Odds & Ends

There's not too much to report yet, but I thought I'd fill in some gaps that some of you have questions about. First, Tom and I are in the domestic adoption process. We also are 1/3 of the way through our home study and we need to have that completed before we can be active for birth parents to look at us as adoptive parents for their child.

The process has been relatively easy and we've been very comfortable with our agency and the women we've worked with so far. First, we attended a couple of informational seminars to decide if this was something we really wanted to pursue. After that, we called the agency and told them we were interested in adopting and wanted them (the agency) to be who we adopted through. Next, they sent us a packet of forms, letters, and information that we needed to read and/or fill out and return. Once we received our packet, a couple of weeks later we had an office visit. This is where we sat down with someone from the adoption agency and she talked to us about why we wanted to adopt. It was basically a "get to know you" kind of meeting. The next step, which is coming up in a couple weeks, is to attend an all day class. We're not exactly sure what is going to take place, but we think one of the topics is going to be how open we'd like our relationship with the birth parents to be and other related issues. Following the class we have the home visit, which will be at the end of March. This is where someone from the agency visits our home to make sure it will be a safe and loving environment for the child to live in. Once all of our documents are returned to the agency and the home study document is finished and we've signed off on it then we're active. This means that birth parents can begin to look at our biography, photos, etc. to determine if they'd like to allow us to raise their child. Once we've been picked by a birth couple it can vary as far as what happens. The only thing that is definite is that once the birth parents sign off on the child, the child is ours (there may be a 30 day waiting period-we're not 100% sure on this). That's basically the process in a nutshell. I hope you've found this informative and it answers more of your questions regarding the adoption process. Please continue your thoughts and prayers. We do appreciate them!