The Journey From Final Chemo to Being Home With Genevieve

March 30th. A great day indeed. Not only is Genevieve 2 1/2 weeks old (crazy, right?!), but it has been 3 years since my last chemotherapy treatment.

If you are new to this blog, and just tuning in to read our adoption story, you must know that this journey and fight to bring our Genevieve home hasn’t just been the last 8 months of our adoption journey. No, our fight to bring her home started in August of 2011, when we began trying to expand our family.

By way of that, we learned I had breast cancer. Yes, you read that right, stage 3 breast cancer, at just 24 years of age.

My life was at stake and no one could tell me I would live. I drew hope and strength from God’s word and believed on his promises that He had a future for me. I would live and declare His works (Psalam 118:17).

I determined, through Christ, that I would not die and that God had chosen me, yes simple little ole’ me, to be a vessel and shining light of his healing power and glory.

Through that journey, not only was my life at stake, but our future children’s lives. Our doctor explained to us early on that the treatment used to aid in saving my life might prevent us from having children biologically.

As devastating as that was, we decided to trust God (as if there was another choice!) and continue with my cancer treatments.

I went through 6 months of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy surgery, 6 weeks of radiation therapy, followed by 6 reconstructive surgeries.

My healing- my miraculous healing- was confirmed by doctors on April 30, 2012, when I was deemed cancer-free! Everything doctors had prepared me for was proved wrong when I beat the statistics and was proven to be completely ridden of this terrible disease called Cancer.

Today, though, I am talking of another huge day in my cancer journey, and that day was March 30, 2012.

3 years ago today, I had my last chemotherapy treatment. It was these cancer treatments that put a huge risk to my fertility.

To say I was ready to be done was an understatement. I still can’t believe I was on these terrible drugs for 6 months! That is half a year!

Yes, God shielded me from much sickness and typical side effects, but it was horrible.

Losing hair, fingernails, nausea, body aches and pains, hot flashes, mood changes—I wouldn’t wish these things on my worst enemy.

So, when March 30, 2012 came, I was one, happy, thankful girl.

On this day, my best friends surprised me at the hospital. I had fallen asleep during treatment, and woken up to my sweet prayer warrior friends there at my side.

My husband made me a video that morning that increased my faith.

Our moms were there to celebrate in this day.

Truthfully, there were days I was scared that I wouldn’t even make it to my last chemo day.

At MD Anderson, they have a bell you ring when you complete treatment, and I was going to ring that bell! Literally a moment I had fantasized about since I began treatment!

And here I am today, with a sweet baby sleeping as I write this post.

3 years ago today, I was sitting in a hospital bed with poison running through my body.

Today, I am a mom.

I am alive and well.

Healed and whole.

Forever.

I talk about this in my book in more detail, but cancer, yes cancer made me a mommy.

Chemotherapy made me a mommy.

Infertility made me a mommy.

So, today I remember. And I am thankful.

This little life that God has entrusted me with will forever be recognized as beauty from ashes. What Satan meant for evil, God ALWAYS intended for good.

WE ARE HOME!

Yes, you read that right! We are home. We received clearance to come home last week! Josh and I headed home, along with his mom carpooling on Friday!

Genevieve is such a good little traveler. We stopped twice to feed her on our 6 1/2 hour drive home and she was a little trooper:)

We had the cutest outfit for her to wear home that one of my sweet friends made. It says “Carry me home” with a heart from Florida to Louisiana. It really is amazing that God destined her to be ours from the beginning.

We are her home.

She has mastered the art of peeing in the middle of her diaper changes. This is awesome. Multiple outfit changes and diapers wasted.

She sure is cute though:)

She even peed on her outfit while changing her on the road. Fun times, fun times:)

As many of you know, we were in the middle of building a house when we were matched for our adoption. The timing was great in a lot of ways because we are able to have a house to bring her into instead of a one-bedroom apartment.

But in a lot of ways, it wasn’t so great. We had to be out of our apartment by the end of February. We were heading to Florida at the end of February to make sure we didn’t miss the birth, and we would both be in Florida when our home was move-in ready.

So, what to do? We just prayed and tried not to worry too much about it. If we had to come home and unpack boxes, live with our parents for a while—we would do whatever.

My scheduled, organized, “nesting” self couldn’t think too much about all of that!

Well, once again, our friends are absolutely incredible.

Seriously.

I do not know of many other people that would go to our storage unit, unload it, and then for several days have TEAMS of people come to our house and unpack our stuff.

They set up Genevieve’s room. Put together our beds. The left us encouraging notes EVERYWHERE. They cleaned the house. They went through a ton of boxes! The washed our towels, our sheets, put out our rugs— I mean…. I really have no words.

So to our parents, to Alicia and Jason Hinton to headed it all up- we are so thankful. Beyond thankful. As we have thought of ways to thank them, even the “good” ideas we have are not good enough and could never be good enough to describe how grateful we are for friends and family like them.

With my next few posts I want to share with you photos of Genevieve’s first few days that we weren’t able to share when she was first born. I will do that and we can give you more details on what was going on in those moments.

Today, I wanted to share some delivery room photos with you all:) Rebecca Harvin at rebeccaharvinphotography.com took our labor and delivery photos. We cannot say enough good things about Rebecca and we are so blessed to have met her and to have had her document one of the most blessed moments of our life.

Enjoy the day that our promised little girl came into our world and made it so much brighter.