I think my stress level last night was about as high as it has ever been. Things have been going really smoothly with this whole process, so a smart person should have seen it coming. It isn't anything major (like we failed the home study), but it is a set back at the worst time.
I had spent many hours perfecting my text for the profile. That was my main focus. I also went through and picked pictures of everything we needed. My parents sent me a bunch and my brother and sister-in-law had me pick a ton from facebook. Dusty asked his family as well and they sent us a ton of great pictures. I thought that was handled. I emailed the graphic designer on Sunday afternoon that everything was in dropbox and ready.
On a slight side note Dusty and I are heading out for the first "real" (meaning not to visit either family althought that is fun too but isn't the same) vacation in 4 years. We leave today after work. We had worked in overdrive to get everything done before we left so that we were not pushing things back a week. The plan was to have the planning conversation with the designer tomorrow on the long drive and while we were in waiting mode be having fun on vacation. WRONG!
I get an email at 5 pm last night which I didn't check until 9 pm because I went to the barn to ride after work, then we had dinner (hot dogs yum!) and then took the pups for a walk. There was an email from the designer saying that she liked the pictures. They were fun and non posed. BUT....she can't use them becasue they are low resolution and screen quality not print quality. :( She also mentioned that any picture from an online source such as facebook or shutterfly can not be used.
The good news is that I had swiped a bunch of my own that I had the original for from facebook because it was easier and I was already there swiping pictures from my sister-in-law. The problem is that beyond knowing that I can't use ones from those sources, I have no clue what really designates a good quality picture. It could be that my small digital camera just doesn't take high resolution pictures. If that is the case, we are up the proverbial creek.
Of course all this would have been nice to know BEFORE I uploaded all the pictures and annoyed family the first time. The email made a comment about how some people just have bad pictures and end up with nothing usable. Well, if this happens a lot don't you think an email or conversation about quality should be done at the beginning of all this???
This all meant that I became a mad woman last night and stayed up until midnight knowing full well that 5:30 would come awfully early this morning. I went through the storage area and found all the original cd's that I had burned pics to and re-uploaded them. I also found our honey moon pics (there is 1 in particular that I really want in there) and uploaded those. I re did everything that I could and made new folders titled take 2. There are some I am missing and need to find the memory card for those that was in my car and I didn't feel like getting. The problem is that while I can avoid the facebook ones, I don't know if a 35 mm camera (allbeit a very high quality camera) put onto a cd is considered high resolution or not. I also do not know if either of my 2 small digital cameras are.
AHHHHHH!!!!
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Homestudy Part 2
I have had some time to let yesterday sink in better and the whole thing ended up not being anything like I expected.
The social worker was very nice and informative about the entire process. She was definitly not shy about talking about her past and her experiences with being adopted. Some of her opinions were a little different than I would have thought.
What was odd was the complete lack of questioning us about our thoughts about the future. Every question she asked was about the past which honestly she could have learned from the annoying autobiography I had to write. She asked me about my parents, their birthdates, my brother and his wife and children. She asked about my life growing up. Where and when I went to what schools. How I met Dusty. My job. Our marriage. She asked about how we handle a disagreement. She asked how close we are to family.
The only parenting type of question she asked was what core values we want to instill in our child and about daycare. Thats it. Nothing about discipline. Every child misbehaives at some point (heck, all adults do too as you can tell from me blogging while at work :). Don't you think it would be important to know how we will handle this? She didn't ask about education - home school, private school, public school? She didn't ask about our view on chores. She didn't ask about interaction - how do we see ourselves interacting as parents? How involved with PTA, sports etc do we plan on being?
Nothing. I find that odd. Maybe her job is to just make sure we are not criminals, but you would think she would be looking for parenting red flags.
Of course, I am not complaining. It was very informative and helped ease some of our concerns and questions over how the child percieves being adopted. She also came out on a Sunday to move things along for us. It just ended up not being at all like I expected it to be.
The social worker was very nice and informative about the entire process. She was definitly not shy about talking about her past and her experiences with being adopted. Some of her opinions were a little different than I would have thought.
What was odd was the complete lack of questioning us about our thoughts about the future. Every question she asked was about the past which honestly she could have learned from the annoying autobiography I had to write. She asked me about my parents, their birthdates, my brother and his wife and children. She asked about my life growing up. Where and when I went to what schools. How I met Dusty. My job. Our marriage. She asked about how we handle a disagreement. She asked how close we are to family.
The only parenting type of question she asked was what core values we want to instill in our child and about daycare. Thats it. Nothing about discipline. Every child misbehaives at some point (heck, all adults do too as you can tell from me blogging while at work :). Don't you think it would be important to know how we will handle this? She didn't ask about education - home school, private school, public school? She didn't ask about our view on chores. She didn't ask about interaction - how do we see ourselves interacting as parents? How involved with PTA, sports etc do we plan on being?
Nothing. I find that odd. Maybe her job is to just make sure we are not criminals, but you would think she would be looking for parenting red flags.
Of course, I am not complaining. It was very informative and helped ease some of our concerns and questions over how the child percieves being adopted. She also came out on a Sunday to move things along for us. It just ended up not being at all like I expected it to be.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
The Home Interview
Sorry I missed yesterday. There was a big horse expo going on a couple of hours away and we headed there with our friends L and B for a day of fun.
The exciting adoption news from yesterday was that I heard from my caseworker and she LOVED my profile!! :) She made a couple tiny changes and approved it being sent off to the graphic designer. I emailed her this afternoon and should hear from her in a couple days to talk about layout and color themes. After that it is 10 days until the first proof comes out.
Today was our home inspection. It lasted 3.5 hours! There were a lot of questions to go over. Who we each were before we met, how we met, our families, are interests, why we are adopting, the core values we want to instill in the child, and the list went on.
What was interesting is that sh is adopted herself as an infant and shed some light on that side of things. She stated that being open and honest to the child from day one is best, but each child is prepared to hear different information at different times. For example: she was not told ehr birthmother's first name until she was 16. She wasn't ready before then. She had heard the story of how her adopted mom was chosed, the birth and the court ceremony to make is official. She also said that almost every adopted child has an identity crisis at some point not so much over wondeirng if they were love, but over why they were not kept. She said that she never met her birth mother and doesn't think she ever will becasue she views her adopted mother as her only "real" mother. She is also against an open adoption where the birthmother can contact and visit the child. She says tha tis muddys the waters. She would keep a journal and offer information regarding physicla charateristics and even anything you know about personality throughout the years as the child is ready.
