Tate Family Adoption!

Hello and Welcome! We are currently raising funds to grow our family through adoption for the 2nd time! We are so extremely grateful and this is our story:

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My husband, Chris, and I have been married for a little over 7 years. In our early dating years, we often dreamt of having biological and adopted children, and we were never sure why this desire was so strong on our hearts. We talked frequently of how special it was to have this same desire in both of our hearts from so early on in our relationship.


Our entire world shifted when we got pregnant with our first baby and found out at our 20 week ultrasound that  she wouldn't be able to survive after birth.. She had a fatal genetic disorder that still can't be pinpointed. We were told throughout the remainder of our pregnancy that this had to be an anomaly and should never happen again, but our hearts were devastated as we carried our sweet Ellie to term and held her as she passed. Our daughter’s condition didn’t change our heart towards her. She was absolutely perfect and our love for her was so strong. She is our treasure and still very much a part of our family. We grieved and healed and began walking through life figuring out how to do life with this consistent and sometimes overwhelming layer of grief, and we tried our best to navigate an additional layer of complexity to it all as watched many of our closest  friends deliver healthy babies within months of Ellie's birth.


As we learned to move forward in our marriage through this trauma, we held onto the hope that we would one day have children again. Nine months after Ellie’s passing, we prayerfully tried to get pregnant again, and we ended up getting pregnant on the first try. Seeing that positive pregnancy test induced so many feelings: hope, worry, excitement, and fear, all at the same time. We held tightly to the words and hope of the doctors and our completely normal genetic test from the first time around. We had every reason to be confident! We had our 20 week ultrasound for our second little girl only to find that she, too, would pass after birth to what appeared to be a similar condition. We were absolutely shocked, devastated, and unsure of how we would be able to meet and say goodbye to another child within the same breath.


The remainder of this second pregnancy was brutal. We loved her so much and we had to somehow prepare to say goodbye much too soon. We went into labor on Christmas night at 41 weeks pregnant and I was in labor with her for 36 grueling hours. It was an awful 36 hours of attempting to prepare my heart to say hello and goodbye at the same time. She lived for about 5 minutes and then joined her sister in Heaven.

We got licensed to adopt the first time around two weeks after delivering Elsie, our second daughter, because we knew that the adoption process could take a very long time. We were hoping to be proactive and, at the same time, open the door to parenthood once again as a sign that we wouldn’t give up. Getting licensed to adopt was a statement of faith that we would endure and press forward into parenthood and raising children in our home, even if it took years.


With so much help, love, and support, we brought our son, Shepherd, home through adoption just 4 months later. We are so in love with Shepherd and being his parents. It has been the most amazing privilege of our lives. Fast forward to now: Shepherd is 3.5 years old and, through a series of unmistakable signs, we felt called to expand our family through adoption once again. We jumped in head first and we are so full of hope and love!

You can follow our journey through instagram @wethetates