Bowman Family Adoption

Our Adoption Story~
Most of you know us and you know what our life has looked like for the past 9 years and many of you longer than that. I’m going to start with a brief overview of life starting about 9 years ago. In the spring of 2004 Vince and I found out that we were expecting a baby. We were very surprised and scared and not sure how this was going to be accepted since we were not married a...t the time. I was always told that I (Amanda) would have a hard time getting pregnant, if I could even get pregnant at all. In October of that year Vince and I were married and very soon after and almost 2 months early, Logan made his debut! If you know Logan that is why I say his Debut! He has been one of the greatest gifts God has given us! Logan is the most amazing miracle and amazing son. We could not even begin to imagine what life would look like without him. Logan was born very early and very tiny and had lots of prayers and support and today is a strong healthy almost 9 year old. Logan’s rocky start also lead to some rocky roads for our young marriage and through the hard times Vince and I learned to be a better support for eachother and the value of true partnership and companionship.  Now we jump ahead about 6 years. Vince and I had been ready to grow our family during those 6 years but with no baby in sight we decided to try fertility treatments.  After about a year of feeling like a crazy mess and taking all kinds of pills and other crazy things to try to get pregnant, we finally got to Positive on the pregnancy test. We were so excited! After about 10 weeks and great ultrasounds, we felt we could paint the nursery and start getting a little more excited. We got everything painted and started just putting old things of Logan’s in the room to get them out of storage and just see what all we had, after so many years it was fun to dig it all back out! On April 19th 2010, we lost our baby to miscarriage at 12 weeks. I was devastated, angry, confused, and just sad! I never knew it then but that heartbreaking loss was also the cause of so many blessing that I can now see. Shortly after the miscarriage life went on and Vince went on… being a man and not understanding the loss I was feeling and me not knowing how to communicate, I shut him out. We went through a really rough patch that brought us to some Christian councilors that helped change our marriage and our lives forever. Vince and I began to put God in the center of our marriage instead of just using him as something we went to when things were hard or we needed help.  Vince and I learned the value of marriage and the value of family After a long road of working on healing. Vince fell in love all over again but this time in a much different way.   The second blessing that came out of the miscarriage was how God used my grief and my feelings of injustice to make some huge changes at the Local hospital. The Hospital had no procedure for dealing with miscarriages before 20 weeks.  I felt those babies are just as loved and wanted by some women at 13 weeks as they are at 21 weeks and they should all have a choice in how they want to grieve that loss. I feel honored that the loss of our baby lead me to be hands and feet for the Lord by making procedures for women going through that kind of a loss . Vince, Logan and I spent the next couple years enjoying life and eachother. We sold our starter home and bought our current house (that we love and plan to stay in for many many years!) During that time we also decided we still wanted to grow our family and felt that God was calling us to adoption. We decided to become foster parents in hopes that we could adopt through that.  We were blessed with our first foster son, an adorable little boy named Adrian. I always wondered if I would love an adopted child as much as I love Logan and after having Adrian I knew I could! I loved him and still do very much. He is home with his mom and dad now and luckily they let us continue to still be a part of his life. We have since had 3 other foster children in our home for various amounts of time. We love them all. We miss them all! We prayed and prayed for a baby that could stay with us as a part of our family. Patiently waiting and feeling like every door was closing in front of us, we finally decided that we were ready to give up on what we were starting to feel was only “Our” desire not God’s  to have another child.  Just about 2 weeks ago sitting in a small bible study with two other women I told them that Vince and I had made the decision to stop knocking down doors and that if God wanted us to have a baby he was going to have to drop one on our doorstep. That leads us to where we are now. This past Friday evening August 2nd , I received a phone call from my sister-in-law and her sister telling me that they had a cousin that was pregnant and already had a young child and could not keep the new baby. She wanted to give it up for adoption. They immediately thought of Vince and I and our desire to adopt. Since they both have known me for about 20 something years they were able to tell her what kind of a family we had and they knew our hearts and our desire to adopt! The young lady wanted to meet us the next day.( I am a date person and I thought this was pretty cool of God as well.) We met on August 3rd which was also the day that one year ago to the day we moved into our new house and also had to say a heartbreaking goodbye to Adrian our first foster son that we had for 10 months.  I talked to the young lady for a little bit and left feeling a mix of emotions but mostly my thought was …this is just too good to be true. This does not just happen to people. As I remembered my prayer or rather my request from God to put a baby on my doorstep, I realized through HIM all things are possible.  I asked for a couple days to talk to Vince and pray about it and really to just let the reality of it set in. Vince and I went on a walk the next morning and talked about this over our favorite thing… Coffee! We both looked at eachother and thought this is funny we are even debating this. If God placed this in our laps do we really have way to say no? The only thing that was holding us back was of course the fear or being hurt in the end. Which still could happen and we are very realistic about that being a possibility as much as we don’t want it to be.  Yesterday (Tuesday) we met with our adoption attorney who flew in from Indianapolis to meet us, her, and also the baby’s father at the Gary Jet Center. We talked about the adoption and what kinds of things she would like and not like as well as just getting all the basic information that the attorney needed to start his side of things. I am going to spend some time with her this weekend as well so we can get to know eachother more and get a better feeling for how she wants all of this to work.  So outside of coming up with the funds to make this happen we just wait. We will be a part of as much as she wants us to be along the way. I am trying to be very careful not to be too pushy or come on too strong. I just want to be able to love her, the way God wants me to. He knows what she needs and I hope I can just be whatever I’m supposed to be for her.  Speaking of “her” I do not want to share her name to keep her protected and honor her privacy but I want to quickly express my feeling for this young lady that is still somewhat a stranger to me. She is a beautiful young lady that has a adorable little boy. She is brave, selfless, funny, and so incredibly strong! I have always admired women who can love their child enough to give them up to someone else who can love and provide for them.  To me she is one the most loving and selfless people I have met. I will continue to pray daily for her and I hope that she will get to know us enough to trust us completely with this priceless gift she is planning to give us! So stepping forward in faith, the journey begins…. Thanks for coming along on the ride with us!

1. ~Financial picture~I want to start by letting everyone who is reading this know that this is the part of all of this that I like the least. I am not a good fundraiser and I HATE asking for help when it comes to money. But I have been asked by several people how much it cost to adopt and how they can help. I also hope that if anyone is considering adoption that this will help them as well. We are... working on some fundraisers and some other things but I wanted to let people know the clear picture of what this looks like for us and many other couples. We are very fortunate in the adoption situation because we are doing this privately we have been able to avoid the additional cost of an adoption agency. The additional cost is almost double. We have taken out a personal loan to pay for the initial fees since they have to be paid within 10 days of receiving the bill (that was months ago). The total cost for our adoption will be in the range of $11,500 - $13,000 again that is about half the amount of a traditional adoption through an agency so we are so blessed to be able to move forward with this privately. If God blesses us with over the amount that we had to borrow we are going to put those funds into a college fund for the baby and also give some back to our church as well. We believe fully that God has called us to this and HE will provide. We trust that! If you decide that you feel lead to donate towards our adoption we thank you! If you decide you can pray for us and encourage us we thank you! Initial attorney fees (within 10 days of first meeting) $2980.00 Home study (paid within first month ) $2500.00 Counseling for the birth mother $2500.00 Attorney fees (due at birth) $4000.00 Any additional travel, misc. $1000.00Est. Total $12,980.00See More