Adoption finally makes their family whole

THE PARENTS: Amanda Yeakel, 36, and Kyle Yeakel, 38, of Macungie, Pa.

THE CHILD: Emerson Nevina-Hope, 6 months, adopted Dec. 28, 2020

AN EARLY “A-HA”: When Amanda was living in Washington, and Kyle showed up at her door at 3 a.m. “That’s when I realized this was going to happen,” she says.

Maybe the third time would be the charm. Twice, they’d felt jubilant on seeing a positive pregnancy test. Twice, those pregnancies had ended with miscarriages. But this time, it was Valentine’s Day 2018, and Amanda hunkered in a Walmart bathroom, staring at a just-bought test stick.

“I went home and took another one. It was still positive. I told Kyle, ‘I think I’m pregnant.’ ”

A month later, on a Sunday after church, she began bleeding. By Wednesday, Amanda was curled on their bathroom floor, weeping and wracked with pain. An ultrasound brought grim news: not only a third miscarriage, but an 18-centimeter cyst in Amanda’s ovary. She would need surgery to remove it.

“That last loss was the hardest,” Amanda says. “I genuinely believe that God only gives you what you can handle. But it was not an easy road at all.”

Kyle says their path was paved with Amanda’s persistence. She was smitten at first sight, when the two worked at the same restaurant, then discovered both were studying education at Kutztown College. “I knew he cared about kids, that he cared about the future of humanity,” she says.

As for Kyle, “I was maybe playing hard to get. I wasn’t 100% sure who or what I wanted.” But Amanda refused to give up on their relationship, even after graduation, when she moved to Washington for a teaching job.

In May 2008, she came home for a visit, and the two were watching The Empire Strikes Back. “I said, ‘I need to know what’s going on: Are we together or not?’ ” Kyle replied, “Let’s do this.” A few months later, Amanda moved back to Pennsylvania.

They went ring shopping together, and Kyle planned to propose on New Year’s Eve. But he couldn’t find the right moment, so it wasn’t until the next day, in Amanda’s childhood bedroom, with Law & Order: SVU playing in the background, that he dropped to one knee.

They married in November 2011, at Amanda’s home church in Penndel, and entered the reception to “The Imperial March” (Darth Vader’s theme) from Star Wars. Outside, guests lit Chinese lanterns and watched them float skyward.

“We always knew that we wanted children to be in our future,” Kyle says. Since she was a teenager, Amanda had thought about adoption — ”My heart was torn apart by those stories of kids who don’t have families,” she says — but once she met Kyle, she yearned to have a biological child together.

The diagnosis of her ovarian cyst didn’t dash that hope. Even though the surgery brought more bad news — Amanda had severe endometriosis, and IVF might be their only hope of conceiving — fertility specialists assured that she still had “working parts” and would be able to sustain a pregnancy.

Fund-raisers and gifts from family members helped defray the cost of an IVF cycle — $12,000 including medications and doctors’ visits. Kyle figures he gave Amanda at least 50 shots. The retrieval process yielded just two eggs. A doctor transferred both. Then came the verdict: “They did not take. You are not pregnant. We’re sorry.”

“That whole seven- or eight-year span was very difficult for both of us,” Kyle recalls. “We moved into a new house, got two dogs, fostered cats. … We constantly filled that void of a child with other things.” Would they scrape the funds to try IVF again, or would they funnel that money toward adoption?

In February 2020, they met with caseworkers at A Baby Step Adoption. From there, the process moved swiftly. The shutdown actually worked in their favor, giving them time to complete their home study and prepare a profile book with photos of their wedding, stories of their travels to Italy, France, and Mexico, and their passion for Harry Potter and all things Disney.

They included a letter: “Dear Birth Mother, We can never thank you enough for taking the time to get to know us and our family as you make the most difficult decision of your life. … We would love nothing more than to be connected to you through a child that we will all love so much.”

Last May, Amanda had a hysterectomy. In June, they “went live” on the agency’s network. Over the next three months, they submitted their profile for birth mothers in Arizona, North Carolina, California, Texas, and Michigan, about 18 in all. They learned that no news meant “no, thanks.”

Then, on Sept. 17, Amanda’s watch, phone, and computer buzzed simultaneously during a team meeting at the school where she teaches 8th grade. It was their caseworker. A birth mother, due in less than a week, had chosen them. “My brain shut off at: You matched,” Amanda remembers. “Tears were streaming down my face.”

That night, they had a Zoom call with the birth father, who took diligent notes, and the baby’s maternal grandmother. The birth mom wasn’t feeling well and didn’t join the call. At 1:30 the next morning, Amanda’s phone pinged with a text from their caseworker: She had the baby. A girl. Eight pounds, four ounces.

She woke Kyle. “We have a daughter,” she said.

They dropped $2,000 at Buy Buy Baby — car seat, bassinet, a changing table, infant clothes — drove to the hospital, and scrubbed down to enter the NICU. Even before the nurse directed them, Amanda somehow knew which bassinet held their daughter.

The baby was swaddled: dark hair, blue eyes, occasional serial sneezes because of in utero drug exposure. “We took turns holding her, loving her, keeping her really close,” Amanda remembers.

The name Emerson came to them by serendipity. Her middle name honors Kyle’s grandfather, Nevin, who died at 90. In their last conversation, Kyle had asked, “Grandpa, when you make it to heaven, can you please send me a daughter?”

And the second part of her middle name? Hope — elusive, essential, the thread they clutched until they became a family.