Our Adoptions From The Heart Story- Matthew and Elizabeth

Our Adoptions From The Heart Story – Matthew and Elizabeth

Our Daughter Liliana was born on October 22, 2013

Starting a Family

We were married for several years not thinking we’d want to have children right away. We wanted to establish our careers, travel, and enjoy our new lives together. Children were not in the picture! 😊 After several years we were ready to settle down a bit and begin trying to have a baby. We thought it would be easy – after all, most of our friends were on their second child already so we had some catching up to do! This went on for several years with no luck. I took ovulation tests, charted cycles, and followed various theories to no avail. We decided to take it to the next step and see a fertility doctor. None of the tests were conclusive in telling us why we were unable to conceive. I underwent endometrial surgery to prepare myself for IVF and, subsequently IUI treatments which all proved unsuccessful. After several months of trying with no luck, we decided to stop all medical interventions and take a mental break. All of this was quite stressful mentally and physically.

Meeting Joan

After several months we both felt a strong desire to grow our family again and began to research the adoption process. We knew we wanted an infant child born domestically and that helped to narrow our search. We got recommendations of agencies from various resources and attended several agency orientations. Nothing quite felt right for us until we visited Adoptions From The Heart in Greensburg, PA. There we met some really great staff who answered all of our questions and gave us a TON of great information. We were about 90% sure we wanted to work with AFTH after that meeting but it wasn’t solidified until we met the person that would become our social worker, Joan Smith. Once we met her, we just knew AFTH would be the right choice for us. She is an angel!

Joan worked with us through the entire process in terms of preparation and assistance. She kept our spirits up when we got down and made us believe we would see our dream of becoming parents one day come true. And it did! After about 6 months of preparation and another 6 months of waiting, we got a call on Labor Day in 2013 saying the birthparents saw our profile and felt we were a good match and asked us if we would want to meet them. We were overjoyed and couldn’t believe what we were hearing. The baby – a girl! – was scheduled to be born late October so we had a little over a month to prepare.

That first meeting with the birth parents was nerve-racking but it went really well overall and Joan was very excited to tell us that after the meeting they wanted us to be the adoptive parents. We were overjoyed!

The Birth

Things took off pretty quickly after that in terms of preparation and our family and friends were right there to help us every step of the way! We were blessed to be at the hospital when our baby girl was born and got to be the first one to hold her, to see her get weighed, to watch her get her vitals checked…and we even got to ring the bell in the hospital which plays a lullaby over the loudspeakers indicating to everyone a baby has been born! 😊 And, Joan was there with us for every one of those awesome moments.

Our Daughter

Those first few weeks were tough as any parents of newborns will attest but now 6.5 years later, it seems a distant memory. Now, our daughter is in kindergarten and thriving and is the best thing that happened to us. Most days we forget that she is not our own flesh and blood. We remind her that she wasn’t born in mommy’s belly but in her birthmother’s belly. She understands and when she has questions, we answer them. We know there will be many more questions as she grows. Some will be easy, some won’t. And, that’s ok.

We are so glad we chose AFTH. We are so blessed to have worked with Joan. I can’t say enough about the agency and the staff. Congratulations on 35 awesome years!