Heart babies: A story of love
The Hausners have rock-solid faith. They also incubate hope and leak love. Theirs is truly a story of faith, hope and love, writes Karen Read
CAPETONIANS MIKE AND ANGIE
Hausner always knew they wanted children and when they discovered they were infertile, devastation cut them deeply. “We had to face that raw question: ‘Would we be able to make peace with the fact that we might never be parents?’ Our purpose and identity in this world had to be anchored in the right place for that question to not wash us out to sea,” writes Angie in a post on her blog, Everyday is written.
The couple went on to spend six years working their way through pain. “I think we drove those close to us a little dilly with our lack of ‘outward action’. But inside our hearts, in our home and sometimes even throughout the night, we trusted and prayed together.”
The room that they had hoped would be a nursery became a prayer room and over time “God tenderly led us through the valley to an open space where adoption became our conviction and not our escape,” writes Angie.
The Hausners used a private social worker, whose name had come up in conversations with friends repeatedly over the years. She was a great help, but they alone had to grapple with “which boxes to tick”, says Angie, referring to the choices that prospective adoptive parents are asked to make concerning the race, sex and health – among other things – of the child they want to adopt.
“Having felt to put ourselves forward for a white baby, we knew we needed to be prepared for a wait that could potentially take years, but we stuck with what felt like a ‘deep knowing’, even when at times fear said ‘untick that box’.”
A mere seven months later, in their seventh year of marriage, the Hausners got “the call” – and seven hours’ notice – that their newborn baby girl was ready to be united with her forever parents. There were shrieks of joy and floods of tears – or “laughblubbing” as Angie puts it.
Five months later and overwhelmed by love for Zoe, the Hausners called their social worker with baby number two in mind. In January 2014, when Zoe was 15 months old, Angie heard a podcast by psychologist and founder of Focus on the Family Dr James Dobson on “The Miracle of Snowflake Adoption” – babies born as a result of embryo adoption. “Snowflake” refers to frozen embryos. Nightlight Adoptions in the USA, a non-profit organisation that has pioneered this form of adoption in the States, defines embryo adoption as a means of allowing a couple with excess embryos (formed through IVF) the opportunity to select a family for their embryo, and the adopting family the opportunity to give birth to their adopted child.
“It’s not part of the adoption framework here, but, if approached, a social worker could in theory screen adoptive parents in the same way they would with a traditional adoption and facilitate the adoption of the embryo,” says Angie.
For a sense of what it might involve, the Hausners sought the counsel of a fertility specialist. They walked away from the second consultation as the beneficiaries of three perfectly created little embryos! “We had no doubt of God’s leading in this,” Angie says.
The beauty of embryo adoption is that the financially and emotionally draining first half of IVF has already taken place. What it does involve is prepping the uterus for the “transfer” of the thawed embryo, at the exact right time for implantation to occur. This prepping can involve either a medicated process or what’s known as a “natural cycle”.
Jake Hausner was the very last embryo – the only one that took to settling into Angie’s womb. He made his grand entrance into the world in July 2015.
While Jake and Zoe’s adoption stories may be very different, Mike and Angie believe that they are essentially the same: the same passionate love that gave their children life, placed them with their parents. It just so happens that adoption was used in the crafting and grafting of this family. YB