This Forever Family

Chip had his doctor’s appointment this month and after that form is mailed to Bethany, we will be completely done with the paperwork.  We still need to finish the profile, but it is mostly complete.  In addition, we decided to make a video for the online profile.  We had already decided to put a condensed version of our profile online, but after the newsletter suggested we create a video, Chip and I decided to do a mini-tour of the house as a video for our profile too.

We also attended the Birthparent Panel Discussion on May 5, 2009.  We both really enjoyed this discussion and loved hearing about the adoption process from the birthparents’ perspective.  We now understand even more the importance of fulfilling our promises as adoptive parents to send pictures and letters.  We can see the significance these have on a birthparent and we appreciate that importance.  Also, it helped us to better understand what might happen at the hospital and how the hospital plan could be set up.  It also raised some questions we would like to ask Kelly at our next meeting.

We now know that we will be attending our Placement Preparation Meeting at Bethany Christian on June 16, 2009.  We were unsure of the date until last week, but luckily it is after we are back from our trip to NC…which we are very thankful about.  This meeting discusses what will happen between the time we are approved (from the homestudy) and when a baby is actually placed with us.  This is also one of the last meetings we will need to attend at Bethany before our homestudy is complete.

Today, May 18, 2009 we met with Kelly again.  We had a very long, but very good discussion about our backgrounds, childhood, and our personalities.  It was a nice discussion and I’m so glad we feel so comfortable with Kelly and sharing our stories with her.  We also set up our next meeting for June 10, 2009.  This meeting will take place in our home so she can look around and make sure everything is OK to place a child.

We’ve also officially sent in all of our paperwork.  We need to check to make sure it’s all been received, but we are done with our part.  The only things we have left are a few meetings and finishing up our profile.  We’ve written a draft of both our regular profile and our online profile for Kelly to look over and give suggestions.  We also need to start our video, but that can always be added later if we want.  We can always put 3 pictures in and then replace one of the pictures with the video.

Within two weeks of filling out our paperwork, our adoption specialist, Kelly Richards, called us to set up our first meeting with her.  We were both very excited and couldn’t wait to officially begin the process.

In addition, we began to create our profile.  This contained pictures and information about our families and the two of us.  We wanted to give a well-rounded picture of who we are as a couple and the things we like to do, both individually and together.  We also wanted to show all of the experiences we have had since we got married…whether it be traveling or taking a photo caravan safari at the Wild Animal Park.  All of these things have shaped who we are, so we wanted to include them in our profile.

Also, throughout the month of April, we filled out more paperwork.  We had our fingerprints taken and sent off to the federal government for a background check.  I also had a doctor’s appointment to get a physical and have some tests done to make sure I was healthy.  Everything came back just fine.  So, we began to complete most of our paperwork in the month of April.

We had our first meeting with Kelly (our adoption specialist) on April 29, 2009.  We had one snafu on the time, but we didn’t mind waiting a little bit longer.  Eventually everything came together and we began the meeting and it went really well.  We discussed a lot of different things, including our backgrounds, how we met, why we decided to adopt, why we chose Bethany, and our jobs.  We really enjoyed our conversation with Kelly and felt very comfortable talking to her about all of this information.  This was the first of 3 meetings that we will be having with Kelly.

This month we met with two agencies.  We really liked the first agency we met with, but they couldn’t start our process for the homestudy until July and we really didn’t want to wait that long.  But, we really appreciated the amount of support they gave to both adoptive and birthparents.  These were two aspects we didn’t feel the first adoption agency had.

Then, we met with Bethany Christian Services (http://www.bethany.org/indiana).  We attended their general adoption meeting where they discussed all of the different adoption methods they offered (domestic, intercountry, embryo, and foster care).  At this point we had already decided we wanted to adopt domestically because we really wanted the infant experience.  But, it was nice to get some more information about the process.  We really liked Bethany’s support system and we appreciated that they could begin our process almost immediately.  We found out that day that the next domestic adoption meeting was the following Tuesday.  So, we RSVP’d for that meeting.

We filled out the initial paperwork and went to the domestic adoption meeting that following Tuesday.  After finding out more information, we definitely knew this was the agency for us.

The following week we started filling out the application and answering the questions for the autobiography.  Because Chip was out of town, it took us a few weeks to get all of the paperwork complete, but eventually we did and sent it off to Bethany for approval on April 6, 2009.

February was a month of waiting.  The next two adoption agencies did not have meetings until March, so we were just waiting to find out more information about them.

This is the month we officially decided to adopt.  After almost 2 years of trying to get pregnant with no success and multiple infertility tests that were inconclusive, we decided God was calling us to build our family in a different way than we were expecting.  We felt this was the right time because Chip was now settled in his job and we had a nice big house, with lots of room to grow.  Also, we had been ready for two years (more in my case) so we felt it was time to change our plans and follow God’s plan instead.

I had already collected a lot of information about different adoption agencies and we had narrowed it down to three.  We met with our first adoption agency in January and asked a lot of questions – most of which we got from my sister who had already adopted 2 kids by that point. We liked the agency, but felt it was a little too “hands-off” and didn’t have a lot of support and education for adoptive parents.  But, at this point, we really didn’t know what we were going to do.