Julie's Motherhood Story - Ottawa Documentary Photographer
Today’s feature shares the super power women have when becoming mothers! Julie guides us through the process of becoming an adoption mom and how natural yet scary it all felt to fill her new role. I am thankful for Julie sharing her journey as there may be other women going through this phase and need to connect with another. You can connect with Julie under her Instagram handle @julesm25
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Adoption is a crazy ride that no one really understands until they are in the middle of the adoption process. My husband and I tried for many years to conceive a child of our own but it never happened. We had many long talks about what direction we wanted to go. We ended up feeling adoption was the route for our family. We went through our courses and then completing the crazy home study process. We were then told it would take us five to seven years to adopt/ be chosen from the time our file was adopt ready. What we didn’t know was in three months we would be chosen to be parents. August 1st 2018 we were contacted about the possibility of being matched with a baby girl who had not been born yet. It was a birth mom who was close to her due date who had not found the perfect family for her child. Our adoption practitioner thought we could be that perfect family and told us we should put our profile forward. We decide to take that leap and submit our profile. Things moved so quickly from that moment. A week later we were parents to our beautiful baby girl Evelyn. We had no prep time and we were in a different part of the province. We had to fly by the seats of our pants getting her room ready, getting clothes and everything that surrounds a newborn.
For my husband and I we have gone through many changes in such a short time period from being just a couple with a double income to then traveling across the province and back a few times in a short period of time to then becoming parents along with the financial aspects of adoption and being on one income basically over night.
For myself I was working full time, singing in a choir and volunteering and planning my 31st birthday in Las Vegas to becoming a stay at home mom. I am still singing in my choir and volunteer when I am able too. I had to navigate support within the community for my daughter and myself. Many parents join a prenatal class or a facebook group for there birth month but unfortunately I didn’t have the lead up being able to make “mommy friends”. I had to find different classes in the community so I could make friends and have a the type of support I needed. A lot of my friends with children my daughters age were in different cities or their children were that much older and my friends were back to work.
After being on parental leave for 35 weeks I had to make a choice, do I go back to work or do I stay home. After financially looking at it we decided I would stay home with our daughter. It is really hard due to the government not seeing the value in adoptive parents getting a year off for leave. For myself my daughter was still so little and the thought of her going to care was difficult for me. I wanted as much time with her as we had waiting and wished for her for so many years.
Our ups and downs were a little different yes we have gone through the joy of first smiles, laughs, crawling to the difficulties of teething and fevers. Some different difficulty we have had to go through that’s a little unique would be jumping through all the adoption hoops. For example asking permission to go to a different province, asking permission for a passport. Not being able to open a bank account for our daughter. Learning how our openness agreement with work with our wonderful birth mother. Navigating how much of our journey and story we want to share with the world. How to protect our daughter from the negative view points of others not understanding the reason our birth mother is in our lives.
I feel even though our journey was so quick, that it was my natural instincts just kicked into high gear. Everything I did was to make this little girl’s life the best it can be. I can’t say it has been easy as I never got that slow realization that this was coming. I had to give notice to my job, redo plans and cancel out on really exciting trips but looking down at this little girl in our life just fits and you make it work. I have been so lucky to have so many amazing friends and family in my life who have been there to support me in this transition into motherhood. This journey has been filled with many tears, loss, joy, many kilometres on the 401 but I would never change this journey for anything.
This week on July 9th 2019 we finalized Evelyn’s adoption and legally in every manner she is ours!
PLEASE LEAVE JULIE COMMENTS FOR THE COURAGE
SHE’S TAKEN IN SHARING HER STORY.
Irina Fortey is an Ottawa and Toronto Documentary Photographer.
Capturing your everyday in the most beautiful way, candidly and unscripted.
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