Adoption Tell-All: Everything Went Wrong. Nothing Was an Accident.

We were supposed to be home in two days. That’s what we thought when Amanda flew alone to Austin, Texas to meet our brand-new son — four pounds, three ounces, and so tiny it took your breath away. Jonathan stayed back in Omaha with a sick kid and a house to hold together. It was supposed to be a quick NICU stay. Feed and grow. Home by the weekend. It was anything but.

In this episode, we’re telling the whole story — the adoption tell-all our community has been waiting for.

This one doesn’t have a lot of financial teaching in it. That’s okay. Sometimes a story is just a story — and this one is one of the best ones we’ve ever lived. Peter is home. He is loved. And God had His hands on every single detail.

This episode is brought to you by the WalletWin Spring Bundle of Joy — the Catholic Money Academy, WalletWin Kids Courses, and the MoneyTogether Couples Workshop, all bundled together for one special price. Because you’ve blessed us, and we want to bless you back. ⁠Sign up before Thursday night to snag your own Bundle of Joy at WalletWin.com/peter⁠

There are episodes where we sit down with a tidy outline, a few practical takeaways, and a clear point we want to make.

This is not one of those episodes.

This one is personal. It is emotional. It is messy in the way real life is messy. And it tells the story of how, on March 3, we woke up as a family of six and went to bed on the path to becoming a family of seven. It also tells the story of how that joy was almost immediately wrapped up with fear, long hospital days, a very sick newborn, and the kind of surrender that strips you down to prayer alone.

In this episode of The Catholic Money Show, we are sharing the adoption story of our son Peter, the medical crisis that followed, and why we decided to turn this moment into what we are calling our Bundle of Joy offer inside Catholic Money Academy.

A note before you listen or read

This episode includes discussion of child illness, NICU care, infant sepsis, and a very difficult stretch for our family. If that is not something you are in a place to hear right now, it is fine to come back to this one later. We mean that.

There are joyful parts to this story and unmistakable signs of God’s providence all over it. But there are also some very painful moments, and we do not want to pretend otherwise.

How this adoption journey began

About nine months before Peter came home, we were asking a question that adoptive families know well: Are we done, or is God asking us to stay open?

At the time, our family had what felt like two “cohorts” of kids. We had our older girls, and then our toddler James, who was much younger and wondered whether our family was complete, but we also felt a certain sadness at the possibility that James would be the lone ranger for years after the older kids left home. We were open, but we did not know what story God was writing.

Then last August, one of our children’s birth parents reached out to say she was expecting again and asked whether we would be open to adopting. That felt like our answer. We jumped back into the paperwork, the fingerprints, the background checks, the home study updates, and all the other hoops that adoption requires.

Then, in October, we learned that she had miscarried. That loss was real. It was heartbreaking for her, for our family, and for one of our children who had hoped to have a biological sibling in our home. We had done all the work to be adoption-ready, though, so we stayed active and began presenting our profile in other situations. Through the winter, we presented on nearly twenty cases. A few times, we made it to the final group being considered, but we were not chosen. Still, we kept going.

Looking back, there was a strange peace in that waiting. Not ease, exactly. But peace.

The email that changed everything

March 2 was James’s second birthday. We celebrated, put the kids to bed, and then saw an email from our adoption agency about a baby boy who had already been born a few days earlier.

We looked at his photo, read the situation, and both of us had the same reaction: this might be our son. Amanda felt it immediately. There was no spreadsheet for that. No measurable metric. Just that deep conviction parents sometimes get before they can explain why.

We submitted our profile right away. In these situations, speed matters. Agencies often show profiles in the order they are received, and even though we responded within minutes, we were still the second family in line. That night, our kids saw enough to know what was happening, and one of them asked to pray with Amanda for the birth mom, the baby boy, and our family. That mattered. It felt like another small thread tying us to the story before we knew the ending.

The next morning, Amanda started panic-cleaning the house. If you have adopted before, you know that sometimes the call is not “sometime in the next few months.” Sometimes it is: You need to come now. And that is exactly what happened. We got the call. We had been chosen. And almost immediately, we learned that Amanda needed to get to Texas right away.

Meeting Peter in the NICU

The original expectation sounded manageable. Peter had been born small and was in the NICU, but the agency believed he might only need another two or three days there. The plan was simple: Amanda would fly down, stay with him, and come home quickly once he was discharged.

That is not what happened.

When Amanda got to the hospital, she found an incredibly tiny baby, just over four pounds, trying to learn how to feed and grow strong enough to leave. He was off the ventilator and doing fairly well, but he was sleepy, small, and struggling to gain weight. The hospital itself was wonderful. They had family suites just outside the NICU, and for a few days, the rhythm was almost calm: coffee in the morning, long days holding Peter, making sure he took his feeds, and going back to the room at night.

Then, a few days in, things shifted.

Because Peter was symmetrically small for his gestational age, the medical team began running a host of tests to rule out more serious concerns. Suddenly, what had felt like a waiting game in the NICU became a stretch of scans, lab work, chromosome testing, X-rays, and unanswered questions. Some results came back normal right away, which was a relief, but others took longer. The emotional tone changed completely. What had been exhausting became frightening.

Still, Peter started to improve enough that the hospital discharged him.

And that is when things got truly scary.

The day everything went wrong

Amanda left the hospital with Peter and stayed that night with family near the airport so they could make a pediatrician appointment the next morning before flying home. But almost immediately, something felt off.

