::Happy Holidays from the Sipek Bunch::

Happy Holidays! 

We want to thank you for those who supported our adoption process....very grateful for that! We cannot thank you enough! It has been amazing. We hope 2014 will be our awesome year to bring our child(ren) home! 

Cheers!

The Sipek Bunch: Brian, Brooke, Hooch, Chief, Lo, and our little Sipek-in-waiting

::Infertility::

Who are we? Really...

That's funny, we were a little bit resistant of revealing our background because you never know these days with the reaches of the internet and people with malicious intent.... but one reader contacted us regarding our adoption blog and wanted to help out. However, she made a valid point- she wanted us to reveal to our readers who were interested in helping out with our adoption journey. By getting to know and trust us, our readers would feel a personal attachment to us and more likely to contribute to our cause. And that's so true. We would want to know details if we were donating money, too!  We completely understood where she was coming from. So.. time to open that door.

So- page one.. our birth day.  Kidding :)

We both are deaf, which is the primary reason we want to adopt specifically deaf orphans. We thoroughly understand the needs of a deaf child (communication and education-wise) and feel that we would be the best fit for raising a deaf child(ren).  Brian comes from a fourth generation deaf family (yes, his parents, sister, grandparents, & cousins, etc are deaf, too!) while Brooke comes from a hearing family as the only deaf member in the entire family tree. We both are teachers at a deaf school and work closely with deaf and hard of hearing children.. and completely love our jobs!

So why the adoption route? We aren't able to have our own children. We were kind of mentally prepared for this possibility because Brooke was having some kind of health complications from the very beginning. Hypothyriodism/hyperthyroidism runs in her family.  She had hyperthyroidism in high school and it still hasn't returned to this day. So, that was ruled out for Brooke's inability to conceive. Brooke took some fertility medications: Clomid and Femara. Both didn't work and Brooke's body reacted negatively to the medicine. She experienced vertigo attacks and we just really believed that the medicine she was taking were triggering the attacks. Brooke also developed some painful cyst growths in her uterus area from Clomid (they burst at one point, yikes!).

We decided to see a fertility specialist in Austin and it was not a pleasant experience for either of us. And on top of that, it was an expensive procedure (no, the insurance doesn't cover a single penny). We tried two rounds of IUI (intrauterine insemination) only. Both attempts failed. We decided to add injectables (Gonal-F) and ovidrel (to force ovulation on time) for our third round of IUI. She produced many follicles during all three rounds. The result just was not in our favor. Of course, before doing the IUIs, Brooke took an HSG test to make sure her tubes were open and they were. Brooke ovulates on time and everything "seems" to be at their normal levels. The doctor called it a "mystery diagnosis" as there are some couples who aren't able to conceive with very little explanation. Everything else was ruled out except for one possibility: endometriosis. Our specialist stated that Brooke showed NO symptoms of having endometriosis such as painful periods, pain with bowel movements/urination, fatigue, bloating, etc. Nothing. That was why our fertility specialist was resistant for performing a laparoscopy.  A laparoscopy is a surgery that uses a thin tube put through a cut (incision) in the belly to find any underlying issue such as cysts, adhesions, fibroids, and/or infections.  

Brooke had an intuition that something was off and wanted to proceed with a laparoscopy to find out. This surgery was performed in February 2013 and the doctor actually found Stage II Endometriosis after all! There are four stages: Stage I & II are considered mild (which was why she didn't indicate any apparent signs). Stage III & IV are considered medically severe and significantly lowers the chances of conceiving.

After finding out that Brooke has endometrosis during the surgery, they had to ablate her endometriosis (they looked like tiny brown spots all over her ovaries and uterus). The surgery lasted only an hour. There are no absolute cures for endometriosis- a laparoscopy is considered the "band-aid" approach and gives us a window of up to six months before the possibility of it coming back. Overall, our doctor wasn't exactly.... let's say... compassionate? We just never felt a good relationship with him and it seemed like it was more our money he was after than a successful pregnancy. It definitely wasn't a positive experience for us. We decided to stop with the fertility treatments.

Fast-forward ten months later, Brooke is experiencing much more painful cramps and some kind of pain in her tailbone/sacrum area. She went to the doctor to get her tailbone x-rayed to rule out any possible fracture/broken bone. It came out negative.  It turns out that endometriosis is strongly associated with pain in the lower abdomen area/back. Apparently, it returned. She will need to see her obgyn doctor to decide what's next. One possible solution would be a hysteretecomy. At this point, it's a wait-and-see approach.. 

