The Yellow Door Life

More than anything in this world, I want to be a mom. A wife yes, teacher, friend, daughter, neighbor, all yes, but I don’t get any feeling like I do when I think about being a mom.

This blog has been on my heart for years and has been one of the hardest things to actually sit down and write. 

I’ve had to stop to cry, pray, and reflect on the journey. 

But this part, just like so many other parts of my story, is part of my truth, and I hope that it will be encouraging to all of you who are going through trials on your road to motherhood/parenthood.  

…

Always

There were several things I was sure of at a very young age:

1. I was convinced I needed to be blonde. 
2. I wanted to be a mom.
3. I wanted to be a teacher.
4. Writing made me happy. 

Now, the first one clearly was from a long obsession with Barbie and wore off as I grew up, but the other 3 dreams have remained. They may have gotten pushed to the backburner at different times in my life, but they have always taken up space in my heart. 

Perhaps, it was from being raised by my Mom doing it alone, since my Dad worked on the road and was rarely around, but she inspired these dreams. I knew I wanted to be around kids, even when I was still one myself, toting Lunchables to school and making mud pies in the backyard. She had confidence in me and always told me I was a peacemaker. Good with people and loyal to a fault. She encouraged me to follow these dreams. She’s been praying for these dreams of mine longer than I have. 

I treated my stuffed animals like my children. 

I’ve always gravitated toward TV moms. The way they raise their kids. The way they pray for their kids. The way they work to give their kids the life they deserve.

Lucy Ricardo. 

Dr. Michela Quinn. 

Annie Camden.

Debra Barone. 

Lorelai Gilmore.

Emily Gilmore. 

Brooke Davis. 

(To name a few).

All characters in made up worlds, but they have helped make up who I am. 

I guess it’s why I’ve always had so many dogs. My need to nurture and care for life runs deep. Even if it is only to fur children so far. 

I’ve always wanted to be a mom. 

It’s just who I am. 

Thank God for Unanswered Prayers 

After getting married, there were several times I thought I was pregnant. I took pregnancy tests probably 3 or 4 times in the first 6 months of my marriage, eagerly awaiting double lines. Every time, it was negative and it made me so sad. When would I be a mom? Why was it taking so long now that I was married? Was I also going to struggle for years like many people I knew? I had quit smoking in service of this dream the week before the wedding. I had quit drinking regularly many, many years before that. I was starting to eat better. What would it take for me to get pregnant? 

The first time I heard the words pulmonary hypertension, I was sitting in my driveway in Fort Collins. I had just had my first echo, and my cardiologist called me frantically. 

The results of the echo showed that I had elevated blood pressure in my heart and he feared it was being caused by a pulmonary embolism. He told me it was not emergent, but it was urgent, and requested that I return to the emergency room to have a CT immediately. 

It was one of those moments in my life where you feel like you are watching the scene from outside of your body. I sat there waiting for him to call back and say he had made a mistake, but that call never came. 

I called my now ex-husband, told him what was going on, called my Mom and told her, went inside to feed the dogs dinner, and drove myself back to the ER. 

The whole thing felt like a plot line on Grey’s Anatomy and as I moved from room to room within the ER, I took note of each nurse and doctor and compared them to people on the show. I felt like an animal in the zoo as they watched me, confused by my presence there when I looked perfectly normal and healthy to them. 

After hours of waiting and completing the CT, I was told that I had a dilated pulmonary artery, but by the grace of God himself, there was no pulmonary embolism. 

I left the ER, picked up cheeseburgers for dinner on the way home to my ex-husband, and didn’t figure my life was going to change much. 

I got home and sat down to eat, phone in tow, and began to Google pulmonary hypertension/ pulmonary arterial hypertension. 

It was foreign to me, some rare disease I had never heard of. (Ironically, I would remember later that I had heard it on Grey’s Anatomy in fact, just couldn’t remember at the time). 

As I read the terrifying (and sparse) information Google had to offer, I kept coming across things like this:

PAH is dangerous for people who are pregnant. It can cause complications for both the mom and fetus.

Phrased differently depending on the source, the general consensus out there was PAH and pregnancy don’t mix. 

I was absolutely shattered. Of all the things I could be diagnosed with, I have something that could prevent me from ever having a child of my own. That devastation, that feeling, still haunts me. 

As I moved through the required testing to be officially diagnosed with the condition, I kept being told, “It is important that you do not get pregnant during this time.” Over and over. Every appointment. Do not get pregnant. I was a newlywed and was being told not to get pregnant. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. He wanted kids and he was equally upset that we had to wait. 

Looking back now, my prayers for children during that time, and with that man, would have changed my life, and not for the better. I’m blessed that God said no then. It’s what I needed, and in all honesty, probably kept me alive. 

