Building a Bethards

We got the call today. The crib is no longer empty. There is a sweet baby sleeping in the next room. A precious baby who has been entrusted to our care. We don't know how long we will have her, but we will love her while we do! Jack was incredibly excited when she arrived. Wonder when he'll realize that she's staying for a while. Thankfully, she didn't mind all his licking, in fact after just over an hour she started reaching for him! So adorable. As you may know I will not be able to post any pictures or details of her or her case here, so please don't ask. I will be posting our adventures in parenting this sweet baby, though! And of course I'll continue to post about our fertility journey. Pray for us as we love this little one. Pray for this little one as she learns who we are. Pray for her family and the issues that removed her from their care. Pray for all the foster families who are loving all these children. Continue to pray for our fertil...

We are once again an open foster home! We were officially approved last Friday and opened for kids a couple of days ago. We are incredibly excited and so ready for that call that there is a baby who needs us. As excited and ready to help as we are we also know that for us to get a baby like this it means that a family is being taken apart, and that is heart wrenching. The jobs that I have had over the years have placed struggling families in my life in a variety of ways. Through working at daycares I was able to see so many working moms and dads striving to make the lives of their children good and fun. At Early Head Start I worked with some incredibly vulnerable families and children; the struggle these parents went through to make a good life for their children was evident. Some did a better job than others, some struggled constantly. These children lacked rules and boundaries and didn't know how to get love and attention without behaving badly. My work at the variou...

Calm is not a word I would say has been in my vocabulary lately. Calm is also not something that has been in my life lately. However, this past cycle I have been given an overwhelming sense of calm. Now, that's not to say life has slowed down at all or we've had changes in what is happening to give me this calm. This feeling is definitely a blessing from God. Last cycle ended up being one without medication to assist ovulation. This happened for several reasons, the main one being that I was unable to get into my doctors office for an ultrasound at the beginning of the cycle to get a new prescription; another reason we went med-free this cycle was to see if I would ovulate on my own. Well, I can say I ovulated, but it ended up being a painfully long 40 day cycle because I didn't ovulate until sometime between CD 25-28. So when most girls finish their cycle on day 28 I was just ovulating. Fantastic. Not. Late ovulation can be an indicator of poor egg quality, but my RE ...

As my body continues to defy what it is supposed to do we are soldiering on in the process to open our home to foster children once again. For any of you who have gone through this process or have close friends who have done so, you know that the state is very slow with these things. You'd think with all the kids who need placements they would step it up and go faster, but that is not the case. So, we are still in the process of waiting. Seems like most of adult life is about waiting. Which makes it hard not to get lost in the future and the what-ifs. As for now we are waiting on our resource worker to come visit our home to give the final stamp of approval before we are officially open again. All the paperwork has been turned in. All the continuing education hours have been finished. The room is ready for babies. The dog is ready for babies, too, for that matter! Not much needed to be done to the room, as I mentioned before, we were keeping the empty crib as a faithful sign ...

This post is definitely going to be picture heavy, so be prepared for all the cuteness!! For those of you who know me well or have known me for a long time you would probably agree with the statement that I am not a dog person. I grew up with a mom who is allergic to dogs, so it was not really an option to want/get a dog. We were always told the negatives about dogs, so I never wanted one. Then I married a boy who grew up with dogs. Lots of dogs. I married a dog lover. When we were dating we discussed dogs and he knew how I felt. He once told me that he would teach himself to be ok without a dog. That didn't last long. About a year into our marriage my sweet hubby started researching dogs that were low allergen, so it wouldn't prevent my mom from coming to visit. After another year of trying to sneak the topic of dogs into conversation he decided he wanted to go to the dog show in LR that summer, you know, just to see the dogs. Yeah, right. He of course met a bunch of sweet...

So often recently I find myself trying to occupy my time; to fill the waiting with things that are not related to infertility or trying to make a baby. It's exhausting. Infertility is exhausting. Trying not to think about infertility is exhausting. Dictionary.com defines exhaust as: to   drain   of   strength   or   energy,   wear   out,   or   fatigue   greatly,   as   a  person That is where I'm at. I am drained. Most days I really fight to make myself get out of bed. I don't have the strength to get through the day, especially when that day involves pretending that I'm ok when I'm not, which is most days. At this moment in time, as I sit here on day one of a new cycle, the only strength I have is to cry out to God. To pray to him to give me strength to make it through another day, another week, another cycle. I came across a note in my phone this morning that I had typed out last July. Exactly 14 months a...

I've always been one to try to prepare for things. I try to make plans. I love writing out lists and making a calendar. Infertility is hard because it takes all of that away from me. I can plan as many pregnancy announcements as I want; they're different every month based on when the baby would be due. So far they've all gone unused. But, hey, now I'm prepared with 18 months of them, right? When our first foster child was placed with us we were not ready. Yes, we had gone through all the classes, read all the material, and completed all the necessary home visits & requirements from the state. Our home had a space for a child. We had a closet full of clothes and the crib set up, ready to go. But we were not prepared. Our hearts were not ready. Looking back on that experience now I think it was just too close to the heartache of our failed attempt at the fostering and adoption of the baby in the hospital whom we both loved. We were also not prepared ...