One Family's Story
November 2003

"Before we were parents, we never knew that something so small could affect our lives so much, we never knew the feeling of having our hearts outside our bodies, we never knew that something so small could make us feel so important and happy, we never knew that we would love being mom and dad, and we never knew that we could love someone so much".

Mark and I got married later in life and we knew that we wanted to have children right away. As soon as we got married we started trying with no success. After 1 year, we went to seek medical attention and we were told that we would have to try to conceive through IUI, fertility medication, and IVF. Well, after 12 unsuccessful IUI attempts, 6 months on fertility medication, and 2 unsuccessful IVF attempts, we decided we were going to adopt.

So we proceeded with adoption. We did lots of research and talked to people experienced with adoption. After several months and visits with our social worker we selected Adoption Services Associates in San Antonio. The people there were extremely helpful, kind and very friendly. We already had our home study done when we contacted them, but our paperwork took a few months to complete and in September, 2002 we were informed that we were officially "parents in waiting". We moved into our new home in October of 2002 and because of that we weren't able to submit our portfolio until January of 2003. We had hoped we would get a referral by December of 2003 and our Social Worker had made a prediction that we would get a referral within 4 months, but we know how long people have had to wait and we didn't believe her.

Well, you can imagine our total shock and surprise when we got a call on March 17, 2003 that we had been chosen as adoptive parents by a birth mother who was due in July of 2003. Well, we couldn't believe it. We decided to take the case and began talking to our birth mother the following week. We felt everything was going really well for the first couple of months, then we started to feel uncomfortable about this birth mother, as well as the case worker and all these red flags started to go up. Well, we decided to put everything in God's hands and stay with the case and God was certainly watching over us and our birth mother and baby because everything worked itself out the way it was meant to be.

We kept in contact with our birth mother and the agency on everything and on July 13 we flew out to Fort Worth because our birth mother thought her water had broken. Well, we stayed there until July 24 and nothing happened so we flew home. We were home 2 days until the 26th and we got a call from our birth mother that she was in the hospital and in labor. Well, we couldn't believe it! After all the waiting, nerves, and excitement our moment had finally arrived and our lives would be changed forever!! We flew back out to Fort Worth on Monday, July 28, 2003. We got to see our son for the first time on July 29, 2003 and he was absolutely a perfect little angel. Wow, what an experience and a feeling!!! We can't even describe everything we were feeling that day. It was one of the best days of our lives. We believed he was truly ours when we saw him in the hospital that day and then even more when we actually got to take him out of the hospital and take this baby home with us.

So, now we are the proud parents of our sweet son Aidan and we couldn't be happier. We know that there was a reason we couldn't conceive and that was for all of our lives to be blessed by our wonderful bundle of joy. We believe that we are blessed to have him and that he is blessed to have us. Thank you so much to God and everyone at A.S.A. for making our dreams come true. We are looking forward to starting proceedings for our second adoption in the near future.

--Mark and Mary