She also walked through the house and liked it. Didn't really have anything negative to say. The only negative the entire time was the info about our assests versus liabilities. We have a lot of money in student loans. If you want professional people, you get professional loan debt! It does look kinda bad, but given the fact that I am still in residency and Dusty ahsn't been out that long she said she can spin it to not look so bad.
We will get passed once we finish the paperwork. It should be a few more weeks before everything is done. Dusty is diligently working on the autobiography next to me. I have to start in on mine here in a little bit.
The exciting adoption news from yesterday was that I heard from my caseworker and she LOVED my profile!! :) She made a couple tiny changes and approved it being sent off to the graphic designer. I emailed her this afternoon and should hear from her in a couple days to talk about layout and color themes. After that it is 10 days until the first proof comes out.
Today was our home inspection. It lasted 3.5 hours! There were a lot of questions to go over. Who we each were before we met, how we met, our families, are interests, why we are adopting, the core values we want to instill in the child, and the list went on.
What was interesting is that sh is adopted herself as an infant and shed some light on that side of things. She stated that being open and honest to the child from day one is best, but each child is prepared to hear different information at different times. For example: she was not told ehr birthmother's first name until she was 16. She wasn't ready before then. She had heard the story of how her adopted mom was chosed, the birth and the court ceremony to make is official. She also said that almost every adopted child has an identity crisis at some point not so much over wondeirng if they were love, but over why they were not kept. She said that she never met her birth mother and doesn't think she ever will becasue she views her adopted mother as her only "real" mother. She is also against an open adoption where the birthmother can contact and visit the child. She says tha tis muddys the waters. She would keep a journal and offer information regarding physicla charateristics and even anything you know about personality throughout the years as the child is ready.
She also walked through the house and liked it. Didn't really have anything negative to say. The only negative the entire time was the info about our assests versus liabilities. We have a lot of money in student loans. If you want professional people, you get professional loan debt! It does look kinda bad, but given the fact that I am still in residency and Dusty ahsn't been out that long she said she can spin it to not look so bad.
We will get passed once we finish the paperwork. It should be a few more weeks before everything is done. Dusty is diligently working on the autobiography next to me. I have to start in on mine here in a little bit.
Friday, April 20, 2012
We Have the BEST Friends!
Around 4 pm yesterday evening my friend, L (don't want to put full name online), sent me a text asking me to call her. We have plans for Saturday so I assumed that was what it was about. I called her back and she asked if I would mind if she came over with B (her hubby) and the kids and had a cleaning party for the home inspection!!! How awesome is that?!?! Dusty picked up some take and bake pizza from Papa Murphys on his way home from work and plopped that in the oven for everyone. After dinner we all started cleaning, cleaning and cleaning some more.
It helped that we had gotten the entire upstairs and most of the main level already decluttered. Dusty continued to declutter the kitchen and the downstairs and L and I headed upstairs to dust, vacuum and wash windows. B was our handyman and got the closet doors back on their tracks, vacuumed the blinds with a neat hand held vacuum, and generally reached all the tall things. The kids kept Bones and Hero entertained with a game of tag.
We got a lot accomplished. The entire upstairs including both bathrooms are spotless (well, until new cat and dog hair settles on everything again) and smell wonderful. The main level living room is as well. Dusty scrubbed each litter box until it looked like new again and tackled the downstairs bathroom. It was around 830pm when they left and all we have left now is the dinning room and kitchen on the main level and the downstairs living room to do. They are going to come over after work again tonight and we should get the rest done. :)
Then we are having a sleep over and heading out to Madison in the morning for a day of no stress fun tomorrow. I LOVE our friends!
It helped that we had gotten the entire upstairs and most of the main level already decluttered. Dusty continued to declutter the kitchen and the downstairs and L and I headed upstairs to dust, vacuum and wash windows. B was our handyman and got the closet doors back on their tracks, vacuumed the blinds with a neat hand held vacuum, and generally reached all the tall things. The kids kept Bones and Hero entertained with a game of tag.
We got a lot accomplished. The entire upstairs including both bathrooms are spotless (well, until new cat and dog hair settles on everything again) and smell wonderful. The main level living room is as well. Dusty scrubbed each litter box until it looked like new again and tackled the downstairs bathroom. It was around 830pm when they left and all we have left now is the dinning room and kitchen on the main level and the downstairs living room to do. They are going to come over after work again tonight and we should get the rest done. :)
Then we are having a sleep over and heading out to Madison in the morning for a day of no stress fun tomorrow. I LOVE our friends!
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Panic:1 Sara:0
Ok..I'll admit it. I had a minor moment of higher than normal stress yesterday (although Dusty would call it panic). Here is what happened:
I got home a little earlier than normal and since the horses had both the farrier and vet out in the morning I didn't want to go ride and I had plans to run today. This gave me some actual free time. I spent it straightening up the upstairs in preparation for the homestudy. It is amazing how much clutter we accumulate. I started in my bedroom and was doing really well organizing things. Then I looked over into the corner by Dusty's dresser and saw a whole pile of wires. I thought to myself "hmmm...thats probably not all that safe. we need to do something with those." Well, that started it all off. I then noticed that the alarm clock on top of the dresser had the cord running down the side where it could easily be grasped allowing the clock to crash down and crush a tiny skull. Looking over toward the bed, I saw more cords (for the lamp and a cord to charge the cell phone). We also have a space heater from winter that could easily burn a face. The box fan for Hero in the summer could chop off a finger. The dog bowl of water could be used to drown in. On and on and on I went. And that was only our bedroom!
Then Dusty happened to call and I went off about how unsafe our house is and how the kid is going to easily find 100 different ways to hurt itself. Most people get somewhere along the lines of 8 months to prepare. You can slowly accumulate things and organize the house. We have no clue how long we have. We could have 2 years or we could have 4 weeks. We could get a call saying that we matched with a birthmother due in 3 months or 3 days. We just don't know. This is one aspect about adoption that snuck up on me.
