Local family's adoption story was 'God's plan'

December 24, 2019

Josh and Nicole Blakley are the parents of Addison, Jameson, Griffin, Isabella and Hannah. The Bellville couple decided to adopt after having three children of their own. (Photo: Ali Carter/Just Images)

Lou Whitmire,Mansfield News Journal                                                                                                        

MANSFIELD - Josh and Nicole Blakley always had a desire to expand their family.

But after having three children, Nicole said, they were no longer able to have more.

"I think adoption was something that was always in the back of my mind but maybe not so much Josh," said Nicole, who is retired from the Ohio Air National Guard's 200th RED HORSE squadron, based in Mansfield.

Josh, who serves as a chief master sergeant in the 179th Airlift Wing of the Ohio Air National Guard, and Nicole shared their adoption story this month in hopes that anyone considering adopting a child will do so.

"We had three under 3 (Addison, Griffin, Hannah)," Nicole said of their biological children. "I approached the topic with Josh. I always say I think he thought I was crazy, drinking in the afternoons or something. We have three children under 3, why would you bring this up?'" she said with a laugh.

"It was always in my heart. We knew we wanted four (children). I say we but it was probably me," she said.

Nicole had just gotten back into the military around 2009 having been out of the military for 1½ years.

It was then the couple first began exploring the topic of international adoption.

"That was our original intention. We were going to adopt from Ethiopia," she said. "We had no experience with adoption. We had nobody in our family (who adopted). We just knew nothing.

"Through a series of events, our social worker, who has since become our friend, just said quite frankly, 'Why international?' And we told her about birth mom coming in and stealing our baby in the middle of the night. All the Lifetime movie stories."

Josh said the social worker started to educate them on state and national adoption laws.

Their own biological children were ages 4, 3 and 1 at the time.

"So we made the switch and decided we're going to explore domestic newborn (adoptions)," she said. "And this all leading up to my deployment. We got everything done, the home study, the classes we had to take, the mountains of paperwork. We had to take training. We had everything done. We said we want three months once I get back to acclimate as a family and literally three months to the day after I returned, we got a phone call on (daughter) Addison's birthday that we had been matched three times, with three separate birth moms."

The Blakleys didn't know how to choose a birth mother, so they went with the first birth mom who chose them, and their son Jameson was born exactly a week later on Jan. 11, 2011.

The couple went to the hospital and met the birth mom for the first time.

Josh recalled the nerves kicking in.

"We walked by the nursery. It was like the TV shows, the glass with all the babies laying in the nursery, and one of these could be our son," Josh said. "They had let us know that birth mom and grandma were in the room and we did not know what to expect."

Nicole said both she and her husband walked into the room and immediately felt physically sick.

Josh said then it was immediate "tears and hugging."

"Two and a half hours later it was fine," his wife said. "There was peace. I felt it. We all felt at peace. We got to hold our son and feed him and change him."

Josh said he felt peace in that moment after having had doubts about adoption in general. 

"It just felt different, her not carrying the child, could I love this child? Is this going to be my child? All of those questions," he said.

Snapping his fingers, Josh described the feelings that came over him when he saw the baby boy, that same feeling he had when he first laid eyes on his three biological children.

"Your life changes, your love changes for them. We didn't give birth, but it didn't change anything," he said.

But their adoption story didn't end here.

Nicole recalled how happy she was with the family of six as they left for Texas the day after Jameson's "finalization," or the day the official paperwork with the state was completed in the courtroom.

"I would have said, 'We're done. Our family is complete.' I felt that was God's plan for us. We are the Blakley party of six. That is who we are," she said.

The family spent a year in San Antonio for Josh's job. Next the family transferred to Washington, D.C., for Josh's job. On their daughter Hannah's birthday, they got a phone call from their social worker in Ohio, who they had not heard from in awhile.

Nicole remembered how it was 9 p.m.; Josh said he remembers how the kids were in the tub.

"It was unusual," Nicole said. "She prefaced the phone call with, 'You should probably sit down.'"

Josh said he immediately felt it was the Lifetime TV movie and the birth mother most likely wanted the baby back. His wife said her mind never went to anything else other than bad news.

But the news was the birth mother of Jameson was pregnant again and she was exploring the idea or the option of placing this baby with the Blakleys.

Nicole said Josh saw her face.

"And he said OK. And I said OK. We'd been together for so many years we didn't need to talk. It was never a question," Nicole said.

Josh said that was Jameson's sister.

"If the baby isn't going to be with birth mom, then the baby has to be with us," he said.

They quickly sold their home D.C. after less than seven days on the market.

"We had just bought a house in D.C. We had been there 10 months and the plan was to stay there for another four or five years," Nicole said. "The plan was always to come back to Ohio eventually." The couple are natives of Richland County.

There was one open job in Ohio that Josh could have returned for and that job had no potential for being open, but by law, the couple had to return to Ohio to adopt the baby girl and remain in Ohio for six months, Nicole said.

"The person who had the military job in Ohio decided she wanted to move back to Texas, and Josh applied for it and got it," Nicole said. "We were back in Ohio by Thanksgiving."

The couple could not find a house in Ohio right away, so they stayed with Nicole's parents in Guernsey County for about six weeks.

"In order to complete a home study you have to have a home," she said. "We bought a home in Bellville and had our home study."

Josh was still working in Maryland and Nicole was in Ohio.

"It was tough," Nicole said.

"Josh did not falter from his faith the entire time," she said. "I did constantly, hourly, daily. I struggled a lot. He kept saying, 'If God brought us this far then there's absolutely no way this is not part of the plan.'"

Nicole said she and Josh were already in love with the child and wanted the best for the birth mom and their baby.

Isabella was born Feb. 5, 2015. "Mom (Isabella's birth mother) told us to come to the hospital in Ohio," Nicole said.

The couple, who are very open about their adoption story, said Isabella has been "a fierce child since the hot second she was born."

"Tiny but fierce," her dad added. 

"Isabella knows what she wants and she tells you and she will get it. It's crazy in our house," the mother said of the busy schedule with five children and daily activities."We have three in braces," said Nicole, who recently began working out of her home.

Nicole shared that when she was 12, she wrote in a journal that she was going to marry a handsome lawyer and they were going to adopt one child.

"He's handsome. He's not a lawyer and we have five," she said laughing.

Nicole said she can't fathom their lives without adoption.

Going through adoption classes, Nicole and her husband saw people who tended to consider adoption a "Plan B."

"And there were people who had struggled with infertility for 15 years," she said. "It was never a Plan B for us." 

The couple said they get a lot of questions about the nature or appearance of their interracial family.

Nicole said Isabella tells kids who ask why her mom is white and she is tan, "She is my mother and that's all I know."

"These five children are our children. It seems very normal for us. It's not any different for us," Nicole said. The children are brothers and sisters and love and fight like brothers and sisters.

 Josh and Nicole said anyone thinking of adoption should do it.

"There will be a thousand reasons not to do it. It's the money, it's the situation, it's the paperwork," said Nicole, who now serves on the Richland County Children Services board.

"There are a thousand reasons not to do it and there is one huge reason to do it. It's your child," she said. "And whatever you think you can't do, you can."

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