Joel and I met in the fall of 2003 after being set up by three of my students who were also his football players. In April of 2005, we were married.It wasn't long after we got married that we decided that we wanted to expand our family. Through a few years of struggling to start a family on our own, we looked into the medical reasonings. Instead of choosing the fertility treatment route, we chose adoption. We did not want to go through more heartache with fertility treatments. We felt that we could be parents to children out there that needed a home. So we set out on the journey of adoption.
In the fall of 2007, we attended an informational meeting at Bethany Christian Services. We left the meeting with a sense of calm and a large application packet. By May of 2008, we had finally finished the application and turned it back in. Over the course of the summer we went through the home study process where a social worker met with us and decided if we were fit to become parents. In October of 2008, we were on what we refer to as "the list". At this point, we had put together a letter to birthparents and a profile book so that birthparents could choose us. At the time we thought that those two things were the hardest parts of this process. How do you convince someone that you are the one to parent their child?
On January 28, 2009, I was supposed to have a cheer meet but it was cancelled due to weather. If I had not come home early that day, I wouldn't have heard the most wonderful phone message until very late at night. Dawn, a pregnancy counselor, at BCS called to tell us that someone had seen our profile and wanted to meet us. We met "J" the following week and it was a match! We continued to meet up with "J" periodically to go to her doctor's appointments as we all prepared for "Spike's" arrival. "J" invited me to join her in the delivery room during the C-Section.
Augustus John Martin Stapleton was born on Thursday, June 18, 2009! The adoption was finalized on Monday, February 22, 2010. We are head over heels in love with him and are thrilled that he is completely ours!!
In August of 2012, we completed our second home study with Bethany Christian Services and began the wait for Baby Stape #2. We were BEYOND shocked that we received a call on October 22, 2012. Penelope Lin Elizabeth Stapleton was born that morning and her birthmom, "S", picked us!! We went to the hospital on October 23rd to meet "S" and brought home our beautiful daughter! We are all so smitten with her and can hardly believe how quickly this happened for us this time around.
Our family is complete. I have a baby for each arm. My dreams have come true and I cannot wait to see what comes next for the Stape fam!