We do not need to have the house baby proofed for the home inspection on Sunday. She is looking for major concerns - the roof caving in, a swamp in the backyard, exposed live wires etc.... She will walk around and make suggestions for improvements and baby proofing. We do have some questions regarding the pets. What do we do with the litter boxes? What about the water bowls?
Since we are moving in a little over a year and are already pushing the average time frame, we don't want to sink a lot of money and effort into babyproofing a house we have a good chance of not bringing a baby home to. On the other hand, it needs to be ready if that call does come. AHHHHH!!!
Dusty was able to talk me from the precipice of insanity by reminding me that we still have so much paperwork to get through and classes to take and autobiographies to write that we have time to go through the house and make it right. Deep breath. Big deep breath.
I got home a little earlier than normal and since the horses had both the farrier and vet out in the morning I didn't want to go ride and I had plans to run today. This gave me some actual free time. I spent it straightening up the upstairs in preparation for the homestudy. It is amazing how much clutter we accumulate. I started in my bedroom and was doing really well organizing things. Then I looked over into the corner by Dusty's dresser and saw a whole pile of wires. I thought to myself "hmmm...thats probably not all that safe. we need to do something with those." Well, that started it all off. I then noticed that the alarm clock on top of the dresser had the cord running down the side where it could easily be grasped allowing the clock to crash down and crush a tiny skull. Looking over toward the bed, I saw more cords (for the lamp and a cord to charge the cell phone). We also have a space heater from winter that could easily burn a face. The box fan for Hero in the summer could chop off a finger. The dog bowl of water could be used to drown in. On and on and on I went. And that was only our bedroom!
Then Dusty happened to call and I went off about how unsafe our house is and how the kid is going to easily find 100 different ways to hurt itself. Most people get somewhere along the lines of 8 months to prepare. You can slowly accumulate things and organize the house. We have no clue how long we have. We could have 2 years or we could have 4 weeks. We could get a call saying that we matched with a birthmother due in 3 months or 3 days. We just don't know. This is one aspect about adoption that snuck up on me.
We do not need to have the house baby proofed for the home inspection on Sunday. She is looking for major concerns - the roof caving in, a swamp in the backyard, exposed live wires etc.... She will walk around and make suggestions for improvements and baby proofing. We do have some questions regarding the pets. What do we do with the litter boxes? What about the water bowls?
Since we are moving in a little over a year and are already pushing the average time frame, we don't want to sink a lot of money and effort into babyproofing a house we have a good chance of not bringing a baby home to. On the other hand, it needs to be ready if that call does come. AHHHHH!!!
Dusty was able to talk me from the precipice of insanity by reminding me that we still have so much paperwork to get through and classes to take and autobiographies to write that we have time to go through the house and make it right. Deep breath. Big deep breath.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
More Paperwork
I was getting pretty proud of myself for gathering a ton of pictures, shifting through them and selecting those that will work plus writing the profile which turned out to be roughly 3 pages of text. Dusty was handling the homestudy information. I thought we had a handle on everything.
Since we are working with an out of town adoption attorney, we need to find a local agency that can perform the "homestudy". From what we had been able to gather it seemed like it entailed some interviews with the social worker, a visit to our home for an inspection, and letters of recommendation. Dusty contacted some agencies and found a really wonderful one called Special Children, Inc out of Milwaukee. The social worker we are working with is adopted herself and can really offer great insight to all our questions and potential concerns.
As I was calming down and feeling on top of things a massive packet came in the mail from them yesterday. It contains a TON of things we need to do such as:
-Get fingerprinted - we were able to do this at the local police station this morning
-Gather our marriage and birth certificates
-Have a physical exam (not really sure why on this one)
-Get police information from not only WI, but also OH since we haven't lived here for 5 years (not sure why teh fingerprinting doesn't cover this)
-Get 3 letters of Rec
- Fill out more and more and more and more forms (I swear there are like 25 pages of forms!)
-Each write an autobiography that is limited to 4 typed pages, but the list of what questions to answer is about 50 long, so how that is possible I don't know.
-Complete 18 hours of education either online or in person. We will be doing the online thing due to our schedules. There are also books you can buy that count.
I am sure there are more things we need to do that I can't think of right now, but this was very overwhelming yesterday. There are some good things going on though too:
1.) The actual home inspection is going to happen this Sunday. They don't usually work on Sunday's but because we are on a time crunch they made an exception. They are really awesome people. This means we need to clean, clean and clean some more! Anyone want to come and help?
2.) Apparently the homestudy being completed doesn't impact being shown to birthmothers. As soon as the profile is done we will start to be shown regardless of the homestudy status. The only thing that matters is that it is completed and official before we bring home the baby, so in theory it does limit who we are presented to, but not that we are presented. Basically, if we know it will be done in 4 weeks, we willl be shown to any birthmother with a delivery date more than 4 weeks away to give it time to be completed.
Time to start writing my autobiography.
Since we are working with an out of town adoption attorney, we need to find a local agency that can perform the "homestudy". From what we had been able to gather it seemed like it entailed some interviews with the social worker, a visit to our home for an inspection, and letters of recommendation. Dusty contacted some agencies and found a really wonderful one called Special Children, Inc out of Milwaukee. The social worker we are working with is adopted herself and can really offer great insight to all our questions and potential concerns.
As I was calming down and feeling on top of things a massive packet came in the mail from them yesterday. It contains a TON of things we need to do such as:
-Get fingerprinted - we were able to do this at the local police station this morning
-Gather our marriage and birth certificates
-Have a physical exam (not really sure why on this one)
-Get police information from not only WI, but also OH since we haven't lived here for 5 years (not sure why teh fingerprinting doesn't cover this)
-Get 3 letters of Rec
- Fill out more and more and more and more forms (I swear there are like 25 pages of forms!)
-Each write an autobiography that is limited to 4 typed pages, but the list of what questions to answer is about 50 long, so how that is possible I don't know.
-Complete 18 hours of education either online or in person. We will be doing the online thing due to our schedules. There are also books you can buy that count.
