shouldn't put off getting licensed any longer. We had a set expectation of what our "complete" family was going to look like. And this summer I really started to think that maybe my version of our "complete" family, wasn't God's version. Perhaps our family wasn't going to be completed the way I thought. We both felt God was saying not to push off the call on our hearts for some self-imposed milestone. We aren't done trying to have biological kids, but we decided that our vision of when we would foster should be reworked. So we started the process.

We have friends and family in the area that have fostered, so we asked around and found a wonderful agency. From there it was lots of paperwork, 10 weeks of classes, lots more paperwork, a homestudy (just lots of interviews that our licensing worker writes up about us), and a home inspection by the state. It's been a long road, but I'm happy to say that as of last Thursday, our application for a license was submitted to the state, and we should hear any minute that we have our license.

Gulp.

That means this is really happening. I have to tell you...when we started this in June, it seemed like an eternity away. And when we submitted our application last week, I kind of felt like I was going to have a panic attack. You know that feeling when you are really excited to ride a roller coaster, and then when it's slowly climbing up to the peak at the beginning, your heart starts racing. With each eery "click", you can feel your stomach rise higher into your throat. Click....click....click. And then, you're at the top, looking down at the ground, and you have that moment of "oh crap..." right before you're hurled down for the most fear-filled yet thrilling ride of your life? That's pretty much exactly how it feels. This is a journey that we are stepping into knowing it will be the ride of our lives.

One of the first things people say when they know you're going to foster is that they never could do it. That it has to be so hard to take a child in, bond with them, and then say goodbye. And I totally get it. I don't think I can do it either. I love kids. I love babies. You could hand me a baby tomorrow and say, "it's yours." I wouldn't think twice and love him/her like I had carried him/her for 9 months. I honestly don't know how you say goodbye to a little one that you've loved and cared for. But, I know that while I can't, I know that He can. God has placed this call on our hearts. And I know that He can walk us through the hard parts. I know that He has created each of us, Mckenna included, to be able to navigate through and flourish while carrying out this call. So while I stare from the top, panicked and scared for the plunge, I am feeling at peace knowing that God will walk us through this.

So please pray for our family as we step out in faith to carry out the most challenging, yet rewarding, journey we may ever do together. We are so excited...and scared...but more excited!!

Creating a Family: Thoughts on Our Options and a Question

So I know that it's been baby central around RSBR lately...It will let up! But before it does, I wanted to post the post I promised I'd post (say that 10 times fast): our thoughts on our options.

First things first, the appointment Tuesday went well. Shockingly well actually. He made it sound like getting me (a 24 year old) preggers was a no brainer. He obviously said we have to first rule out any possibility of me having infertility issues, but he sounds like if there are no issues, we should have pretty good chances. This was music to my ears. I know there is still the chance that we do a few rounds and it doesn't work, but he seems to think if that's the case, then we need to reassess because there's something there we're missing.

I'm excited. I'm excited, and I'll tell you why. To me, the best of our options, the option that I like the most, is being able to conceive a child that is created from Ronnie's DNA and mine. I have spent many hours asking myself why this is; trying to pinpoint my reasoning behind this being my preferred option. And here's what I've concluded: There are two big reasons, but I'm not sure which is the main reason. The first reason is that I want to carry a child. While terrified by the what pregnancy can do to some people's bodies, minds, emotions, etc, I have always dreamed of being pregnant. Most people just played house with babies. I played house "pregnant", "delivered the baby", "brought it home from the hospital"...you get the point. The second reason is that part of me wants to look at my kid's face and see Ronnie. I don't know how to explain that better than that. And I know this one is flawed, as Ronnie keeps reminding me, even if it's biologically his, it very well may not look anything like him. But it's still part of my reasoning, so there you go. To me, this seems like the option you try first.

All that being said, there are a TON of other options. For us, the next options to look at are adoption, fostering to adopt and adopting embryos. Here's the dealio on these options: they're really good options that I am actually excited about. First, adoption and fostering to adopt. While I want to carry our child really badly, I think after holding my adopted/fostered baby in my arms, the pregnancy wouldn't matter, the genes wouldn't matter, nothing. You could hand me a child tomorrow and I would not love it any differently than a child I carried for 9 months with my genes in it. So while I really want to carry our child, if that's not in the cards for us, we'll regroup and look at adoption/fostering to adopt. Also, we have talked about fostering regardless of if IVF works or not. We would love nothing more than having a few biological kids, and then fostering and potentially adopting a few children (no, we we're not picturing a Cheaper By the Dozen or a 18 Kids and Counting deal). We have watched the foster care process with our cousins, and I have a really close family friend that has 3 biological kids and several adopted foster children. I would love that. As I said, you hand me a baby, and I will love it just as much as if I carried it nine months. What a cool way to give a child a home that maybe wouldn't have had one. So even if we do IVF and it works, fostering/fostering to adopt is still in the cards for us!

And onto the last option, adopting an embryo. To be honest with you, I've looked into this only slightly after following the Davenport's (awesome, awesome people) journey. It seems like a really good option that falls somewhere between adoption (in the traditional sense) and having biological children because you adopt an embryo, they implant it, you carry the baby, and vwalla. This is another option for us, but I need to dig into it a little deeper if IVF with our goods doesn't work.

So there you have it...my thoughts on our options. We will be moving forward with option number 1 (IVF) and try to roll with the punches. Here is my question for you: how would you like us to do this? Would you like the blow by blow? Postings each step of the way? Or would you like us to make it through the first round and post backwards how we got to the outcome we got to? We want to share the process, but in the way you all want to hear about it! So leave a comment and let us know!