Brandon and Rachael's Story

We would love to have started building our family soon after marriage, but we knew that it would be difficult to accomplish this dream.  I (Rachael) have been diagnosed with 'Premature Ovarian Failure' which is basically early menopause. I expected from a young age that I would have infertility issues because the women in my family have had difficulty with fertility. When Brandon and I were dating and we started talking about marriage, I nervously told him that we probably wouldn't be able to have kids on our own.  He quickly, and excitedly replied that it was no big deal, and that he thinks adoption is an amazing way to build a family! I was floored (to say the least), he not only had no problem with it, but was (and has always been) so excited, calming and reassuring that our infertility and adoption process has been a positive and exciting one for us!  Our family and extended family has been so blessed by the miracle of adoption already, we have 8 first cousins and 5 nieces/nephews that have joined our family through the blessing of adoption.

We found out that we were chosen by this amazing non-profit organization to be one of the three couples they were going to sponsor in a fundraiser 5K. It was so exciting and we were overwhelmed with the amount of support and love we felt on the day of the race.

On April 10th, I was at work one day when I got a phone call from our case worker telling me that she was about to rock our world, that we had a big decision to make, and we had to make it quickly.  She told us that there was a baby girl born April 4th in Michigan, the birth mother picked us and needed to place quickly ... so, if we interested we'd have to drop everything, hop on a plane to Michigan. So, with our bags backed and hearts full of faith we hopped on a plane the next morning not knowing if we would get this baby, no pictures, not a lot of other info, but we were on our way!  

When she arrived and was placed into our arms we were in heaven, literally in heaven; we felt angels round about us!  Heaven!!

Special thanks to: Pound the Pavement for Parenthood, the many people who came to support us on race day, the many people who registered but couldn't make it, and the many people who gave donations! Our hearts are overflowing with gratitude!