I am sure there are more things we need to do that I can't think of right now, but this was very overwhelming yesterday. There are some good things going on though too:
1.) The actual home inspection is going to happen this Sunday. They don't usually work on Sunday's but because we are on a time crunch they made an exception. They are really awesome people. This means we need to clean, clean and clean some more! Anyone want to come and help?
2.) Apparently the homestudy being completed doesn't impact being shown to birthmothers. As soon as the profile is done we will start to be shown regardless of the homestudy status. The only thing that matters is that it is completed and official before we bring home the baby, so in theory it does limit who we are presented to, but not that we are presented. Basically, if we know it will be done in 4 weeks, we willl be shown to any birthmother with a delivery date more than 4 weeks away to give it time to be completed.
Time to start writing my autobiography.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Flash Forward to Present Day
I think that should catch us up to our present day situation. There are a lot of details I could go into, but I honestly think it would just be overkill and probably nobody else is as interested as I am in them. Please feel free to ask about anything you are curious about. I would love to talk about it!
So where are we now? Drowning in paperwork. Almost literally.
The biggest step is to get our profile completed. That is the color magazine with pictures and texts. It is the single most important piece since that is how the birthmother decides who she wants to pick. Basically we were told that she usually gets the pile of possiblilities down by 2/3rs based off the cover picture alone, then cuts it in half again by the inside photos and then finally reads the words when it is down to like 4 or so. Yikes! We better have nice smiles! Ours is going to be 12 pages including the front and back covers. I have been working on it non stop for a week now. It is REALLY hard to write 12 pages about yourself/spouse. Geesh!
The agency suggested that we use a graphic designer who they have had good results from in the past. We are using a woman based out of Madison who was adopted herself and has adopted her son, so she knows how important this is. You can check out her website at:
www.ourchosenchild.com
There are several examples of other people's successful profiles under (you guessed it) the heading profiles and prices. This will give you an idea of what it will look like in the end. A big thanks needs to go out to our family who has scrounged up and emailed us a ton of pictures to use. We were lacking in family photos.
I think I have it just about completed. I emailed it to my dad who thought it read well but was a little too...outdoorsy although not in a hippy kinda way but more of an environmentalist kinda way. Neither of which we are, but we just happen to mostly do outdoors type things. I made a few changes tonight and sent it on over to our case worker. She will review it and make her own suggestions and comments about how it reads. I also resent it to my dad to get his thoughts on the revision. My guess is that she is going to say it is too long. I really poured my all into it so I hope it goes well.
After she sends me back her ideas and I decide to make changes or not and send it back again until it is per our liking, I will send it off to the designer along with our pictures. She said it should take about a week to ten days for her to get us a proof. Once it is all accepted, it goes off to the printer. Now the scary part - once printed we start to be presented to birthmothers!!!! This means we could be presented to someone in about 2 - 3 weeks!!!!!!!! Which means we could be chosen in about 2-3 weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course, I am not getting my hopes up or excited or anything. I know the average is 6-12 months, but.........
Ok, deep breath....
Oh! One thing I didn't mention which is actually pretty important. Apparently you need to live in the same place for 6 months (in the state of Wisconsin, other states can vary on the time) after placement. Since we are planning to move in June 2013, this means for us that we have to have a child in our loving arms by the end of January 2013 or perhaps February if we stay an extra month past graduation. If we are not chosen in time, we will have to place our account on hold until after we move and get a few things updated which would probably be about 8 months maybe 7. lets hope we don't have to do that :)
Kind of off topic:
I was introduced to something new to me through this process (ok, well it is all new to me but this is nonspecific to adoption new) called Dropbox. Apparently it is, well I guess I don't really know what it is, but it seems like an online network that you have a password for. She set up folders for all our pictures with different titles such as "our home" "sara's family" "pictures of dusty" "us with kids" etc... to help organize and make sure we hit the important categories. I also think I put my text in there too somewhere. Apparently she can have instant access as soon as I put something in it wihout me having to email everything. Anyone else ever use this before? It seems pretty nifty.
So where are we now? Drowning in paperwork. Almost literally.
The biggest step is to get our profile completed. That is the color magazine with pictures and texts. It is the single most important piece since that is how the birthmother decides who she wants to pick. Basically we were told that she usually gets the pile of possiblilities down by 2/3rs based off the cover picture alone, then cuts it in half again by the inside photos and then finally reads the words when it is down to like 4 or so. Yikes! We better have nice smiles! Ours is going to be 12 pages including the front and back covers. I have been working on it non stop for a week now. It is REALLY hard to write 12 pages about yourself/spouse. Geesh!
The agency suggested that we use a graphic designer who they have had good results from in the past. We are using a woman based out of Madison who was adopted herself and has adopted her son, so she knows how important this is. You can check out her website at:
www.ourchosenchild.com
There are several examples of other people's successful profiles under (you guessed it) the heading profiles and prices. This will give you an idea of what it will look like in the end. A big thanks needs to go out to our family who has scrounged up and emailed us a ton of pictures to use. We were lacking in family photos.
I think I have it just about completed. I emailed it to my dad who thought it read well but was a little too...outdoorsy although not in a hippy kinda way but more of an environmentalist kinda way. Neither of which we are, but we just happen to mostly do outdoors type things. I made a few changes tonight and sent it on over to our case worker. She will review it and make her own suggestions and comments about how it reads. I also resent it to my dad to get his thoughts on the revision. My guess is that she is going to say it is too long. I really poured my all into it so I hope it goes well.
After she sends me back her ideas and I decide to make changes or not and send it back again until it is per our liking, I will send it off to the designer along with our pictures. She said it should take about a week to ten days for her to get us a proof. Once it is all accepted, it goes off to the printer. Now the scary part - once printed we start to be presented to birthmothers!!!! This means we could be presented to someone in about 2 - 3 weeks!!!!!!!! Which means we could be chosen in about 2-3 weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course, I am not getting my hopes up or excited or anything. I know the average is 6-12 months, but.........
Ok, deep breath....