He was fussier. More lethargic. His cry sounded different. He did not seem to want his full feeds. By the middle of the night, Amanda knew this was not normal, even if she did not yet know how serious it was. The next morning, at the pediatrician’s office, his temperature came back at 101. The doctor did not hesitate. He sent them straight to Dell Children’s in Austin and told Amanda they would not be getting on a plane that day.

In the emergency room, things moved fast. Blood draws. IVs. X-rays. A spinal tap. Broad-spectrum antibiotics. More labs. More waiting. Meanwhile, Peter kept getting sicker. His fever climbed. He became weaker. What had started as “something feels off” turned into an unmistakable medical emergency.

One of the lab markers showed that he was septic. Later testing revealed just how bad it had gotten. As Amanda sat there alone, holding him while he declined, she had one of the most terrifying experiences of her life. She did not know if he would recover or what they were dealing with. She only knew she was watching a baby she already loved suffer, and she could not fix it herself.

This is the part of the story where all illusions of control are stripped away.

There was no productivity hack for this. No perfect plan. No financial system or parenting framework or marriage strategy that could solve it in that moment. There was only prayer, endurance, and the mercy of God working through a medical team that knew what to do.

When Jonathan came to Texas

At that point, Amanda called and said what had become obvious: Jonathan needed to come immediately.

Because of timing, flight routes, and last-minute airline pricing, that was not simple. There were no convenient flights. There were delays, an overnight airport layover and the whole absurd chain of events people live through when they are trying to get to the person they love in a crisis and every logistical detail becomes harder than it should be. But Jonathan made it.

And by the time he arrived, Peter had started to respond to the correct antibiotic.

He was still sick. He was still hospitalized. But he was turning a corner.

That mattered medically, of course. It also mattered spiritually and emotionally. Up until then, Amanda had been running on adrenaline, fear, and the kind of maternal force that drives a person far past their limits. Jonathan’s arrival meant she could exhale enough to sleep, to step away briefly, and to begin trusting that she did not have to hold the entire crisis alone.

The unmistakable providence of God

In the middle of all this, there was a moment that neither of us will forget.

While Peter was hospitalized, we found a nearby Catholic church and went to Mass. It happened to be a Maronite church, just across the street from the hospital. The community welcomed us immediately. The priest mentioned Peter by name. He prayed for him publicly. At Communion, he recognized us as Peter’s parents and personally assured us of their prayers.

Then, after Mass, a man approached and offered us oil associated with St. Charbel, a Maronite saint known for miracles. Jonathan looked at him and realized he knew him from years earlier in Vermont. Not only were we at a church that was not ours, in a city that was not ours, in a rite of the Church that was not our usual one, but we met someone from Jonathan’s past who was only there by what looked very much like providence.

And then, one more detail: the Maronite tradition traces itself through St. Peter.

That was the kind of moment you do not manufacture. You do not force meaning onto it. You simply receive it. It felt like God saying, in the middle of the storm, I have not lost sight of you. I am here. I have led you here.

Coming home, and then going back to the hospital

Eventually, Peter improved enough to leave the hospital on oral antibiotics. We made our way home and had the joyful homecoming every adoptive family dreams about: the kids meeting their new brother, the whole household trying to remember where the baby gear was, and the surreal feeling of settling into life with a newborn you had only just met.

But the story did not end there.

Within days of getting home, Peter spiked another fever and ended up back in the hospital, this time locally. Doctors discovered that he had kidney reflux, which likely contributed to the bacterial UTI that had caused the earlier crisis. So now we have a clearer path forward. There may still be a long road ahead. There may be more treatment, more decisions, and possibly surgery. But at least now we know more than we did in those first terrifying days.

Why we created the Bundle of Joy offer

This last month forced us to postpone, cancel, or pivot more than a few things in our business. There were promotions we had planned and sales we intended to run, and they simply had to wait. Family came first. Survival came first. Peter came first.

So instead of trying to pretend it was business as usual, we decided to do something different.

We wanted to introduce everyone to our little bundle of joy, Peter, and at the same time offer a Bundle of Joy for families who are ready to get serious about their finances.

Here is what that means: when you join Catholic Money Academy this week, we are including all three levels of Wallet Win Kids plus The Money Together Workshop at no extra cost. These are resources that normally would cost extra, but during this special promotion, they are bundled into your membership.

This matters because many families do not just need information about money. They need help having the conversation and getting on the same page as spouses. They need a way to begin without launching straight into conflict, deprivation, or shame.

That is exactly why The Money Together Workshop is part of this offer. It gives couples a place to start by understanding themselves better, understanding each other better, and clarifying the future they want for their family with vision, unity, and purpose. From there, the practical financial work can actually take root.

And if you have been putting off your money goals because life feels full, messy, or expensive, this is probably the point of the whole episode:

There is never a convenient time to get your financial life in order.
There is only the moment you decide to stop waiting.

If you need an excuse, here it is. If you need a way to work on your money while also caring about your marriage and your kids, this bundle was made with exactly that in mind.

This month has reminded us that family life does not pause for a clean calendar. Babies arrive. Emergencies happen. Hospital bills show up. Plans change. Fear intrudes. Grace intrudes too.

And in the middle of all of it, God remains faithful.

That does not make hard things easy. But it does mean we do not walk through them alone.