A Living Miracle//Jude's Birth Story

So here I am late to the game and just now writing Jude's birth story the week he turns two months old. Oops. Lately my days have been a little busy :) 
We've had so many people ask about Jude's story. His story is full of God's faithfulness and is simply a miracle. The Lord is full of beauty and mystery and a lot of times it is so hard to comprehend the goodness of God's plans, especially when you think those plans should look a certain way. I hope by sharing a glimpse of our journey-that it will serve as a reminder of just how good & redemptive He is.
There are many details about Jude's story that we will keep to ourselves because it is HIS story to tell one day and we don't want to take away from that. However, I want to share a few things about how we were lead to the situation and how every thing played out leading up to his birth. 
Jimbo and I kicked off our second adoption journey by selling t-shirts in November. They were a huge success and we are so so thankful! The design we came up with was "Move Mountains". There are often many hurdles and challenges that you will go through during an adoption journey, but we were claiming and praying that the Lord would move mountains for us. Our design couldn't have been more fitting for Jude's adoption! He definitely showed us just how many mountains he could move!
We used the money we raised from the t-shirts to pay for our homestudy expenses and were offically homestudy approved January 1st. As most of you know, our goal was to self-match. Self-matching allows you to keep adoption costs tremendously lower than the average adoption in the US. With the help of Quiver Full Adoptions, we had a Facebook page, a website and several other avenues we were using to try and connect with an expectant mother considering adoption. We had contact with several expectant moms but never officially matched with any. Most of them were still very early in the pregnancy so we were just getting the know them and loving on them while they were still deciding if adoption was right for their baby. 
Fast forward to January 28th, I attended the Families Forever Fair with Quiver Full Adoptions as a work event. While at the event, I was chatting and catching up with the attorney who we used for Oliver's adoption. I was telling him how great Oliver is doing and how we have maintained an open adoption with his birth family and also told him we had just gotten homestudy approved again. He then mentioned in conversation that he had a Special Needs/Medically Fragile situation that he needed a family for. Baby was due next MONDAY (9 days from this day). This expectant mom had already been matched for months but after receiving medical records & an ultrasound update, that adoptive family decided to back out of the match because of the prognosis of the baby's condition. In that moment my heart broke into a million pieces. I felt something move in me that was saying GO! SAY YES! I was terrified to take that next step but I did. I asked the attorney to email me all the information and that I would talk it over with Jimbo when I got home. 
The next several days were HARD. There were so many things that we were wrestling with. The cost of this adoption was MUCH higher than we were hoping for. The prognosis & medical records were SCARY. I didn't feel equipped or ready. We didn't have a nursery ready. We didn't have anything for a newborn baby girl- did I mention they thought it was a GIRL?! We had no clue what we would do for child care for Ollie or pet care since it was an out of state adoption. We had less than a week to prepare at this point. Despite all of the reasons to say no, I felt God pushing me to say yes. It took Jimbo several days to come around and say yes. He's the realist, the one who carefully considers all aspects of any situation. He's the one who keeps me grounded when I want to #adoptallthebabies and #rescueallthedogs. We prayed about everything for FIVE DAYS. I pleaded with God for five days to give us a clear answer. On February 2nd, we called and put our YES on the table! We spoke to first mama "E" that afternoon and she was excited to meet us and move forward.
We knew once we officially matched that a huge chunk of money was due. We desperately needed help and reached out to our village. We were able to raise the $5K in three days!! This was a tremendous blessing and a HUGE mountain moved for us.
Terrified, emotional, and SO excited were just a few ways we were feeling. We spent the next few days frantically getting things together and arranging childcare for Ollie. Our family stepped up big time to help us & we are so thankful. We bought a handful of girl outfits and diapers and things for the trip. We left for Nashville on Sunday and c-section was scheduled for Monday morning at 7am. We are so thankful for our new forever friends Andy & Heather for opening their home to us! They truly showed us the love of Christ during our time in Nashville.
Sunday night I didn't sleep at all of course. I got up around 3am and spent most of the morning sick and throwing up because of nerves and being anxious. We got to the hospital around 6:45am and went and sat with "E". She allowed me to be in the operating room for the c-section and I will always cherish that experience! Because they were expecting Jude to have several complications, the room was PACKED full nurses, doctors and specialists. It was very intimidating for me but everyone was so nice and explained everything as they operated. By this point my nerves were shot! When they finally pulled Jude out I couldn't believe how teeny tiny HE was! A BOY! The very first thing the doctor said was "Wow! You are a little miracle aren't you?!" (They were expecting some abnormalities with his limbs). Cue all the tears!!! After holding him up for a picture they quickly swept him away to check him out. The next several minutes are a bit of a blur because I literally couldn't see through all of my tears. There were so many people in there looking at him but I kept hearing things like "he looks perfect" and "no he doesn't need oxygen".  I was completely floored and praising Jesus for this miracle. Within 20 minutes they were done with him and laid him on my chest for skin to skin. I was a Mama again to a precious 3 pound miracle!!! 

Against all odds & a scary prognosis, Jude was born perfectly healthy and continues to amaze his doctors. 
Looking back at how everything came together it is so evident that God was in every detail. He wanted to challenge us to say yes. He wanted us to step out of our comfort zones- financially and spiritually because he wanted to show us something amazing. He wanted to show us what trusting him and being faithful can look like. He wanted to show us how much better his plans are than our plans could ever be. He wanted to show us the type of mountains he can move and what He is capable of when you TRUST him completely.