Oh! One thing I didn't mention which is actually pretty important. Apparently you need to live in the same place for 6 months (in the state of Wisconsin, other states can vary on the time) after placement. Since we are planning to move in June 2013, this means for us that we have to have a child in our loving arms by the end of January 2013 or perhaps February if we stay an extra month past graduation. If we are not chosen in time, we will have to place our account on hold until after we move and get a few things updated which would probably be about 8 months maybe 7. lets hope we don't have to do that :)
Kind of off topic:
I was introduced to something new to me through this process (ok, well it is all new to me but this is nonspecific to adoption new) called Dropbox. Apparently it is, well I guess I don't really know what it is, but it seems like an online network that you have a password for. She set up folders for all our pictures with different titles such as "our home" "sara's family" "pictures of dusty" "us with kids" etc... to help organize and make sure we hit the important categories. I also think I put my text in there too somewhere. Apparently she can have instant access as soon as I put something in it wihout me having to email everything. Anyone else ever use this before? It seems pretty nifty.
Monday, April 16, 2012
And our decision is......
All this researching brought me to my final decision......domestic infant adoption. It seemed to fit what we are looking for. I looked at a lot of different agencies and some had scary statistics about wait lists. The majority work off a senority list - basically when your name comes up next you get the choice to accept the adoption or be put back on the list. While this seems like a sensable way to do it, it just doesn't seem like it takes into account personalities, life style etc...
Then I found the agency (which I think is technically really an independant adoption attorney service) that fit the bill. It is based out of California and has an extensive network. This is how it works:
-A birthmother makes the decision to adopt out the child and either through personally contacting the agency or through a program at local hospital/doctor's office, she gets set up with them. This service is nationwide and has birthmothers from every walk of life.
- She then makes a profile of what she is looking for in the prospective adopting parents: married or single, 2 genders or 1, race preferences, age, etc...
- There are counselling services that go on as well
The birthmother is only allowed to sign up no sooner than at the beginning of the 3rd trimester. This is to allow her to experience the milestones of the pregnancy such as hearing the heartbeat, feeling the kick and finding out the gender before commiting to the adoption.
- Once she has decided to adopt she is presented with a "profile" of all prospective people per her requests. This is an 8 1/2 x 11" color magazine full of pictures and information. This deseres an entire post of itself and will come soon.
- She picks her choice and then the lucky couple/person is informed. They get information about her, the child, and background (oh, each prospective adoptive couple also fills out a list of what they are looking for and only get presented to those that match it) and decieds to accept or not.
- Once matched a whole new world begins and I will get into that later.
Some quick facts:
- The average wait list for an infant for this agency is 6-12 months with the shortest being the next day and the longest 3 years in the 10 plus years they have been doing this
- The adopting parents are present for the delivery and usually are the first ones to hold the child. Plans are made to allow them a lot of time to decrease chances of the birthmother changing her mind.
- With everything in place there is still a 10% rate of the birthmother choosing to raise the child herself at the time of birth. If this happens, we get placed on an emergency list. (I can explain that more later).
This system sits well with me because it allows the birthmother to really get to know not only the parents but the lifestyle that she is choosing for her child. They have a high success rate of placement because the birthmother feels comfortable and happy with the choice instead of forced or lost. The agency said that it is surprising how well the matches end up because artistic women end up with an artistic family, outdoorsy with outdoors etc...
There are a million and a half things we need to get done now that we are signed up with this agency. It seems like a whirlwind, but it is all exciting. It feels great to be actively moving forward again. I think I am driving people nuts with my current obsession to get this done, but why sit on my butt when I can be getting things in order?
Then I found the agency (which I think is technically really an independant adoption attorney service) that fit the bill. It is based out of California and has an extensive network. This is how it works:
-A birthmother makes the decision to adopt out the child and either through personally contacting the agency or through a program at local hospital/doctor's office, she gets set up with them. This service is nationwide and has birthmothers from every walk of life.
- She then makes a profile of what she is looking for in the prospective adopting parents: married or single, 2 genders or 1, race preferences, age, etc...
- There are counselling services that go on as well
The birthmother is only allowed to sign up no sooner than at the beginning of the 3rd trimester. This is to allow her to experience the milestones of the pregnancy such as hearing the heartbeat, feeling the kick and finding out the gender before commiting to the adoption.
- Once she has decided to adopt she is presented with a "profile" of all prospective people per her requests. This is an 8 1/2 x 11" color magazine full of pictures and information. This deseres an entire post of itself and will come soon.
- She picks her choice and then the lucky couple/person is informed. They get information about her, the child, and background (oh, each prospective adoptive couple also fills out a list of what they are looking for and only get presented to those that match it) and decieds to accept or not.
- Once matched a whole new world begins and I will get into that later.
Some quick facts:
- The average wait list for an infant for this agency is 6-12 months with the shortest being the next day and the longest 3 years in the 10 plus years they have been doing this
- The adopting parents are present for the delivery and usually are the first ones to hold the child. Plans are made to allow them a lot of time to decrease chances of the birthmother changing her mind.
- With everything in place there is still a 10% rate of the birthmother choosing to raise the child herself at the time of birth. If this happens, we get placed on an emergency list. (I can explain that more later).
This system sits well with me because it allows the birthmother to really get to know not only the parents but the lifestyle that she is choosing for her child. They have a high success rate of placement because the birthmother feels comfortable and happy with the choice instead of forced or lost. The agency said that it is surprising how well the matches end up because artistic women end up with an artistic family, outdoorsy with outdoors etc...
There are a million and a half things we need to get done now that we are signed up with this agency. It seems like a whirlwind, but it is all exciting. It feels great to be actively moving forward again. I think I am driving people nuts with my current obsession to get this done, but why sit on my butt when I can be getting things in order?
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Domestic adoption
Yup, it is really 2 am and I am blogging. This is because I am on call and at work waiting for an open operating room to take a patient in for surgery. Have about 40 minutes to kill.
So...where was I? Oh! We put aside the thought of international adoption for the time being. Domestic adoption has a lot of misconceptions. This time my mind stuck on:
"You have to go through your own state and it can only be done after fostering."
Again this is not true. Adoption laws have changed and you can now adopt from any state. There are numerous websites that have information on the various children that are looking for a home. Some states have different regulations, but for the most part it doesn't matter where you live. There are stipulations the child ma have that could prohibit you from adopting such as wanting to stay close to older siblings, aunts/uncles or grandparents that reside in a certain place.
