PART 2.1 Melodie
Camille: And two of your children are adopted.
Melodie: Yes.
Camille: Do you want to talk a little bit about that, what led you to adopt?
Melodie: So, pregnancy that was terrible, um, I never wanted to have just one kid, so when I had one kid and the pregnancy was just terrible, I mean I couldn't imagine doing it again. So, uh, around that time, my older sister ended up going through the adoption process with in Guatemala, and got twins and when I watched her go through that, I realized I could totally do that, like I could take that baby, and it could be mine, no problem. So, uh, we actually started the adoption process, and we ended up going through the United States because Guatemala was really tough at that point, still is, um, and the government's kind of corrupt, and a lot of the international adoption services were like shutting down because of corruption in governments, so we went through United States and it ended up being really fast for us. Camille: Yes. Melodie: It was three months from the time we dropped off our paperwork to the time that we took our baby home.
Camille: Wow, that's way quicker than a pregnancy.
Melodie: Way quicker than a pregnancy, and way quicker than a normal adoption.
Camille: Wow, three months, did you expect it to be that quick?
Melodie: No, I mean people were saying a year, yeah, like a year is a good amount of time to think that it could be. So it was definitely a surprise, but it was an amazing experience, I really love adoption, and I'm a really big adoption promoter.
Camille: Yes, um, what is your tattoo?
Melodie: It says “adopted”, so, um, I tell my adopted children that they're adopted twice, because I'm a Christian, so I believe that we are adopted into the family with Jesus, and so having a physical representation of what I believe spiritually, was such a beautiful thing, and it impacted my life so much that it's my one and only tattoo.
Camille: Yeah, that's amazing, so you decided to go through the process twice, and then did you just feel like this is our family's complete after your three children?
Melodie: Yeah, yeah, I mean our third child was a daughter, and hers was even faster. It was two weeks.
Camille: That's right, that is wild, so fast.
Melodie: It was so fast, but both of them were really amazing experiences, I have such high regard for birth moms, um, it is such an amazing and emotional experience to watch what a birth mom goes through. And the choice that they make, yeah, the love that they show is, I'll never forget it, and it'll impact me for the rest of my life. So, um, now we have amazing kids, and they both have relationships with their birth families, and it's such a blessing.
Camille: Wow, that's amazing, absolutely incredible, because a lot of parents have closed adoptions, and so then their kids can never meet their birth parents. Right. And so this way your children know their birth parents?
Melodie: Yep, they know their history, they know who they are, because it always is a part of them, even if they're raised by a completely different family, it's still a part of who they are, so it's healthy for us to know who we are.
Camille: Yes, absolutely, that's amazing.