We've already discussed about adopting because the idea of putting Brooke's body through all of those hormones and various procedures has become mentally/emotionally-draining and quite ridiculous when there are children who are already born and in need of homes. We want to be parents. We want to raise children. An adoption is a guarantee. We love the idea of changing the orphan's world by providing love and home. The idea of adoption really sparks our excitement and seemingly to be a much more positive experience for us to embrace. Like we already mentioned, we have fostered 30+ dogs for Austin Pets Alive and there's just something about opening our home to a being that does warm our souls. So, we turned to the idea of what we had understood with our three awesome dogs -- adopting!

We are simply meant to be with another child out there. Two little boys, hopefully! :) 

Time to think of possible names!

::spread some love!::

$13k a week.

$35k in 4 and half months.

$4k in one morning.

We read many successful adoption stories with the use of community resources. One amazing story was when a family raised 13k via sharing their adoption story on Facebook. We keep thinking to ourselves, how is that even possible!? No way. A second story was when a couple had a pancake breakfast fundraiser and earned over $4k in one morning.  Many other stories involved large earnings towards their adoption funds. We are skeptical. It just seems too good to be true for us. It's feels as if we need to make six figures a year, have an enormous inheritance, or win the lottery in order to adopt. Regular families like us making modest incomes can adopt, too, and if you’re reading this, you likely fall into that category.

Then.... it just occurred to us that the type of community does make a big impact when it comes to providing assistance. We are facing a  “disadvantage” with our connections. We are affiliated with the deaf community, which is small compared to the general “hearing” community out there (if you are hearing and reading this.... this may sound strange). When involving a “hearing” community, words/ideas/stories spread to people of all walks of life like wildfire and reach out to a much larger crowd- such as "my co-worker's friend's sister went to college with this guy who works with his best friend's girlfriend's neighbor from.......".  The “six degrees of separation” in the hearing world is only “two degrees” in the deaf.

Thus, our resources feel limited. Our connections are smaller. It feels as if the process will stretch out longer if we continue to seek for outside adoption support. We are trying to stay optimistic as much as possible and hoping the light at the end of the tunnel gets brighter and brighter. The adoption expense has been all over our minds as of late.  "How can we pay the next bill?" "What should we do to pay this off?" "Where the heck am I going to get another $9k?"  It's difficult to feel less stressful and anxious about this because, eventually, the money aspect of all this should work itself out somehow.........(or so we’re led to believe!)  If you have ideas, we’d love to hear from you!  Brooke can only do so much sewing of scarves.  Brian is quite helpless in that department but at least he’ll bring in some money from coaching girls basketball.

We are applying for Gift of Adoption (http://www.giftofadoption.org/) to hopefully receive a grant towards our expenses. There are other grants that we in the process of applying for as well! We are not going to sit around idly because we are committed to bringing our boy(s) home as soon as possible and to reduce our boy(s) waiting time at the orphanage, too. This definitely encourages us knowing that we actually have a child out there waiting for us.  It's almost not fair to BOTH of us.  But we’re working hard.

Speaking of the "two possible little boys"- some of you have asked us about more information. Currently, we are being told that our placement agency has found a second boy recently released from his parents because he is deaf. However, they do not have enough information on his background yet and they are working on translating all of his paperwork from Spanish to English and we should have more information by end of this month (hopefully by Christmas!?). The first little boy is approximately one year old with a minor (non-threatening) heart issue. He is at the orphanage and the agency has been working on translating all of his medical information and history before sharing his file with us. They feel that both boys would be a great match for us. We cannot wait to receive more information on them! Waiting sucks, but we are excited! :)

If you cannot contribute financially to our adoption, you can still be a big factor by, simply SHARING our story with anyone and everyone. You have to throw a stone to make a ripple. Spread the story. We are throwing a stone right now and hopefully, the ripple reaches out further than we could have imagined.  Oprah or Ellen, if you’re reading... :)

Spread some love!

Brooke & Brian

::AdoptTogether::

 ADOPT TOGETHER 

Since we finally got our home study approved and can now activate our tax-deductible fundraiser through AdoptTogether.com.... We hate asking for donations but without you, this would be such a monumental task. We aren't the richest people in the world and we only want what most married couples want-- a family. Our dogs are incredible, but they come with obvious limitations. :)

Our adopting agency has located two possible little boys for us in Colombia.... we're still waiting on more information but at this point- things look promising. At this point, it's all about Colombian government officials taking care of their paperwork and us coming up with $10,000 (to cover the next step).

Each dollar donated helps us bring our boy(s) home.. Thank you for all of your support. The link is: https://www.adopttogether.org/adoptingasipek