As for the fostering first this is true in a way. There is a post placement period that is required by law and varies depending on the state you live in. I guess this could be considered a "fostering" period but really the child is yours if everything works out. There is a seperate form of adoption where you enter into a foster situation first to test the waters or because while the child has been taken away from their parents they have not legally given up their rights to the child. This way you are not obligated to adopt if things do not work out.
I began to keep an eye on the adoption lists. There were some adorable children needing love. Dusty and I considered sibling adoption - adopting the whole family unit to keep them together. I think had we gone this route this is what we would have done. We ended up deciding against this as our primary route as well. We may end up expanding our family this way eventually, but for now we decided we wanted the experience of raising a child from birth. There are plusses and minuses for both. For me the fear of when to tell the child they are adopted and how they will take it is very real with infant adoption. Adopting an older child in the foster system pretty much guarantees that they know they are adopted and are happy to have a permament place to call home. However, most of these children are in the system due to bad parenting originally and have emotional issues to resolve and they already have a set personality that you have to get to know.
Either way you are giving a child what they need most - a home, love and support. Having never had a baby I really wanted to experience everything. Once again we shifted gears and looked into domestic infant adoption.
So...where was I? Oh! We put aside the thought of international adoption for the time being. Domestic adoption has a lot of misconceptions. This time my mind stuck on:
"You have to go through your own state and it can only be done after fostering."
Again this is not true. Adoption laws have changed and you can now adopt from any state. There are numerous websites that have information on the various children that are looking for a home. Some states have different regulations, but for the most part it doesn't matter where you live. There are stipulations the child ma have that could prohibit you from adopting such as wanting to stay close to older siblings, aunts/uncles or grandparents that reside in a certain place.
As for the fostering first this is true in a way. There is a post placement period that is required by law and varies depending on the state you live in. I guess this could be considered a "fostering" period but really the child is yours if everything works out. There is a seperate form of adoption where you enter into a foster situation first to test the waters or because while the child has been taken away from their parents they have not legally given up their rights to the child. This way you are not obligated to adopt if things do not work out.
I began to keep an eye on the adoption lists. There were some adorable children needing love. Dusty and I considered sibling adoption - adopting the whole family unit to keep them together. I think had we gone this route this is what we would have done. We ended up deciding against this as our primary route as well. We may end up expanding our family this way eventually, but for now we decided we wanted the experience of raising a child from birth. There are plusses and minuses for both. For me the fear of when to tell the child they are adopted and how they will take it is very real with infant adoption. Adopting an older child in the foster system pretty much guarantees that they know they are adopted and are happy to have a permament place to call home. However, most of these children are in the system due to bad parenting originally and have emotional issues to resolve and they already have a set personality that you have to get to know.
Either way you are giving a child what they need most - a home, love and support. Having never had a baby I really wanted to experience everything. Once again we shifted gears and looked into domestic infant adoption.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Lets Move On, Shall We?
Enough with the sob story. Everyone has problems they need to deal with. Lets get the ball rolling again.
Back in December 2011 I started to look into adoption. All I had to go off of was the little "facts" I picked up along the way. The first one that stuck out in my mind was:
You can't adopt an American infant. You have to go international.
This couldn't be farther from the truth. To begin with it is rare to technically adopt an international infant. Most are around 1 years old, which is by no means old but isn't an infant any more either. And you can adopt domestically and be with the baby from his/her first breath. You just don't get any younger than that.
But I didn't know all of this at the start and so I started researching. I found a great website:
http://international.adoption.com/foreign/country-information.html
It has a list of every country that an American can adopt from with the requirments, cost, time frame and facts. Did you know that an American can not adopt from a Western European country? I didn't. So I began to click on the coutnries that I would be interested in adopting from. We had our own criteria of what we were looking for. I found out some interesting facts such as the above mentioned 1 year old thing. Also Poland (where I have heritage from so it was an interesting option) requires you to have some sort of Polish background. Or that in Russia, while you are adopting from that country, foreign adoptees tend to get non-Russian children that were born in Russia. Most countries require some time spent there finalizing paperwork, but Poland was the worst at 1 month. While it would be cool to live there for a month it is not very practical or realistic for us. According to some information, China now has up to a 7 year waitlist. In most countries you can only adopt an orphan - meaning that all family members are deceased or not willing to lay claim to the child. This is why they are usually at least 1 years old before they qualify for foreign adoption. The expense part was breath taking. There are fees that are required for background checks, a homestudy, and legal documents on top of your travel expense and time spent in the other country. Add on to that the fact that most countries also require a donation to the orphanage system that at the highest was $20,000 and it gets pricey quickly. The time frame for foreign adoption isn't all that quick either. There is a ton of paperwork that needs to be completed with the above background checks and homestudy but you also have to create a dossier. This is apparently a very taxing step where you gather your and your partner's birth certificates, school records, immunization records, marriage liscence, current financial statements, health records etc... If 1 thing is off the country will not accept it and it goes back. To give you an idea about how taxing it is there are companies in existence whose sole purpose is to create this for you. Once that is complete and is sent off to the country of your choice you get put on a waitlist. This list is senority rules, so whenever you sign up is the order of placement.
Now there are pros to this form of adoption as well. The list is first come first serve so there is no bias or selection process you have to suffer through. Once you are notified of an available child you can say yes or no after seeing a picture of the child. This means you are 100% sure of gender, birthing issues, health issues etc... No real surprises. You fly over and meet the child and once you sign the papers the child is legally yours. No wait period. Since the child is an orphan there are no parents that may want to interfere or change their mind. The negative is that there are usually minimal or no health records/family records so genetic diseases and such are unknown.
That is the information in a nutshell although there are a lot of loop holes and contingencies I am sure. Having not been through the process all I can report on is the information I gathered from what appears to be reliable sources. After reading through all of this we decided that this wasn't the way to go for us. The expense is unpredictable and the wait time was longer than expected. We also wanted to help a child from our own country. There are so many children that need love in our own backyard that for us it didn't seem right looking elsewhere unless all other options failed.
I then switched to looking into domestic options.
Back in December 2011 I started to look into adoption. All I had to go off of was the little "facts" I picked up along the way. The first one that stuck out in my mind was:
You can't adopt an American infant. You have to go international.
