Introducing...

Our daughter, Ellery Claire
Born 5/29/13
7lbs. 10 oz.
19" long


















Wow. What a wirlwhind this has been. Ellery is now over a month old. You're probably wondering WHY we're just now telling you about her? Well, she was born in PA. Not far from where we live actually. And PA has a 30 day revocation period. The process is this: The birth mom gives birth. They have to wait at least 72 hours to sign TPR (termination of parental rights). Then they have 30 days AFTER TPR is signed to change their minds. Due to the weekend and whatnot, TPR in our situation was not signed until 5 days after the birth. Fortunately this provides us with a July 4th date for when Ellery is ours for keeps! (Talk about a new appreciation for Independence Day!)

We chose not to tell 90% of our friends and even some of our family until the revocation period was up. We were terrified about the birth parents deciding to take Ellie back and if they did chose that, we did not want to go through the pain of having to tell everyone what happened and going through 50,000 questions about why/how/what now.

But, that revocation period is now up and she is OURS!! So we are introducing her to the world!

Here's how the past month went (if you're a parent, you can probably understand). Sleep, wake, feed, change diaper, rock her to sleep, sleep ourselves, wake, feed, change diaper, rock her to sleep, sleep ourselves... you get the idea.

The first few days where HORRIBLE for me. Thank God for Matt because I don't know what I'd do if he wasn't the most amazing man and father ever. This is hard for me to put down in writing but I'm going to anyway. I regretted her. I really did. I missed my old, quiet life. I missed sitting on the couch with Teddy and relaxing. Watching the shows I wanted to watch when I wanted to watch them. I had severely bad anxiety trying to deal with both losing that and just adjusting to a newborn. Plus, there was a LOT of people coming and going from our house. It was a horrible first few days. I cried all the time and I barely wanted to hold her. Matt changed all of her diapers, feed her all the time and held her. I just cried.

Now, I know I'm not the only one to go through this, but I feel it's a bit different for adoptive parents. I feel that most people don't think I should go through this since I didn't give birth. But ya know what, just because I didn't give birth to her doesn't mean my emotions aren't going crazy and my world hasn't been turned upside down. And yes, I've been going through this and getting ready for this for at least two years but we only had THREE WEEKS to really emotionally prepare for this. That's a lot less time than most people who get 7-9 months to prepare.

Back to our story.... things are getting much better with me. I'm adjusting pretty well and I'm not as sad anymore. I still get a little bit of depression here and there but nothing like the first few days.

Ellie is pretty perfect. She's opening her eyes more and staying awake more often. She has the most beautiful eyes! She's a good eater and an amazing farter (like her father) and burper (like her mother). She has some amazing nights (only waking once and letting us get 7ish hours of sleep) and she has some rough nights (only wants to be held ALL. NIGHT. LONG. and we only get 3 hours of sleep) but we're getting through it. Some how, we're doing it.

Each day is something new. She's just started smiling intentionally, which is pretty magical. Stay tuned... Things are just getting started!