The Dream of Motherhood

I know I’m not the only one who has this dream on their heart. I have watched countless people in my life struggle with becoming a parent. Infertility, endometriosis, miscarriages. I have watched family members and friends suffer through the pain of trying to bring life into this world and feeling like they are failing. Unlike them though, I felt trapped, like I couldn’t even throw my hat in the ring. I really felt like a failure. A woman who just got married and couldn’t give her husband a child, or run the risk of dying in trying to do so. It all felt impossible. A nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. 

When There’s a Will, There’s a Way

In the most traditional sense, I want to be a mom by having my own baby, but I have always known that I wanted to adopt a child(ren) as well. Throughout my life, I have had many friends who were adopted and their stories have always inspired me to share my life with a child who needs a parent. 

After getting diagnosed with the PAH and scleroderma, I started out by adopting another dog (which shouldn’t really surprise anyone) and I then began making two lists, two sets of possibilities for how we were going to become parents: 

1. Get stable enough to attempt a pregnancy 
2. Take the steps necessary to apply to become foster parents and/or adoptive parents

My ex and I could never really agree on either of the above scenarios, but agreed I should meet with a maternal fetal medicine doctor who specialized in high risk pregnancies to discuss our options. After this appointment, she and I concluded that if I was ever going to proceed with a pregnancy, despite her cautions against it, it would be best attempted when my health was more well-managed and at a lower altitude. 

Tennessee. 

I had been urging my ex for months that we needed to consider the move and now that I knew it would be an important factor in having a baby, it was time to stop considering it and start planning it. He pushed back. He wasn’t ready. He said maybe in a few years. I brought up fostering, he pushed back on that. It had to be the right kid and the right situation. It was not unconditional. I started to realize that becoming a parent meant something different for me, than it did him. And that my quality of life wasn’t really a priority. 

He moved out of the house just a couple weeks after that appointment. 

As the Tennessee dream evolved, so did the possibility of becoming a parent. It actually felt more real and more possible post-divorce, because I could pursue becoming a foster parent when I felt ready and without conditions. Single parenthood is a tough gig, but it is by no means impossible, and for a child living in the system, a far better outcome than most. It became part of the plan, part of the hustle, part of the dream. 

Now, even though I want to become a foster parent and plan to do so regardless of my relationship status, it’s not to say that I don’t still have the dream of marrying my person and having children of our own. I completely do, but until that is a reality, fostering is my priority. 

What Steps Am I Taking to Make My Dream a Reality? 

The move to Tennessee was always in service of living a more fulfilling life and being in a place that gave me more room to breathe, literally. I wasn’t sure how it would all come together once I arrived, but it surely is. 

Jami is the first person I met here and the first friend I made. It is not lost on me that she would help set the foundation for these dreams. I needed to heal, to become the healthiest version of myself, so that I could live the life I desired, so that I could become a parent. I made the plan to complete her Regeneration Protocol and am still working on that today. 

After several months here in TN, I also started working at The Pink Porch, which is where I met one of my now closest friends here, a beautiful woman with two beautiful girls who she and her husband adopted after having fostered them. Her story only inspired me all the more that I could become a parent. 

God literally puts people in our path right when we need them y’all. Pay attention. 

My health is the most stable it has ever been since diagnosis, but probably in my life. Colorado was never the right environment for me physically and I’m grateful that God allowed me to survive it as long as I did. Now that I am experiencing the beginnings of real health and happiness, I can’t help but to know that it’s only going to get better from here. The healing I am working towards is for myself, sure, but it is in service of my dream to have a child of my own. And that motivation is what keeps me going. 

One Step at a Time 

Each day, each month, I am given the pieces of the story that I need. God has not given it to me all at once, and for that I am grateful. He reveals the path one yard at a time, giving me the space and time to plan and act on what needs to be done. 

My road to motherhood is anything but easy, or traditional, but it is such a special kind of miracle I am already praising God for it, despite the fact that it hasn’t happened yet. 

Every meal I make, every hike I take, every breath and movement, and prayer, is in service of leading this full life and pursuing all the God-given dreams in my heart. One day I’ll hear the words, “Hi mom,” and all of this grief and work and pain will have all been worth it. 

I know how devastating it is to want a child and feel like God is keeping something from you, but if it is meant to be and that life is meant to exist, just know, he hears you, and it will. 

It may not be the same as having your own child, but I also encourage anyone who wants to be a parent, to consider fostering and/or adopting. We live in an incredibly broken world and there are thousands upon thousands of children in need of loving homes in our foster care systems. It may not be the traditional route. You may be single. Your family may not understand. But if you have the heart for raising a child, the decision to foster may just change that child’s life, and yours.