This couldn't be farther from the truth. To begin with it is rare to technically adopt an international infant. Most are around 1 years old, which is by no means old but isn't an infant any more either. And you can adopt domestically and be with the baby from his/her first breath. You just don't get any younger than that.
But I didn't know all of this at the start and so I started researching. I found a great website:
http://international.adoption.com/foreign/country-information.html
It has a list of every country that an American can adopt from with the requirments, cost, time frame and facts. Did you know that an American can not adopt from a Western European country? I didn't. So I began to click on the coutnries that I would be interested in adopting from. We had our own criteria of what we were looking for. I found out some interesting facts such as the above mentioned 1 year old thing. Also Poland (where I have heritage from so it was an interesting option) requires you to have some sort of Polish background. Or that in Russia, while you are adopting from that country, foreign adoptees tend to get non-Russian children that were born in Russia. Most countries require some time spent there finalizing paperwork, but Poland was the worst at 1 month. While it would be cool to live there for a month it is not very practical or realistic for us. According to some information, China now has up to a 7 year waitlist. In most countries you can only adopt an orphan - meaning that all family members are deceased or not willing to lay claim to the child. This is why they are usually at least 1 years old before they qualify for foreign adoption. The expense part was breath taking. There are fees that are required for background checks, a homestudy, and legal documents on top of your travel expense and time spent in the other country. Add on to that the fact that most countries also require a donation to the orphanage system that at the highest was $20,000 and it gets pricey quickly. The time frame for foreign adoption isn't all that quick either. There is a ton of paperwork that needs to be completed with the above background checks and homestudy but you also have to create a dossier. This is apparently a very taxing step where you gather your and your partner's birth certificates, school records, immunization records, marriage liscence, current financial statements, health records etc... If 1 thing is off the country will not accept it and it goes back. To give you an idea about how taxing it is there are companies in existence whose sole purpose is to create this for you. Once that is complete and is sent off to the country of your choice you get put on a waitlist. This list is senority rules, so whenever you sign up is the order of placement.
Now there are pros to this form of adoption as well. The list is first come first serve so there is no bias or selection process you have to suffer through. Once you are notified of an available child you can say yes or no after seeing a picture of the child. This means you are 100% sure of gender, birthing issues, health issues etc... No real surprises. You fly over and meet the child and once you sign the papers the child is legally yours. No wait period. Since the child is an orphan there are no parents that may want to interfere or change their mind. The negative is that there are usually minimal or no health records/family records so genetic diseases and such are unknown.
That is the information in a nutshell although there are a lot of loop holes and contingencies I am sure. Having not been through the process all I can report on is the information I gathered from what appears to be reliable sources. After reading through all of this we decided that this wasn't the way to go for us. The expense is unpredictable and the wait time was longer than expected. We also wanted to help a child from our own country. There are so many children that need love in our own backyard that for us it didn't seem right looking elsewhere unless all other options failed.
I then switched to looking into domestic options.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Fast Forward to Today
Image the rollercoaster of emotions that has been the last 18 months:
A cycle is 28 days(ish). Every cycle begins with an intense hope and certainty. This will be the month that all the stars align. While there are things that you can do to try to help things along the active role played by Dusty and I was pretty brief. The days were all marked out and we were excited. We were doing something! The beginning was filled with taking medication to help increase the natural response of the body to the cycle. We had a monitoring ultrasound every month (don't worry, I won't get into the gory details, but it isn't just a probe on the skin to look at things) and were given the greenlight that all was in order and teed up. This is where our brief active part came into play. This was followed by a 2 week period of doing nothing but waiting. Waiting and hoping that something worked this time. That this month would be different than the last. At first I was paranoid and refused to let the cats sit on my tummy or get highlights in my hair or get a massage. I didn't want anything to interfere. I even stopped jogging. I stopped living my life. Then it became intense. The end of the cycle was drawing near and in a day or two I would know. The preceeding 27 days would culminate in such joy. Each time the word "NOT" showed up before "PREGNANT" on the stick was a major crash and burn. Tears, anger, worry. I can't begin to convey the let down. It couldn't last too long though before it was time to start all over again. I can't remember how many times I said to myself "Next month. It will happen. There is always a next month."
But the next months kept adding up. The cycle became predictable. I started to feel helpless, like there was nothing I could do to make it work. My role was limited in reality. My body had to do the rest. One last hope laid upon a test to look more closely at everything. I started hoping that there was something wrong, just so that it could be fixed. Maybe then it would work. But that test came (and that was very unpleasant) and again nothing was wrong. I'm young, thin, active, healthy. So is Dusty. Why can't we get pregnant???? But sometimes there just isn't an answer.
We finally made the decision to cash in the chips and move on last month. I just wanted to wait one more cycle to make sure we were not stopping too soon. I had begun to look into other options a long time prior and had made my peace with everything. It was time to move on.
Now I am back to hyperactive mode. Once the forms were signed and faxed in I started to get information about the next steps. And you know what? I am happy. I am at peace and I feel convinced that this is the right choice for us. There are so many children who need someone to love them. And I need someone to love. It is a perfect match. It feels good to be active again. To feel like I have a part to play in this and that motion on my part, that hardwork and determination can once again move us toward our goal. I am no longer a passive rider. I can work hard and make this happen.
A cycle is 28 days(ish). Every cycle begins with an intense hope and certainty. This will be the month that all the stars align. While there are things that you can do to try to help things along the active role played by Dusty and I was pretty brief. The days were all marked out and we were excited. We were doing something! The beginning was filled with taking medication to help increase the natural response of the body to the cycle. We had a monitoring ultrasound every month (don't worry, I won't get into the gory details, but it isn't just a probe on the skin to look at things) and were given the greenlight that all was in order and teed up. This is where our brief active part came into play. This was followed by a 2 week period of doing nothing but waiting. Waiting and hoping that something worked this time. That this month would be different than the last. At first I was paranoid and refused to let the cats sit on my tummy or get highlights in my hair or get a massage. I didn't want anything to interfere. I even stopped jogging. I stopped living my life. Then it became intense. The end of the cycle was drawing near and in a day or two I would know. The preceeding 27 days would culminate in such joy. Each time the word "NOT" showed up before "PREGNANT" on the stick was a major crash and burn. Tears, anger, worry. I can't begin to convey the let down. It couldn't last too long though before it was time to start all over again. I can't remember how many times I said to myself "Next month. It will happen. There is always a next month."
