Online Adoption Class #2

On this past Tuesday Jesse and I found the time to sit down for a couple hours together and complete our second of three adoption classes.  This class was called Let's Talk Adoption!  It was about speaking with an adopted child about the subject of their adoption, barriers that might cause difficulty in doing this, and strategies for making communication open within a family and between adoptive parents and the adopted child.  Like the last class this class gave us some helpful ideas and information to consider once we adopt our child.  I am so thankful that these classes are required and set up so that we can learn and have something to go back to once we adopt our child.  There have been a lot of things I have learned about adoption, communication, relationships, fears and hopes that will truly benefit us when we are raising our adopted child some day!  I know we will make mistakes and not do everything perfectly but I think we are both excited to see what our future holds and who God will provide for us to love and raise for Him!  We have learned that every child will be a little different in the way they handle the fact that they were adopted or the way they view their unique life story.  The classes are great for giving different options and helping us to understand that really how each situation is or should be handled will depend on the child and what they want or need.

We have one last adoption class to complete before our case worker comes for our home visit on the 10th of July!

Where We Are

Many people are wondering exactly where we are in our adoption process so I am putting an update on where we are and what we still have to accomplish.  The most recent things that I posted that needed to be completed are two adoption classes, reference letters, background check from the State, and our home visit.  I recently talked with our case worker and was informed that she has received all our background check papers from the State, and reference letters from our friends and family.  We have not yet finished our last two online classes due to a busy schedule in June but should be able to complete them soon.  I set up a date for our home visit with our case worker for July 10th!  At this meeting we will show our case worker around the house and she will make sure everything is safe, we will complete some paperwork with her, and then we will talk about our profile book that we will need to make.  After this meeting I think we will pretty much be done with everything we are required to do.  At that point we will put together a digital scrapbook about our lives, family, jobs, etc. called a profile book, for our case worker to show to birth mothers that would be looking for an adoptive family.  Once we have completed this book we will be a waiting family ready to adopt if we would be chosen!  The way it works is that a pregnant mother would come to Family Core looking to make an adoption plan.  Our case worker would get an idea of the kind of family she wants her child to have and then show the birth mom two or three profile books of waiting families that are similar to what the birth mom wants in her adoptive family.  The birth mom would then choose a family and an adoption plan would begin to take place.  Because our placement is really totally dependent on a birth mother choosing us, Family Core can't say exactly how long it will be until we are placed with a baby.  They say their usual wait time is between 1 and 2 years.  Some are placed before a year and every now and then they have someone for longer than two years.  This is because the adoptive family has to be chosen by the birth mom.  So obviously we really have no idea when we will get a placement but it could be at anytime from the day we turn in our profile book to two years into the future.  This is where trust in God's plan and God's timing become really important:)

So as for where we are in the process, our next goal is to complete the two online classes.  Then we will wait for our last meeting, the home visit, on July 10th, and lastly create our profile book!

Thanks for all the prayers on our behalf.  It means so much to us to have support and encouragement as we continue down this path God has brought us to.  We are so thankful everything has went smoothly so far and we give God all the credit for that!

Third & Fourth Adoption Meetings!

On this past Friday, June 7th, Jesse and I had our third and fourth meetings with Family Core in Peoria.  We each met individually with our case worker for about one hour each.  Our case worker basically asked us questions about our life and our past.  She also asked us any questions she had about the application questions we answered about our life. The meetings went great!  As I said in earlier posts we were somewhat nervous, especially Jesse, just because we would be drilled with questions by our case worker and we would be alone.  When we were done we both felt like we could have just kept on talking and were surprised by how fast the hour passed by!  Our case worker is so wonderful!  She is so nice and makes us feel comfortable and able to be open about ourselves.  She is getting to know us personally and so it doesn't seem so formal and strictly business, which makes it much more comfortable.  Jesse went first and I went to a nearby pet store to look around while he was in his meeting.  When I was in my meeting Jesse went down to the River Walk for awhile and walked around.  Our agency is actually only about a block or two from the River Walk.  At the end of my meeting I asked our case worker what we still needed to accomplish and what comes next.  We have to finish two more online classes, which are done on our own time so we just need a couple evenings at home and we should be done with those.  Next our case worker will write an 8-10 page written report of what she has learned about us and our family and lives.  Once she is done with this she said we will meet one more time.  She said to plan on sometime mid July that way she has time to finish her report.  The next meeting will be when she comes to our house to make sure everything is generally safe and a good environment for a baby.  I asked her what things they look for and what we should do just so we can be ready and not have a bunch of things wrong when she comes.  She told me that they are not extremely picky.  They mainly just want the house to be generally safe in basic safety features.  She also said that if something is wrong she will tell us and we can change it, not a big deal.  So I am not really worried about the home visit, I am actually looking forward to it!  When she comes to our home she will also talk with us about our profile book that we will make to show birth moms and bring a sample book for us to get ideas from.  After her visit she will make any final changes to her written report and then it will be sent to the State of Illinois and we will have to be approved by them.  Thanks to Lisa Aberle I am not to worried about being approved as she has told me her experience and how state approvals are usually handled.  Our case worker also said she is waiting on parts of our background checks to come back from the state as well but other than that and the classes we have done pretty much everything we need to do for her!  Once we have our next meeting in July we will begin our profile book.  I am not sure how long state approvals actually take, that's something we will have to ask our case worker, but once that is done I think we will be a waiting family and have our profile book ready to be viewed by birth moms looking to make an adoption plan!  So far everything has went extremely smooth and easy for us.  We were actually trying to figure out what we missed because the process to become a waiting family seemed to easy!  I think that once we are chosen and we begin getting involved with birth families and courts and legal things, that is when it could become a little more difficult.  We are thankful though that it has went smooth this far and we give God all the glory for that!

