We haven’t really kept up with this website, but we have some fun changes to share, so it seems like a good time for an update!
As most of you probably know: in October 2020, after we spent a few months getting to know his biological parents, Emmett Havili Beckstead joined our family through adoption.
We love our little boy, and we love his birth family. We are so grateful that they continue to choose to be a part of his life.
Watching Emmett learn and grow is a dream come true! He is adventurous and strong, and he has a great sense of humor. He loves to run; climb anything he can get his knees up onto; dance whether there’s music playing or not; and spend as much time as possible outside. He is learning new words every day, while continuing to babble along in his own language and laugh at his own jokes.
In other family news: in December 2021, Tom began work at Rocky Mountain Care as the Manager of Organizational Development. He is loving building relationships there as he gets to know the people in the company and how the organization operates. He looks forward to learning and growing into the position.
With Tom getting settled into his job, it gives Becky the opportunity to take on a new role: stay-at-home mom! She has officially given notice to her school that she will not be returning to work for the 2022-23 school year. She is nervous and excited about this new adventure, and sad to leave behind the school and classroom that have become a second home over the past seven years. It’s a daunting change, but one she has been looking forward to for a long time.
We have had so many people asking questions (or maybe afraid to ask questions) since we announced our plan to adopt. Hopefully this post answers some of the main ones! If you are wondering about anything else, please feel free to reach out to us. We are very open about our journey and would love to help others understand the crazy world of adoption a little bit better. (That being said, we’re total newbies, so take it all for what it’s worth!)
What kind of kid are you looking for?
This is a great question! A lot of people feel pretty awkward asking, but it is an important part of the whole process. Right now, we are looking for an infant, preferably newborn. Other than that, we are not really limiting ourselves; we are open to any race/ethnicity, boy/girl, multiples, etc.
How does the process work?
It works a little differently for everyone, but we’ll try to explain according to our understanding and expectations.
Right now, we have decided not to use an adoption agency, in favor of adopting privately. There are pros and cons to each method, but we feel that private is what’s best for us at this point. What that means is that we are pretty much just putting ourselves and our information out there, and hoping to make a connection with an expectant mother. This will likely happen through a friend of a friend, social media, or word of mouth. This means that it could take us two weeks or two years to find the baby that Heavenly Father has in store for us—a little hard to prepare for, but we know He’s orchestrating all of it!
So…open adoption?
Yep! As we learned at a recent seminar, ~95% of adoptions in the U.S. are open. Now, the degree of openness varies from solely getting family history and health background, to regular visits and contact. We are excited by the idea of having an open adoption; we would love for our child to have as many people love him/her as possible. We look forward to getting to know a birth family and building this unique kind of relationship.
Have you considered fostering or embryo adoption?
Absolutely! We have considered a lot of options, and nothing is off the table for us, but we feel directed toward infant adoption right now.
How can we help?
We have been so incredibly overwhelmed by the love and support that we have felt from family, friends, neighbors, and even strangers. It is humbling to realize that we cannot accomplish this on our own; growing our family is going to take a whole lot of help. First and foremost, we ask for your thoughts and prayers and positive vibes. We feel them, even from far away.
The next best thing is to keep your ears to the ground. It’s been amazing to hear the unlikely stories of how adoptive parents and birth parents come into contact with each other; you could be the link between us and our family that is out there somewhere! Similarly, we would love for you to like, comment on, and share our social media posts; the more interaction we get on our posts, the more people they reach, and the higher likelihood that we find our expectant mother and baby.
Finally, adoption can be very expensive. We do not in any way want to hit people up for money, but we have had many friends and family reach out wanting to donate to our adoption fund. If you would like to contribute monetarily, we are accepting donations through @becksteadbabyjourney on Venmo.
We are so grateful for you taking the time to consider us for adoption. We can only imagine the decision you are making is an impossible one. We have a tremendous respect for your willingness to do the impossible as you consider what will be best for you and your baby. You and your baby have been and continue to be in our prayers; we pray that you will find the guidance, peace, and strength necessary as you consider what is best for your life and the life of your baby.
Double wedding with Becky’s sister
We were married in Newport Beach, CA, in December 2011. We are more in love than we ever could have imagined when we started our life together. We look forward to that love growing more and more each day. We are especially looking forward to extending that love to a child, and to you. Both of us have always wanted to be parents and are excited to experience parenthood together! We have always felt that adoption would be one way we wanted to grow our family.