But the next months kept adding up. The cycle became predictable. I started to feel helpless, like there was nothing I could do to make it work. My role was limited in reality. My body had to do the rest. One last hope laid upon a test to look more closely at everything. I started hoping that there was something wrong, just so that it could be fixed. Maybe then it would work. But that test came (and that was very unpleasant) and again nothing was wrong. I'm young, thin, active, healthy. So is Dusty. Why can't we get pregnant???? But sometimes there just isn't an answer.
We finally made the decision to cash in the chips and move on last month. I just wanted to wait one more cycle to make sure we were not stopping too soon. I had begun to look into other options a long time prior and had made my peace with everything. It was time to move on.
Now I am back to hyperactive mode. Once the forms were signed and faxed in I started to get information about the next steps. And you know what? I am happy. I am at peace and I feel convinced that this is the right choice for us. There are so many children who need someone to love them. And I need someone to love. It is a perfect match. It feels good to be active again. To feel like I have a part to play in this and that motion on my part, that hardwork and determination can once again move us toward our goal. I am no longer a passive rider. I can work hard and make this happen.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Rewind to December 2010
We have had a busy marriage what with me deciding to go back to school and moving to Ohio first and then to Wisconsin for residency. And of course, residency has been anything but relaxing. December of 2010 brought about a change that included wanting to start a family. I can't pinpoint exactly what happened that made us want to go from a married couple to having a family. Part of it was my nephew on my side of the family. He is such a great little guy and I adore being around him. I have 3 other nephews as well on Dusty's side of the family, but we have always lived far away from them and it limited my ability to be around them enough to really get to know them. He has had a great relationship with them and has always enjoyed playing around whenever we visit. Another big part was our amazing friends we made here, the Shaws, with their 3 fun loving kids that lived just next door and shared the farm we rented. We saw them every day giving us the ability to watch the grow up over the last 2 years. It was nice being involved so intimately in the family.
We began to...umm..how should I put it...nonchalantly try to begin our family. 6 months of that and I was growing antsy. In May of 2011 we changed from nonchalantly to actively trying. 5 more moths and I was down right upset, worried and questioning things. In October 2011 I began to see a fertility specialist who I have mixed reviews on, but basically she ran some tests that all came back normal and put me on hormone therapy. I responded exceedingly well to this to the point where she wouldn't let me take it anymore. 5 months of drugs, 1 very unpleasant and invasive tube flushing and a couple samples from Dusty later and the verdict is.......drumroll please....we are both physically and hormonally perfectly normal. Huh. Well doc now what? Keep in mind that we do not have a money tree in the backyard and all infertility related expenses are out of pocket and most definitly not cheap. She suggested a shot in the dark and expensive method which we turned down and then began talking about in vitro. I have my own beliefs about in vitro as does Dusty and we said no although we suport others who do decide to go that route. That decision was made in March 2012.
Along the way I have kept in the back of my mind that I need a backup plan. I started to do research on adoption way back in December of 2011 after a year and no luck. I ran into a lot of information about all types of adoption - domestic state/government, foster adoption, international adoption and domestic infant adoption. I will go into some of the more important and interesting information in my next post.
We began to...umm..how should I put it...nonchalantly try to begin our family. 6 months of that and I was growing antsy. In May of 2011 we changed from nonchalantly to actively trying. 5 more moths and I was down right upset, worried and questioning things. In October 2011 I began to see a fertility specialist who I have mixed reviews on, but basically she ran some tests that all came back normal and put me on hormone therapy. I responded exceedingly well to this to the point where she wouldn't let me take it anymore. 5 months of drugs, 1 very unpleasant and invasive tube flushing and a couple samples from Dusty later and the verdict is.......drumroll please....we are both physically and hormonally perfectly normal. Huh. Well doc now what? Keep in mind that we do not have a money tree in the backyard and all infertility related expenses are out of pocket and most definitly not cheap. She suggested a shot in the dark and expensive method which we turned down and then began talking about in vitro. I have my own beliefs about in vitro as does Dusty and we said no although we suport others who do decide to go that route. That decision was made in March 2012.
Along the way I have kept in the back of my mind that I need a backup plan. I started to do research on adoption way back in December of 2011 after a year and no luck. I ran into a lot of information about all types of adoption - domestic state/government, foster adoption, international adoption and domestic infant adoption. I will go into some of the more important and interesting information in my next post.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Welcome!
I have never written a blog before. I read a lot of them and always thought it would be fun to do if an interesting topic came to mind. I have debated writing about my adventures with Gem, but every horse blog I read always ends in a hurt horse and tears. I am not a superstitious person, but those odds seem to work against that idea.
Then we began this endeavor and the more I researched the more I realized that I knew nothing about adoption. I figured then that most people who have never been through the process or close to someone who has wouldn't understand everything. There are a lot of misconceptions and myths floating around about adoption and when we bring our baby home it would be easier if we were all on the same page. I also figured that Dusty and I could use all the support we could get and that this would be the easiest way to do that.
Please feel free to comment and ask any questions along the way. I have spent countless hours researching everything I could and I think Dusty's ears are bleeding from hearing me talk about it over and over and over again. A fresh victim would be great :) My next post will cover some of the back story that brought us to this decision. We are just now beginning and there will be a lot of information to share. We are very excited and anxious and are happy to have you along!!
Then we began this endeavor and the more I researched the more I realized that I knew nothing about adoption. I figured then that most people who have never been through the process or close to someone who has wouldn't understand everything. There are a lot of misconceptions and myths floating around about adoption and when we bring our baby home it would be easier if we were all on the same page. I also figured that Dusty and I could use all the support we could get and that this would be the easiest way to do that.
Please feel free to comment and ask any questions along the way. I have spent countless hours researching everything I could and I think Dusty's ears are bleeding from hearing me talk about it over and over and over again. A fresh victim would be great :) My next post will cover some of the back story that brought us to this decision. We are just now beginning and there will be a lot of information to share. We are very excited and anxious and are happy to have you along!!
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