Utah Couple Fly 2,000 Miles to Meet Adoptive Daughter After Unable to Conceive

On the left, newlyweds Tori Story and her husband, Jake, pose for a photo, and on the right, the couple poses with their adopted daughter, Londyn Lou. Facebook | Tori Strohecker Story

It is the hope of all newlyweds to have a fulfilling marriage of one kind or another. For one Utah couple, they had their hearts set on having children. When those hopes suddenly turned to ashes and they didn’t know where to turn, though, they refused to give up and persisted in following their dream.

Amazingly, when their first door closed, a window opened---and they were rewarded in a most unexpected way.

Being young and in love, they had spent many hours discussing their future.

“We were going to have at least one kid by the time we hit our third year of marriage, maybe even two,” newlywed wife Tori Story told Love What Matters. Yet, she admitted that she had a “hunch” that conception was not going to be a simple matter, though she didn’t realize just how hard becoming a parent was going to be.

Shortly after their wedding, Tori and her husband, Jake, started trying to have a baby but met with difficulty. After tests and fertility treatments, “the whole nine yards,” they were rewarded with a hard-won pregnancy, yet their hopes were dashed when, during Tori’s ultrasound, the doctor told them it would turn out to be a miscarriage.

They then decided to try adoption as an alternative, and after again facing many difficulties---from choosing a decent, legitimate adoption agency to filling out the mountains of paperwork---they got yet another false flag when, after three months, a match was found only for them not to be chosen.

Then in February 2018, Tori got the call that changed their lives forever.

The couple had submitted their profile for a second time in hopes of getting a match, and Tori “felt” in her heart that this one would be their baby. Incredibly, a call came through the next day. She answered the phone nervously, apprehensive and afraid of yet another disappointment, and the person on the other end said, “Congrats, you guys were chosen!”

“I was shaking, crying, speechless, and so happy,” Tori later recounted. “I couldn’t believe it. We had finally found our baby, our missing piece.”

After speaking with the baby’s birth mom, she immediately felt a strong connection, “almost like we had known her our whole life,” said Tori.

Tori kept in constant communication with the mother until the birth, and when the day arrived for the baby to be born, the couple were booked to be overnighted to North Carolina. The next day, they met with the mother for lunch before she was to be induced.

“We were finally able to put a face to the woman we had been talking to for several weeks,” Tori shared. “As we sat there, I couldn’t help, but have this overwhelming sense of gratitude for her and the miracle she was about to give us.”

Tori shared via Love What Matters what happened the next morning when they arrived at the hospital:

I was invited to be in the delivery room by the baby’s selfless and brave birth mom. As I watched our beautiful baby girl enter this world, with tears streaming down my face, I was overcome with the purest joy. The second I laid eyes on her I just knew that she was ours. It was an instant love like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. She was the most precious and beautiful little thing I have ever seen. I was even able to cut the cord!

With their new baby girl, Londyn Lou, they were a family of three at last. Despite their own dream come true, though, Tori expressed her immense debt of gratitude for the mother who bore their daughter into the world:

I will never know the pain and heartache she felt as she placed Londyn Lou in my arms. I will forever be indebted to her for everything she did for us […] I love that I get to share the sweetest moments with a woman who is so selfless and brave that she gave her daughter something she knew she couldn’t. I WANT Londyn to know where she came from. I WANT her to know she was chosen and loved on both ends. I WANT her to be proud of her birth mom. I WANT her to feel her love and support. How could I ever deny her MORE love? I want her to grow up knowing where she came from and be proud of the most brave and selfless woman I have ever met. I will forever be indebted to her brave and courageous birth mom for the most beautiful little girl that we get to call ours.

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