For Abbey Shelton, our story begins about five years ago with a stirring in her heart.
She’d seen an old acquaintance from her home town struggling to conceive a child of her own.
“It was really taking a toll on her, and I just felt like God was telling me that I needed to be a surrogate for her,” Abbey recalls.
“I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I typed messages to her a thousand times, and I picked up the phone to call her a thousand times.”
“But I wasn’t close enough to her, I felt. We were just acquaintances. We weren’t friends.”
“For the longest time, this was just in the back of my head all the time.”
For Jamie Redwine, the story begins around the same time, when she found a job working at Abbey’s business, Rose Garden Florist, after moving to Paducah.
“I didn’t know anyone here,” Jamie says.
“Abbey and I just hit it off.”
The women became best friends, bonding over their work together—Abbey as owner and Jamie as manager of Rose Garden Florist—and over their children. Jamie and her husband Derral had three older children, and Abbey was mom to two young girls. Their families spent time together, and their children became close.
For many years, Jamie and Derral had known that they wanted to continue growing their family. It was a dream of Jamie’s.
“Since I was little, in grade school when we were supposed to dress up in what we wanted to be when we grew up, I went as a mom. All I ever wanted to be was a mom,” Jamie says.
The couple had two biological children and adopted another, but they struggled with knowing the right path to take for a fourth child.
“My husband is retired military, and we moved around a lot. Foster care wasn’t an option because they didn’t want to place a child and then us move away in a year,” Jamie says.
“It was hard to get a home study because we were never anywhere long.”
“It was difficult. I thought maybe it wasn’t going to happen for us.”
Out of the blue, Jamie thought her family’s prayers had been answered.
“A couple of years ago, my sister had a friend who was going to place her child for adoption. We went through all the motions. We had the nursery ready,” Jamie recalls.
Through it all, Jamie leaned on Abbey.
“Abbey was so supportive, helping me to make t-shirts to raise money for the adoption,” she says.
“She helped me through it.”
Two days before the baby was born, the birth mother decided on another family for her child.
“It was very heartbreaking for us,” Jamie says.
Once the shock of that experience subsided, Jamie’s resolve was steeled. The family decided that they would try for another adoption. Jamie kept a watchful eye on several Facebook groups dedicated to adoption opportunities. She would check her email often, hoping for news from several birth mothers that they’d shared their story with.
She even briefly considered trying to carry another child herself.
All the while, her best friend Abbey was watching her friends struggle.
“Everything they tried was a dead end for them,” she says.
“It was heartbreaking to me.”
She was starting to sense the stirring she’d felt several years ago for another woman and another family.
One day, Abbey finally made the call that she’d resisted before.
“She just said, ‘I’ll have a baby for you,’” Jamie says.
“I told her that if my body would do it, then I would try for her,” Abbey remembers.
It happened on the first try.
“With the other adoption that fell through, I had talked to the birth mom and had seen ultrasound pictures, but it wasn’t very personal. I didn’t know her very well,” Jamie says.
“With Abbey, I went to all the appointments. She came over to our house at night two nights in a row just to lay on the couch so that we could all sit around and try to feel him move.”
“She would text and say that she was craving this or that.”
“It was way more personal being able to experience all that with her.”
“It just didn’t feel real at first, that he was really going to be mine.”
For Abbey, she reveled in her friends’ happiness during her pregnancy.
“Every time that they would see him on the screen, or the ultrasound, or the first time we heard his heartbeat, just the joy that they had was amazing,” she says.
“There’s no joy that can compare with being able to give that gift to someone.”
The anticipation for Jamie and her family was over in August.
“It kinda felt like it was going to take forever for him to get here, and then all of a sudden, it was happening,” she says.
When their son Knox was born, Jamie and Derral were at Abbey’s side.
“I got to hold him first. The doctor let my husband cut the cord, which was really sweet,” Jamie says.
“Our room was across the hall from Abbey’s. We would go back and forth a lot.”
With Knox growing leaps and bounds through the autumn and winter, the two women and their families are closer than ever thanks to their unique bond.
“I was at her house yesterday, and her kids were here with me yesterday. She comes over sometimes by herself to spend time with Knox. We talk every day. My husband sends pictures of Knox to us both all the time,” Jamie says.
“She’s more like family than a friend.”
Abbey shares Jamie’s sentiment.
“I don’t really know that there are words to describe it. I loved them before, but now I love them even more. I love Knox. It’s going to be really great to be able to watch him grow up and see them be his parents. They are so wonderful. They’re great parents. I’m excited that I get to have that bond with them because I always want them in my life,” Abbey echoes.
Each woman can now clearly see the pieces that had to fall into place to fulfill God’s plan for them. They can see His handiwork going back to the very beginning of their stories.
“I truly, wholeheartedly, believe that everything happens for a reason. As hard as it was to go through the first adoption falling through, I feel like Knox was meant to be. He was what God had planned for us,” Jamie says.
“We just didn’t know it at the time.”
“I feel like God prepared my heart all those years of thinking about it before for exactly how it happened,” Abbey says.
“I’m not sure that I would have been able to do it if I hadn’t already been thinking about it for four or five years before.”
“I don’t think that I could have done it if I wouldn’t get to see him grow up.”
“I just feel like it was exactly what was meant to be.”
