Jennifer Holt
My name is Jennifer Ann Holt. I grew up as a farm girl in Enterprise, Utah, so I have lots of experience moving sprinkler pipe and mucking out calf pens. I can hold my own when handling a tractor as well. I have always loved reading and really like the power of the written word to heal, bring people together, provide comfort and understanding, and uplift.
I graduated Cum Laude from Brigham Young University in December 1998 with a degree in Physical Education / Physical Therapy Emphasis. In March of 1999 I married my wonderful husband and we started our life together.
After a couple years of marriage, and without having had a successful pregnancy, we began pursuing both adoption and increasingly aggressive fertility treatments. We were blessed to be chosen by an amazing birth mom, and we adopted our beautiful daughter as a newborn. Following several failed adoption attempts, and several more years of fertility treatments (including a couple of surgeries) I became pregnant with our youngest son. We were waiting to update our adoption portfolio until after the first trimester to make sure the pregnancy was going to stick, and when I was just about a week shy of that 12-week mark, a wonderful birth mom picked us as the family for her soon-to-be-born baby boy.
She didn't mind that I was pregnant, she felt strongly that her baby boy was to join our family, and he did! We were excited at the prospect of our two boys only being 6 months apart. Then, my pregnancy took a nose dive. I developed severe toxemia almost overnight and had a small stroke. In addition, we discovered that the cord was wrapped around the baby's neck 3 times. So, in order to save both of our lives, my doctor performed an emergency c-section and delivered our 2 lb. 8 oz. son about 3 months early. I was very blessed to recover with only some slight numbness on the left side of my face. And after spending 8 1/2 weeks in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit, and undergoing numerous blood transfusions, a surgery, and many scary moments, our youngest was able to come home and join his big brother and sister.
Today, my husband and I have three wonderfully healthy, happy children (including our two boys who are 3 months apart), and we feel at peace that all of the members of our family are here.
Besides reading and writing, I love to take my kids to the zoo and to just about any kind of museum, spend time volunteering in their classrooms at school, and during the summer we spend every possible moment on the lake, wakeboarding and wakesurfing.
I love to speak about adoption and infertility, particularly about adopting and raising a multi-racial family and how to find hope and healing through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I must say that my family and life has not turned out the way I always thought it would...it is even better than I could have possibly imagined.
