Getting named Mom: Orcutt mother shares journey to motherhood via adoption

Like quite a few other mothers with compact young children, Orcutt resident Sara Fernandez can be heard tending to her energetic 3-calendar year-outdated, Lucas, as he toddles around his indoor engage in space earning new discoveries and sharing his eager observations unabashedly.

“He is all boy,” she explained, reminding her son that his grandmother also would shortly be arriving. “It can be exhausting, but it can be so considerably enjoyment.”

When Lucas was born in the summertime of 2018, the Fernandezs grew to become his foster household with the guidance of Angels Foster Care of Santa Barbara, also found in Orcutt. Not long following, they became his parents, formally adopting him in February 2019.

Fernandez explained that she and her spouse, Eric, experienced very first prepared to have a number of biological youngsters of their personal and afterwards adopt. But things did not fairly go as prepared.

“We experienced significant troubles with infertility,” she recalled. “And rather than devote several years and hundreds of pounds on techniques in order to get pregnant, we knew that this is what we were being supposed to do.”

By way of heaps of prayer and with the blessings of quite a few confidants, their journey to develop into parents started.

Adoption story_Sara_Fernandez 1.jpg — Sara and Eric Fernandez hold their son, Lucas, on his official adoption working day.

Courtesy of the Fernandez household

The couple’s prayers were being answered with the delivery of their to start with adoptive son, Ezra Lionheart Fernandez, who was born in June 2017 at Marian Regional Clinical Heart.

Ezra, on the other hand, was born a micropreemie, a time period usually utilized for toddlers born right before 26 weeks, or who weigh a lot less than 1 pound, 12 ounces. He put in five months in the neonatal intense care unit at Marian.

“Angels Foster Care made confident we experienced total parental entry to him while he was in the NICU,” Sara Fernandez explained. “We had been there every day so he could learn our voices.”

Whilst Ezra’s prognosis was hopeful in the starting, Fernandez explained his health and fitness took a convert for the even worse.

“At three months, it appeared like we would provide him household,” she mentioned, “then he went downhill immediately.”

Adoption story_Sara_Fernandez 3.jpg — Sara Fernandez hold her 3-12 months-aged son, Lucas.

Courtesy of the Fernandez family

Thanks to complications stemming from his premature birth, Ezra was flown to Valley Kid’s NICU in Madera, exactly where he died in January 2018 at the tender age of 7 months.

While the Fernandezs have because adopted Lucas and are currently fostering an toddler they hope to undertake later on this calendar year, Ezra was the initially to present them the titles Mom and Father.

With a trembling voice, Sara Fernandez discussed that immediately after dealing with infertility challenges and the demise of her 1st baby, becoming termed Mother is some thing she will not consider for granted.

“It is really the largest honor for these kiddos to call me Mom,” she mentioned. “I really don’t consider it frivolously.”