EDIT- I emailed our case worker and asked her more information about her written report and about being approved by the State.  Come to find out our Home Study will not be sent to the State of Illinois for approval after all.  Once our case worker is done writing her report about us her supervisor will review it and that is all that needs to be done.  When we go to finalize the adoption something called A Report of Investigation will be written by our case worker including Home Study information and also development information about the child we have had in our care and are adopting.  This report will be given to the Judge and the Attorney involved in our adoption finalization.  I was told that there are a "bazillion" more rules and requirements for an international adoption compared to a domestic adoption and that is why our Home Study will be handled differently than Brian & Lisa's, who adopted internationally.

Online Adoption Class #1

Last night Jesse and I decided to do our first online adoption class.  It covered information on how to help an adopted child cope with grief and loss and also losses and gains of each person involved in the adoption.  We learned so much from the class.  It was just short of two hours and had a small assessment at the end.  As we learned about different symptoms of grief of an adopted child, the different stages in life grief could appear, triggering events of grief or loss for an adopted child and so much more, it was somewhat overwhelming to think about the emotions that come with every adoption no matter how good the child has it or how smoothly the adoption took place.  There will almost always be some form of grief and it is not bound to appear at the same time for each adopted person.  One of the main things that we learned was that being open with our child about their past, birth mom, and any other information we know can help the child tremendously.  The questions are bound to come and if our child feels like they are not able to talk with us about them they will harbor them inside and cause bad feelings about themselves or possibly those around them.  We learned all sorts of ways to help a child cope with their past and their feelings about their adoption and their birth mother.  Some of these include, adoption books, LifeBook's about the child's adoption and life, adoption groups, timelines, telling stories, and rituals.  I am sure having these ideas will be very helpful in the future as we help our child deal with any grief that might come.  One thing we want our child to have is a positive view of his/her birth mother.  We learned that if an adopted child has a negative view of his/her birth mother, the child may take those negative feelings and apply them to himself because he came from his birth mother.  There was an idea to have the birth mother write a letter to her child at the time of adoption to explain that she really does love him and why she has decided to give him up for adoption.  We really hope this is something we can have our birth mother do so that our child will always have that letter to go back to and remember that his birth mother really cared and wanted to do what was best for him.  We really have no idea how our adoption is going to go though so that will be totally dependent on what the birth mother feels comfortable doing.  The online classes are nice because we made an account online and bought the class so we can go back to them at any time in the future.  Some of the things we learned or thought about are things that will be really helpful to reconsider and go back to once we have adopted our child.

We have two more adoption classes to complete.  Our next meeting is this Friday, the seventh.  This meeting  is actually technically two meetings were Jesse and I will meet individually with our case worker and she will learn more about us individually and go over any questions she has about our adoption application questions we completed.  I think this could be somewhat nerve racking especially for Jesse but I think he will do just fine!

