Fifty Shades of A Family in Bloom (Sequel to "A Rose in Bloom")

Chapter 3

Grace's POV

As I reach the top of the stairs I look down and see my son already on his phone making calls.  I feel so heartbroken for him and what he is going through.  I feel even worst for my daughter in law.  She is only suffering from a false pregnancy.  I on the other hand have dealt with a miscarriage.  Several in fact.  I remember the first one I had.  It was just after Carrick and I got married.  I was about 8 weeks along.  I woke up in the dead of night with harsh pains in my stomach.  Months later when the doctor gave us the go-ahead we ended up pregnant again only to end up with another miscarriage another 8 weeks later. 

We healed and waited once again for the go-ahead.  The third time it took us even longer to get pregnant but we did.  We were so delighted when we pasted the 8-week mark.  We felt as if this was it we are finally going to have a baby.  But once again our hearts were broken.  At my 12-week checkup the doctor informed us there was no heartbeat.

It took 2 years for Carrick and me to overcome the miscarriages and the fact that we were never going to have children naturally.  Another year after that we came to the conclusion that adoption is the only way we would have children in our lives. 

First we adopted Elliot.  He was the cutest 2-year-old boy I had ever seen.  He had dirty blond hair and blue eyes, but it was his smile that won me over.  He still has that same smile and it melts my heart every time.

We adopted Christian when he was 4.  I was in Detroit helping out a friend who was having family troubles and couldn't find anyone to cover for her.  Now with Christian things were a little different.  He was a little different.  He came from a troubled home.  His mother, not only was she a prostitute but she was a heavy drug user.  When the police brought him into the ER he was nothing but skin and bones and suffered from dehydration.  His body was covered from head to toe in filth. 

The amount of bruises (Black and blue marks) was enough to make anyone sick to their stomach just looking at them.  It wasn't until we were able to wash him that I noticed the burn marks on his chest and back.  I remember telling him that everything was going to be ok, that no one was going to ever hurt him ever again.  He never said a word to me but he would like at me as if I was an angel.  It was then I knew what I had to do.  I had to become that little boy's mother.

It took Carrick and me several months fighting tooth and nail to be able to adopt him.  The foster home they had placed him in for the time being, the family wanted to adopt him as well.  They tried offering me another little boy a few years older but I knew it was Christian that I wanted.  It was Christian that I needed to help.  He needed a loving family.  Not that the foster home he was placed in wasn't loving, but they couldn't offer what Carrick and I could.  Finally with a little help a friend of Carrick's we managed to adopt Christian. 

For the first two years it was hard.  Hard on all over us.  Christian wouldn't speak a word to anyone.  It wasn't until he was about 6 years old that he finally said something.  That was the day we brought Mia home from the hospital.  I remember it as if he was yesterday.  We had told the boys for weeks that soon we were going to bring home their little sister.  Mia's birth mother was a young girl, no older than 16.  I had meet her while working in the ER.

She came in at 37 weeks having slight contractions.  After sitting with this scared little girl she had confided in me that she wasn't ready to be a mother that she had her whole life ahead of her but now everything would have to be put on hold because she was having a baby.  Of course just like any doctor I explained to her her options.