Training and Outreach

Let's be honest.. Who is ever excited to go to training? I WAS! We met some great people and learned so much in the last two days. 

Yesterday was our adoption education training. We went in depth of the feelings of all parties involved in the adoption process: birth parents, child, and adoptive parents. We even had two families that had finished their adoption process within the last two years come and speak to us about their journey. We had a lot of questions answered. Both of these families' adoption plans are pretty open. One child gets to see her birth mother once a month and is even in her birth mother's wedding as a flower girl! 

We hope one day we will have that great relationship with our child's birth mother!

Our beloved name tags! There is a story behind these... 

On both days we got to know the other families in the training with us. It was so nice to meet people that are going through the same adventures as us! We all actually have each other's contact information and hope to keep in touch to watch each other go through the journey of growing their family through adoption.

This is us with Matt and Beth, our table mates! 

We had to fight to keep these name tags! Yesterday our educators had told us to leave them  for today's training and  we were crushed to find out that they had thrown them away! Matt had them reprint them for keepsakes!

Today was our outreach training. Waiting families reach out to their friends/community/professional lives and ask them to spread the word that they are in search of an expecting couple and child to embrace through open adoption. We enjoyed learning about the unique ideas some families used to find their expecting couple. One family found their match by wearing t-shirts to the state fair stating "Hopeful Adoptive Parent."

These were some examples of outreach families had done!

We have so many ideas for outreach and we are so excited to get started! Just think, 

you may be the one that finds us the greatest gift of our lives! 

No procrastination!

So we are a week into working on our application and we have accomplished SOO much.
No procrastination in this household! Our huge stack of paperwork is down to only two items!

 WOOOHOOOO

 This week we both had our physicals, had our fingerprints taken, notarized documents, and filled out endless amounts of papers. We are turning in our background check paperwork tomorrow, which unless our identities were stolen we have zero worries about. The background study check takes about 8-10 weeks by itself.

Here is our completed stack of paperwork:

Our next step is the adoption education training and outreach workshop - a 2 day event - which the only openings they had were in June. God must want us to be ready for our future expecting mother a little earlier, though, because we just got notification that a spot opened in the April 11th and 12th training:)

So while we are working on the application we are also working on our adoption online training which is required to be completed before the in person training. We have 3 of the 5 completed so far!

Things are falling perfectly into place right now, which makes us know we are down the right path.

How are we feeling?

We are feeling EXCITED, scared, HOPEFUL, worried, nervous etc.

We are beyond happy to be heading down this path, but on the other end we are extremely nervous. How are we going to explain in an online profile why an expecting mom should choose us to raise her child? We can only express so much in words. We just hope and pray we can write the right story and paint the right picture for our child to find us. Also, how do we express gratitude to the selfless expecting mother? We know what is meant to be, will be. <3333333333333333

XOXO future mommy and daddy!

And the Journey Begins!!

Today has been a super day! We have been impatiently waiting for April 1st to find out where we were on the registration hold list. We assumed our registration wouldn't be considered until May.

We were a bit worried about our registration for two reasons: 

1. Our age--They had a minimum age requirement of 25 and we are both under 25

2. Fertility Treatments- We had to disclose that we were going through fertility treatments and we were worried that would be looked at badly. 

We did talk to the social worker that was there when we turned in our registration and she stated that exceptions are made based off of income, stability, maturity, etc. We were praying they would look past our age. 

Well GUESS WHAT!! They made the exception and today they ACCEPTED us into the Domestic Infant Adoption Program!!!! We just received the application, and let's say we have a lot of work ahead of us, which in the end will be so worth it that we will forget all about it! :) 

Next Steps:

1. Complete the Application Checklist (I'll give us 2 weeks)  Includes: Income Check, Background Check, Physical, Medical records, reference letters,  documents (birth cert, marriage cert etc), photographs! ( I already have half of this completed haha!)

2. Hand in Application

3. Complete the Education Seminars

4. Complete the Home Study 

5. Enter Family Profile Book

6. Wait for the perfect mother to find us! 

This becomes more real every day! :)

What is meant to be will be!:) 

We can not wait for the day we bring our child home<33

 for he or she will be blessed with double the love

Update

Last week we received an email with updated numbers for March! We are now officially in the single digits. 

7!  

They accepted 6 families into the program last month, and hopefully they invite at least 7 into the program this month! Otherwise we will be waiting until April or May! 

We picked out the bedroom that will be the nursery. We chose the wood-floored bedroom:) We were wondering if we were crazy for putting together the nursery so early, but it really occupies our minds during this waiting game. After learning that we could be called at anytime after our application is accepted, we thought we'd rather be more prepared than not prepared at all. There are a couple things we could hear on the other end of that phone call: either a mom just had a baby in the hospital and just made their decision, or there is an expecting mom that hasn't had their baby yet that chose us. 

We haven't started working on it yet, but here is the before picture:

More updates will come as we get them!

Most recent FAQ Answers!

FAQ

We have been asked multiple questions which brings us here writing FAQ answers!

We chose our adoption agency based off of two different referrals from family friends. We researched agencies and their fees and ratings, but we did not attend any information meetings other than the agency we chose which is Lutheran Social Services.

Originally when we were deciding to grow our family through adoption we were hoping to adopt from China or Ethiopia, before we knew about the requirements we did not meet. Lutheran Social Services' information meeting introduced us to the international requirements. China requires both parents to be at least 30 years old with multiple other requirements. Ethiopia has fewer restrictions than China, but we still did not qualify because of our age.

Before attending the meeting we had believed the myth that it is more challenging to adopt in country than out of country. Apparently it is the complete opposite! Domestic adoption is about half the price of international adoption, mainly because of travel expenses. Also, domestic adoption can take from 8 months to 18 on average and international is 24+ months most times. Obviously the time it takes to adopt really depends on when the perfect expecting mom finds us and believes we are just as perfect as she is!

The good news was we were not restricted from domestic adoption! We have chosen to apply for the Domestic Infant Open Adoption program.

There are two routes you can take for the Domestic Infant Adoption program with LSS

Route One: Outreach Only- This route allows your registration to jump to the top of the pile. If you chose this route you are choosing to promote yourself and use word of mouth to find yourself the perfect match. If you choose this route and want to change to route two you will end up having to start from the beginning and go behind everyone on the "registration waiting list" talked about below.

Route Two: Family Profile Book- This route puts you on a registration waiting list. Basically there is about a 4 month wait for your registration to be accepted. After your registration is accepted you then start the application process which includes credit, income, background DMV and home studies. Once the application is accepted, you get in line for the Family Profile Book (This is the book expecting moms look through to choose their baby's best fit home.)

It sounds like route one is a lot quicker, and sometimes we wonder if we should be going that route but we chose Route two: Family Profile Book. We came to the conclusion that we can still reach out and get the word out there that we are a waiting family and if we are found while we are in our waiting period we can switch quickly to route one without question.

There were a couple questions on if our adoption will be open or closed. We have chosen an open adoption.
We chose this program because we would like our child’s mother to be in his/her life. Of course our family will not be “normal” in others' eyes, but we never want to hold pure love away from our child. Together we will make a new normal! We get to set up an adoption plan that fits both of our desires. We are very open and are willing to hear any mothers wants with the plan for their child. We are welcoming any race or gender into our family with open arms.