Kimberly Schlapman Shares Her Family’s Journey in New Children’s Book
Her daughter Daisy prayed for a younger brother or sister for years.
During a year when the world has been racked by turmoil and strife, leave it to the effervescent and perpetually kind Kimberly Schlapman to gift us with something uplifting and faith-affirming. In her new book, A Dolly for Christmas, the Little Big Town songstress shares her family’s story and how her daughter Daisy’s prayers changed their lives.
“This story is straight from our hearts,” Schlapman says. “It is totally true. Every bit of it told from a child’s eyes, from Daisy’s perspective, and I couldn’t wait to share it with people.”
Schlapman and her husband, Stephen, welcomed their daughter Daisy Pearl on July 27, 2007, and in the years that followed the couple tried to add to their family, but fertility issues led to miscarriages and heartbreak. “When Daisy was four, she started asking for a baby,” Schlapman shares. “What she didn’t know at the time was my husband and I were already trying to have a second baby and we were having trouble. So she started praying and she prayed every single day for five years for a baby.
“During all that time we started getting more serious with doctors and fertility treatments,” Schlapman says, adding that they were praying too. “We went through all kinds of fertility treatments and those all were losses. They were devastating. We had miscarriages and just every time we went through a new one, a new hope, it ended in heartbreak and devastation.”
The couple decided to grow their family through adoption. “We started the process and we had Daisy really involved in that because she wanted it so badly,” Schlapman says. “She decided that year that we were in the adoption process that she would also talk to Santa. So she sat on Santa Claus’s lap and she said to Santa, ‘All I really want for Christmas is a baby brother or a baby sister.’ Santa kind of looked at us and he looked back at Daisy and he said, ‘Well darlin,’ I don’t know if even I can do that.’ Little Daisy said, ‘I know but I thought maybe you could talk to God about it.’ I think that’s exactly what happened. I think Santa went and talked to God because shortly thereafter we had a little Dolly in our arms.”
In January 2017, Schlapman revealed they had adopted a baby girl and named her Dolly Grace. “I just want people who are out there going through infertility or whatever challenge you are facing, don’t give up hope because you never know. You never know what’s around the corner. . . My husband is like, ‘Babe, this was always God’s plan. This was always meant to be. She was always going to be our baby. She just got here a different way than we thought she would.’ And that’s one of the reasons I wanted to tell the story. I just wanted her to know what a miracle she is and I wanted people to know that miracles happen every day.”
Schlapman says she’s glad that Dolly will grow up knowing she’s adopted. “She’s never going to be sat down and we’re going to say, ‘Okay we have something to tell you.’ She’s always just going to know,” she says. “We’re so outspoken about it. She knows that Daisy grew in my tummy and she did not grow in my tummy, but the love is exactly the same and we wanted her just as desperately as we wanted Daisy. I love that they have two different stories.”
Schlapman admits that before the adoption she wondered if she could love another child as much as Daisy. “I secretly worried, ‘How can I possibly love a child as much as I love Daisy who I carried? Could I possibly do that?’ But when I saw that baby for the first time, Dolly, and they put her in my arms, there is not a single bit of difference in the love I have for those two children,” she smiles. “It is exactly the same and I’ve been blown away by that because I was secretly a little bit worried.”
One of Schlapman’s favorite memories will always be the first time Daisy met Dolly. “My husband and I met Dolly first,” she says. “We met her one day and then we brought Daisy in to meet Dolly the second day. I have a picture. It’s super blurry. It’s not even worth printing or anything because it’s so blurry, but I have a picture of Daisy’s face when she saw Dolly in my arms for the first time and her little face says it all. It’s shock. It’s happiness. It’s awe. It’s, ‘Oh thank you God!’ It’s everything on that little face and she was calling her ‘my baby’ instantly. Dolly is and was her baby. She loves that child so much. So when she met her for the first time, it was overwhelming for all of us because Daisy really is the reason Dolly is here because she prayed so hard and she never ever gave up on having a baby. . . Little Daisy had a dream. She did not give up and her dream became a miracle.”
The day Schlapman first received a box of books from the publisher was an exciting moment for her family and she captured it on video. “When you write a book, you get draft after draft after draft, so I kept getting drafts in the mail and I didn’t let the girls see it. I didn’t want them to see anything but the finished book,” she explains. “So every time I would get a draft, I would take it to my husband and we would secretly look at it and talk about it, but I didn’t want the girls to see it. I let them see the cover, but only the cover because I wanted them to have something tangible to think about when we were talking about the book, but I didn’t want them to see the actual book.
“So I waited until the books came in the mail and I sat down on the couch, with one here and one here. I told them I had a surprise for them and I videoed it because I wanted us to have that memory to be able to watch that back. So I told them I had a surprise. Did they want to read our book? They were like, ‘Yeah!’ I pulled it out right there and read it to them for the first time. It was emotional, just seeing the story that’s so dear to us come to life.”
