Introducing June Bud!

Here it goes!

Hi there! I am June Bud, and I am the newest member of the Bloomin Babies Blog! I have followed the gals on their journeys thus far, and it really inspired me to become one of the Buds. Their stories of TTC, and the journeys they have embarked on, have really helped me to deal with the emotional ups and downs that my own TTC journey has caused me. There are not many people in my life who know the ins and ours of our trouble with TTC, and sometimes it is really hard to talk to people about it because they don't always truly understand the highs and lows that you are experiencing. This was very difficult for me, and I found that reading about other peoples journeys, and following them through similar situations that I myself have experienced, has really helped me tremendously through this time in my life. I hope that my journey can help you too, and that together we can get through all of the highs and lows that we will face in this world known as TTC.

I am 29 years old, and I live in Florida with my wonderful hubby who is also 29. We met in college in NH, and had lived in the northeast our entire lives until about 6 years ago when we decided the cold and snow weren't for us and picked up and moved 1300 miles away to Florida. Mr. June Bud and I love children, and he is currently a Social Services Supervisor for a program that represents children in the child welfare system. I am a Guidance Counselor, and our hearts could not be more in love with children. Long before we even decided to get married, we felt that children in the foster care system needed our help, and we opened our home to foster children for 2.5 years. We never had the intention of adopting...heck, we were only about 25 years old at the time, but we wanted to give these abandoned little kids a place to call home while they were looking for their forever home. This only lasted about two minutes, because as soon as the first child came to our home, we were in love and were determined to adopt them. We had A LOT of heartbreak along the way, but made wonderful memories that will last a lifetime. We fostered four children before our son, and on October 31, 2007 our baby came home. He was a curly haired adorable 9 month old who had been severely neglected by his birth mom. We fostered him and fought to adopt him for over two years before we were finally given the opportunity to officially make him our son on November 30, 2009. He is my "pumpkin baby," and he was born in our hearts on that beautiful Halloween day in 2007.

Mr. June Bud and I were married in October 2008, and our little guy was by our side on that wonderful day. Once we knew last summer that we could officially adopt our son, we started TTC. We felt it was important to make sure that he could be our forever son before we brought another baby into the picture. Dealing with the loss of a foster child is tremendous, and for me, it was not an option to have our own kids if we did not know if our foster son could be with us forever. We needed to grieve and deal with his loss first, if it were to come to that. Once we had the official word that his adoption was in the works, we jumped on the TTC bandwagon. What a year it has been...when I started down the adoption and TTC path, I had no idea what a BBT was, what taking my temps meant, what OPK's were, how to time intercourse, or what in the world CERVICAL MUCUS WAS!!!!!!! I felt like I entered a whole new universe, and that my sanity had gone with it. I never in a MILLION years would have though that it would take so much out of me just to start a little June Bud family. But now, 13 months later it has been a very interesting ride, with a long road still in front of us. Although I have learned a lot over the past year, it was not done without feeling uncertainty, rejection, humility, and of course many shared tears and laughs. Sigh, I know I still have a long way to go, but I can't wait to share this experience with you!

Thanks for listening! There's a lot more where that came from! :-)

June Bud