Adoption Journey Update 2

February 12, 2015- Met with social worker one last time to get finished home study packet and pay for the home study. I also immediately emailed my adoption consultant to let her know we are home study ready, which means we can officially start seeing profiles!!!!

February 17, 2015- Spoke with adoption consultant about what all we need to do if we decide we like one of the profiles that gets sent to us and also just in general how to read through the profiles since they will be coming from multiple different agencies and all look a little bit different. She also told us that since our criteria for a baby is pretty narrowed down; Caucasian, girl, newborn to 1 years old, no alcohol use, that we won't see too many profiles. So, she will actually send us all of the profiles, minus any that seem truly wrong for us, like some serious alcohol use, so that way, just in case, some other profile not in our criteria catches our eye and we get the opportunity to adopt one of those babies instead, if we like.

Since we spoke to our consultant we have seen 2 profiles. Neither fit into our criteria, but still nice to see what different profiles look like from different states and different expecting moms.

*If at all possible please spread the word that we're adopting for us, if you can. Our social worker told us that she has met more people who were able to adopt just by word of mouth because someone randomly over heard a conversation from a couple of people that were talking about themselves or even a friend who was wanting to adopt, and they just so happened to know someone that was looking to put their baby up for adoption.

Here is our adoption profile book as well. Since I wanted it on here page by page, the quality is not great. The actual profile book and pdf are awesome looking though.

Adoption Journey Update 1

We are getting so close to being able to see profiles. Here is what's been going on so far.

December 18, 2014- We made the decision to adopt and use the same company that a fellow blm friend of mine used. I went to their website and filled out the online application and later spoke to the owner of the adoption consulting agency we are going to be working with about how the process works. The owner will also be our consultant through the process.

December 21, 2014- emailed in our paperwork 

December 22, 2014- We paid our initial upfront consulting fees. We're officially doing this!

December 21, 2014- got home study packet from our social worker. Lots of pages for Dereck and I to fill out about ourselves, our financial state, etc. Also immediately got the forms for our 3 references and work info sent out.

January 5, 2015- I got my fingerprint and criminal background check done for our home study. Also, got info from adoption consultant to set up our eadopt account. This is how we will keep everything organized through the process and get all our education done. At first the amount of tasks that we needed was rather overwhelming.

January 7, 2015- Our social worker came over to our house to meet with us and make sure our house was suitable for another baby. It was about an hour long meeting and went really well.

January 8, 2015- Dereck got his fingerprints done. We also had a phone appt with our adoption  consultant about what we're looking for in a baby, as in age, race, sex, etc, and she also wanted to make sure we got started on our profile.

January 10, 2015- Finally started our profile book.  I never thought I'd get it done because I was so worried about not having the right pictures, wording things wrong, or even how to write the "Dear Birth Mom" letter.

January 16, 2015- Worked practically nonstop for 5 day's on our book and then had our consultant take a peek to see if we needed to make any changes. She said she loved it, only had us change a few things, and to go ahead and order a bunch of copies for us and a couple for her to have on hand. Dereck and I also had our individual meetings with the social worker. At those meetings we each got asked about finances, our views on raising kids, our families, and our upbringing. I thought these meetings went pretty well, considering in the beginning I was so nervous.

January 18, 2015- Got all of the education tasks on our checklist from our eadopt account done thus far and waiting until the next set of them are available. Our adoption consultant also gave us a few profiles to look at so we can get used to seeing how they will come from various agencies. Of course, none of these cases we can actually say anything about since our home study isn't completed yet.

January 24, 2015- Received our first profile book I ordered in the mail. I just love it. It turned out even better than I thought it would. Now we just hope that one of the expecting moms loves it, and us, enough to pick us too. So, now we just have to wait for our home study to get closed out so we can start looking at profiles. I spoke with our social worker the other day and all she needs is the results of our fingerprints back before she can finalize everything. My goal was to have everything done by the end of the January, so we could start seeing profiles by February, but it looks like it'll be the middle of February at this point.

February 4, 2015- social worker sent me the draft of our home study to review and make any corrections it may need. I also set up an appt with her for the 12th to come by and hopefully the home study will be completed.

February 9, 2015- Today I got an email from our adoption consultant wondering if our home study is complete. I let her know about the meeting we have with the social worker on Thursday and that it should be ready after that. She informed that their is about 10 other families they are also working with at this time that are female specific like us, and because of this we need to respond to any of the cases that appeal to us after we receive them as soon as possible.

So that is where we are now. Hopefully soon I can share news of seeing our first cases. And who knows, we could love one of our first cases and even get picked back.