Second Adoption Meeting

We had our second meeting with Family Core yesterday afternoon.  I think it went really well.  We turned in all our information and paperwork we have been gathering over the past few weeks and talked with our case worker.  We went over a packet of information about adoptive parents rights and responsibilities with our case worker and were given a few more papers that we need to read through, sign, and turn in.  We were given a little better idea of what we as the adoptive family can expect and what not to expect, more on the legal side, once we are placed with a child.  After we read through those papers our case worker asked us to share about how we met, our marriage, how our journey with infertility/adoption has affected us, our occupations and some different things like that.  She hasn't really had a chance to just listen to us talk about our lives so I think she was probably able to get a feel for who we are and what our hopes and desires are for our adoption.  As our case worker, it is important for her to know us and what we are comfortable with so that when a birth mom would come to her looking to make an adoption plan she is able to know if we would be a good match or not.  We spent probably a good hour talking about us which was somewhat intimidating!  Overall though, the meeting went well and we are hoping to meet again possibly sometime next week after our case worker has had a chance to look through all our paperwork and read through our answers to the many questions we completed.  The next meeting will be individually with our caseworker.  We will schedule them for the same day but will each meet individually for around an hour or so with our caseworker.  I think this will be to go over any questions she would have about our answers and to get to know our past, our personality and who we are as a person.  I think this is a little harder for Jesse than for me because he is a little more shy and easily becomes nervous when he is put on the talking stand like that:)  I think he will do great though!  Our next task is to complete three online adoption classes that are about two hours each.  It will be good to learn more about adoption so we will be more prepared for what the future holds.  We learned that the last two placements that went through Family Core have been done either the week of birth or right after birth.  That means that a family was called and asked if they wanted to be placed with a baby and then within one week they had the baby in their care.  Now this is when it gets overwhelming I would say!  There would be lot of major decisions to be made in a very short amount of time!  It's good to know that happens though so we can be prepared for a child at any time.  We have no idea how it will go for us or when we will get a placement but one thing we know is that whatever God has for our adoption will be just what we need and will be for His glory

Slight Delays and CPR

So yesterday, May 20th, we were scheduled to have our second adoption meeting with Family Core and then take a CPR course at St. Francis in the evening.  Yesterday morning I got an email from our case worker saying that she had come down with something over the weekend and still wasn't feeling well so she needed to cancel our meeting.  I was bummed because I was hoping to be able to get two things done in one trip to Peoria.  Anyways, we didn't have our meeting but we still went to Peoria to complete our CPR training.  It was a good class and I think Jesse and I learned some useful tips for saving a child or infant's life.  It seems like something I never want to have to use though.  Performing CPR on a dummy and on a real human would be quit a bit different I think! The dummy's chest is made to move up and down for the chest compression's but a real child would probably end up with some serious bruises or cracked ribs if CPR became necessary.  When you have a choice between cracked ribs or death I think cracked ribs ends up sounding pretty good though.  Overall the class went well and we now have one more requirement crossed off the list!  Our case worker said she would contact us when she was back in the office so we can reschedule our appointment.  I suppose this is the kind of thing that comes up that you don't really plan for that slows down the adoption process.  Hopefully we will be able to meet either sometime toward the end of this week or maybe next week so it shouldn't be to much of a delay.  When we were leaving our class yesterday at St. Francis the wind and rain was blowing so hard you could barley see in front of you!  Being in a parking garage was extremely scary as well!  It looked like a hurricane from inside the parking garage with sheets of rain and wind blowing in the different levels and the sky looked green.  Anyways it was pretty scary but luckily it cleared up a little past Morton so we didn't have to deal with it too long.  We did get to enjoy a little hail though just as we were crossing the Peoria bridge.  I am not a fan of thunderstorms at all and was worried that the lightning was going to strike just right on our vehicle! Hopefully our next trip to Peoria will have slightly better weather!

Application Complete!

Jesse has finished his application questions!  After 13 pages of typed answers I think he probably feels relieved and happy to be done with that part of the process:)  It is interesting to see the difference in the amount of detail we each give for the same questions.  Obviously I am more of a talker and detail kind of person and Jesse is one to just give the basic information the question asks for!  I think it is a good thing though because it will show our case worker that we are two individual people and that we both really did answer the questions individually.  We are now both finished with our application questions and the application packet we were given to fill out before our next meeting.  We have a pile of papers now ready to be turned in at our second meeting with Family Core which will be Monday the 20th!  Hopefully this meeting will go well and our application questions will be up to par:)  If not I am sure we will have opportunity to make any corrections or revisions.  We are excited to be moving forward and to have our second meeting on the way.  As I think about the the little baby we will adopt some day I get so excited.  It really seems unreal right now that it will actually happen but I feel like when it does it will be the most amazing experience of my life.  As I think about holding a little baby that needs a home and a family and calling him/her my own, I am so excited at the opportunity we have to take part in such a unique way to build a family.  I wouldn't want to trade my life for anything else.  I love the parallel of an earthly adoption to of us being adopted by God.  It is so awesome that I might get to adopt a child just as God has adopted me.  I want to show my adopted child the love that God has shown me and to have a deeper realization that what really matters is love and not whose genes you have.  I am so thankful that God is molding the hearts of Jesse and me to have a desire and excitement to be used according to His purpose for us.