We both grew up in Southern California, and our parents and many of our siblings still live there. We visit a couple times a year, and both families often come up to visit us here in Utah. We both come from big families; Becky has 11 siblings and Tom has four, so we’re excited for our future kids to have so many aunts/uncles and cousins to love them.
We “met” when Becky was 19, and Tom was 29, though our families have always been close, and we grew up in the same community. It’s a running joke that Tom didn’t get married sooner because he had to wait for Becky to get old enough to marry. In all honesty though, our courtship made sense from the very beginning, and there was heavy family involvement on both sides. Becky’s sister would help her carefully craft text messages, and Tom’s brothers were the first to know when he had kissed her for the first time.
BECKY
Becky graduated from BYU with a degree in Math Education in 2015 and is currently a math teacher at a local high school. Becky doesn’t get a lot of time away from the teens either, because she works with the youth of our local congregation each Sunday and Wednesday nights.
Becky loves to learn. She adores reading, and most often as a child, you’d find her inside, curled up with a book. However, she comes from an athletic family, so she enjoys being out on the basketball, volleyball, or tennis courts. She’s super crafty, and you’d be hard-pressed not to find little touches of her projects throughout our home.
Chasing waves with a niece
Becky comes from a huge family, especially for Southern California, and has seven sisters and four brothers. She’s been an aunt since she was seven years old! Because of this, changing diapers, babysitting, peek-a-boo, and everything baby-related is basically second nature to her. Now, she has 52 nieces and nephews just on her side of the family.
TOM
While Becky loves the hard sciences, Tom thinks in a different way. He studied Psychology at BYU, and is currently working on his Masters in Industrial Organizational Psychology. He works at a neurofeedback lab when he’s not studying, and is the best person to have a conversation with about how the mind works. Tom will likely go into HR or the consulting field when he graduates in January 2020. Soon afterward, we hope to fulfill a lifelong dream of Becky being a stay at home mom.
Being a fun uncle
Tom comes from a family of five kids. He has two sisters and two brothers, one of which is his identical twin, Ben. He has a unique and close relationship with every one of his siblings, and adores his 13 nieces and nephews. The kids always know it’s going to be a good time when Uncle Tom comes around.
Tom graduated from BYU, and he has not left his alma mater behind. He is quite possibly the biggest BYU sports fan there has ever been, which, if you follow BYU sports, has not always been easy for him. BYU is his favorite, but Tom loves all sports, and you know that he will always know the scores to the biggest games, and the stats on the best players. Becky couldn’t have told you five major league teams in any sports before she met Tom, and now she might be able to rival him on trivia night.
Tom is fascinated with individuals who share their experiences of personal sacrifice serving in the military through books, movies, and podcasts. It has become a hobby that no one foresaw. Through this hobby, Tom has gained a greater appreciation for his own life by learning of others’ triumph over trials. Learning how people overcome what appears to be impossible with sheer power of will never fails to move him. So psychology is more than a job for Tom–he’s genuinely interested in it.
INTERESTS
Dressed up as clue characters
Our faith plays a big role in our lives. We are active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (often called “Mormons”). You can find us at our nearby chapel each Sunday. Both of us have been asked to serve in the youth program of our church, so each Wednesday we get to feel like teenagers again at youth activity nights (or at least try to keep up with them). We are grateful for the hope that our faith gives us in the future, and for the motivation to get up each day and try to be better and more Christlike than the day before.
We are both homebodies by nature—what’s better than staying in and cuddling in the comfort of your own home? Most Friday nights are spent holed up, watching Marvel movie marathons, binging shows on Netflix, or catching a BYU football/basketball game.
That being said, we also love getting out and exploring. We enjoy hiking in the mountains right in our backyard, swimming at the beach whenever we visit our parents “back home”, learning to appreciate the snowy winters here in Utah, or playing a pick-up game of basketball or volleyball with our families.
We “met” when Becky was 19, and Tom was 29, though our families have always been close, and we grew up in the same community. It’s a running joke that Tom didn’t get married sooner because he had to wait for Becky to get old enough to marry. In all honesty though, our courtship made sense from the very beginning, and there was heavy family involvement on both sides. Becky’s sister would help her carefully craft text messages, and Tom’s brothers were the first to know when he had kissed her for the first time.
Beckstead Baby Journey 