#WeAreIgniteHope The Expecting Mom

My name is Anastasia, and I am the newest member of the Ignite Hope team. On April 10th, 2017 I got vulnerable on my personal blog by coming to a place where I had accepted that even though there was nothing medically wrong with me that I knew that I may never carry a biological child. As I sit here writing this to you, Ignite Hope family, I am 34 weeks pregnant and with math you will realize that only a short month after posting that blog is when I found out that we were expecting our first child around our 9 year wedding anniversary (January 2018).

Why does this matter, why am I sharing this with you today? I have known and shown from a very young age that I had that mothering thing. At the babysitter's house growing up, I would be found changing diapers of the little babies and rocking them to sleep. I had high and lofty dreams of New York, Paris, and Chicago and walking around in high heels all day through busy offices but always at the end of the dream I kicked off my heels and snuggled with a baby at home. I have yet to go to NYC, Paris or Chicago but have yearned for the snuggling of babies and this has lead to my jobs in teaching pre-school, coaching (gymnastics, cheerleading, swimming, soccer), and nannying/babysitting.

I have spent all my days loving others kids for however long they are left in my care. I have had many a seed of foster and adoption planted into me as well, and in 2015 my husband and I started our journey to becoming foster parents in hope to adopt out of the foster system. What we didn't know when we started this process in 2015 was that before we could finalize our last home study, we would begin our transition out of the state in which we were being licenced. This killed us because we had prepped the room, been praying for the children on the waiting child list and on top of that we were going to be leaving our "home" in Indiana. Home is a relative term as we were lead to head back to our "home" with family in San Antonio, Texas for a healing and restoration.

We have not sought to become licensed foster parents in Texas, as we are living in too tiny of a space but have helped friends with foster kiddos and been home to cheer on friends as they adopted their first little one and start the process for their second. 2017 lead me to intern with a non-profit providing duffle bags to children going into foster care so that they would not walk out of their homes with garbage bags and now to my position with Ignite Hope.

So when I wrote in April about not thinking I was going to have biological children and that I was going to be a foster/adoption mama, I would never in a million years have expected the switch to be flipped and be preparing for birth and working to serve families in foster/adoption. Ecclesiastes 3:1, " There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens." I do not know what 2017 has brought you, or what 2018 has for any of us but I know that God is good today, as He was yesterday and will be tomorrow.

I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and a surprising New Year.

#motherhood #fostercare #pregnant