Jeremy Carling isn’t a crier. But the 30-year-old from Farmington, Utah, broke down after adopting four daughters in 24 hours on October 20. “We were sitting at the table being sworn in and just talking about how much we love these girls and he just couldn’t help himself,” Jeremy’s wife, Kaley Carling, tells Us Weekly of the emotional moment. “It has been a really long road.” (Listen to Kaley describe each of her four adopted children in the video above!)
Indeed, the high school sweethearts struggled for two years to conceive a child, but were unable to do so because of Kaley’s rheumatoid arthritis and lupus medication. “I went off for a while and I got so sick. I’m 5-foot-6 and I dropped down to 98 pounds,” says Kaley, 30. “We definitely had our moments of ‘Maybe, we’ll just be an aunt and uncle to our nieces and nephews.’” Instead, the couple decided to pursue adoption, a process that Kaley describes as “a roller coaster.”
In February, the husband and wife of nearly nine years began pursuing adoption with a birth mother, who later changed her mind and decided to keep the baby. “I went to every doctor’s appointment with her. We supported her emotionally and financially. We even watched her 2-year-old son to alleviate some of her stress,” Kaley tells Us. “Then she changed her mind when the baby was born in July. It was devastating.”
One month later, on August 11, Kaley says the woman was arrested for child sex trafficking. Though the Carlings petitioned for custody of the baby girl, she was placed with her maternal grandmother by social services. “We knew she wasn’t in a safe place,” says Kaley. Tragically, they were right. In September, Kaley and Jeremy were notified that the infant and her grandmother had been murdered. “We already mourned the loss of her one time when [the birth mom/name redacted] changed her mind,” Kaley tells Us. “Then we had to mourn her again.”
But it hasn’t been all sadness. On August 11, the Carlings received a phone call from social services informing them that biological sisters Haven and Indie were available to foster. That same day, came more good news: a birth mother wanted to place her twin girls with the Carlings.
Finally, on October 19 and 20, the Carlings adopted all four children, and they say it was meant to be. “I always felt like we would end up with the children that we were supposed to wind up with,” the mom of Haven, 2, Indie, 15 months, and 9-month-old twins Sunny and Weslie, tells Us. “Now that they’re here, I believe that more than ever.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up for the Carling family.