BY STEVEN STIEFEL
FOR THE OBSERVER
EAST ALABAMA — Since she was a little girl, Lori Craft dreamed of becoming a mother. But the path that led her there was anything but simple.
Craft and her husband, Justin, began their marriage already parenting — he had two children, Heath and MacKenzie, from a previous relationship. Lori loved them deeply, but she longed for a child they could raise together from the start.
The couple tried everything. Justin underwent surgery to reverse a vasectomy. When that didn’t work, they turned to in vitro fertilization.
“I tried IVF, which is very expensive,” Lori said. “It landed me in the hospital. That’s when Justin said, ‘We’re not doing this anymore.’”
Lori respected his decision, but the ache remained.
“When we got married, his kids were four and six. I didn’t get to experience the little kid phase. I wanted more than to be a stepmom. There’s just this instinct in some of us — the need to nurture.”
Eventually, they turned to adoption. They signed up with an agency in Birmingham and prayed for the opportunity to parent a newborn. Then, unexpectedly, a friend approached them.
“She said, ‘I found y’all a baby,’” Lori recalled. “It was a friend-of-a-friend situation. That’s how we met Heather.”
Heather was pregnant and planning to place her baby for adoption. She invited the Crafts to every ultrasound procedure and allowed them be part of her pregnancy.
“She’d hand us the sonogram pictures right from the doctor’s hands,” Lori said. “We did all the legal steps, but nothing’s final until that baby is born and the papers are signed.”
The baby was due Oct. 30. But on Oct. 11, Heather had a heart attack.
“She collapsed at home,” Lori said. “Thankfully, a friend was there and called 911. Paramed-ics revived her. She and the baby survived, but Heather fell into a coma.”
The Crafts rushed to the hospital after a call from Heather’s friend, but Heather’s family — who opposed the adoption — refused to let them see the newborn.
The baby boy spent 10 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, born via emergency C-section. Lori and Justin clung to faith.
“We just kept praying — that’s all we had,” Lori said.
Heather eventually woke, but she had no memory of the Crafts or her plans for adoption. Her brain had reverted nearly two years. She remembered only her older son, Braylon.
“We were devastated,” Lori said. “All those months we’d spent building a relationship — it was like it had never happened.”
Heather took the baby home, unsure of her next steps. A few weeks later, she reached out to the Crafts.
“She told us, ‘If what you’re saying is true about our relationship, I want to meet you again,’” Lori said. “She wanted to do the right thing, but was lost in the situation.”
Three months after the baby was born, Heather made her decision.
“She called and said, ‘I want to bring him to you, if that’s okay,’” said Lori. “She said she’d started to remember pieces of what we had shared. She felt like if she made the same decision twice, it must be what God intended.”
Heather signed over custody, and on Jan. 18, Lori and Justin brought home their son, Gentry. His name means “gentleman.”
On the final day Heather could change her mind, she called Lori in tears.
“She said, ‘I’m crying because I’m happy and sad at the same time,’” Lori recalled. “She knew she was doing the right thing.”
Today, Gentry is 10 years old and curious, active and thriving. Lori home-schools him and beams when talking about his close relationships with his biological brother Braylon and his older half-brother, Heath, now 24 and a military veteran.
“He and Heath bond over Legos and Minecraft,” she said. “He’s into mechanical stuff —four-wheelers, anything with gears.”
Lori laughs about her son’s personality differences.
“He’s the messiest person I know, and I’m neat,” she said. “I get frustrated sometimes, but that’s motherhood, right?”
Despite the early trauma of Gentry’s birth and the emotional rollercoaster that followed, Lori holds no bitterness — only gratitude.
The Crafts maintain a close bond with Heather and visit several times a year. They recently attended one of Braylon’s baseball games in Albany, Georgia.
“We’re all still friends,” Lori said. “It’s one of those ‘I’m here for you in your worst moment’ kind of relationships. That’s rare.”
Heather, now a college graduate, continues to manage her health. Lori said her confidence in the adoption gave her peace of mind.
“She didn’t want Gentry to grow up feeling like he was a burden,” Lori said. “She gave him the best chance she could.”
Looking ahead, Lori’s hopes for her son are simple but powerful.
“I just want him to be his true self,” she said. “The world pressures us to be what others expect. I want him to have more than that. I want him to be free to be Gentry — genuine and whole.”
This Mother’s Day, Lori reflects not just on the joy of motherhood, but on the miracle that made it possible.
“It probably sounds cliché, but I just kept walking through the doors that opened,” she said.
Lori feels blessed to have experienced motherhood.
“It is a multifaceted community,” she said. “It’s the legacy of spirit I carry from the mothers and grandmothers who came before, the profound responsibility of guiding my children and the camaraderie of friends navigating motherhood alongside me. What makes my experience particularly unique is the vital friendship I share with my son’s birth mother, whose collaboration empowers me to be the best parent I can be.”
