Kyle and Ashley

That’s right… we are officially “in the pool” of waiting families!

At this point, all we have left to do is wait.

As I’ve mentioned before, the way it works is basically this:

An expectant mother comes into the agency to make an adoption plan. Our social worker (Elly) will then email all of the prospective adoptive parents who fit the situation (based on our answers to the “child you can parent” checklist). She gives us any information that she has on the health of the mother/child, the situation with the birth father, the expected due date, etc. We then decide if we want to be considered for this situation and respond with a yes or a no.

The expectant mother (and father if he is involved) will be shown the letters from each couple that has said they would like to be considered. From those letters, she will usually only pick a few whose profile albums she would like to see. And from those few albums, she will choose the adoptive parents for her child. Occasionally, a mother may decide that she wants to meet two or three of the couples in person before making her decision.

If we are chosen, Elly will call us to set up a time to meet with the expectant mother for the first time at the agency.

The first meeting is usually pretty awkward (so we’ve heard)… with us trying to find a connection with this woman we’ve never met, hoping that she likes us and praying that she doesn’t change her mind, and her trying to picture these strangers as parents for her precious child and probably hoping that we like her, too.

The waiting feels like the hardest part. So much uncertainty. It could be next month, it could be 4 months, it could be a year… we really have no idea.

Our profile is being shown for the very first time tomorrow, to a young woman whose little girl is due mid-October. It’s incredibly unlikely that we would be chosen so soon, but the possibility is exciting! All we can do is wait and pray, knowing it is in God’s hands. If she is meant to be our child, she will be… if not, we will wait for the one who is.

As always, we ask that you continue to pray for us and know that you are in our prayers as well. We truly appreciate having such a wonderful circle of family and friends…it makes this long process a whole lot easier!

And please join us in praying for this expectant mother who has a very difficult decision to make tomorrow… whether she chooses us or not, we hope she finds what she is looking for.

We finally got our profile album and letter finished up! We made our book through Shutterfly (after debating for some time whether we should do a handmade book or a digital one) and it turned out really nice.

It took us about a month to do the album. It was so hard to decide what to say, what pictures to use and how to present the whole thing in a unique way that would make us look like the most awesome, fun, interesting couple in the universe (because we are, right??)… in short, we had to fit everything about us and our lives into a 25 page book. And then we had to take that and cram it into a two page letter. Phew!

But it looks great. We are happy with it, Elly and the girls at the agency are happy with it, and hopefully it will do the trick.

The first thing a birth mother will see is our letter. Out of all the letters she sees, she typically only chooses to look at a few of those families’ albums, so it’s super important that the letter catches her interest.

We tried to make ours stand out by skipping the typical letter format and opting for a more unique look that highlights the most important things about us…

So if she likes what she sees in our letter and wants to learn more about us, she gets to look at our album, which we also tried to make unique and fun. We tried to include a little about every aspect of our lives while focusing on the things that are most important to us. The main goal is to give her a good idea of who we are and how a child would be raised in our home…

The pages are a little hard to read (because I forgot to take real pictures of it before we turned it in to CSS…) but you get the idea.

Enjoy!

We are really happy with how it turned out and hopefully it does a good job of showing who we are.

We turned in our profile (the album and letter) last week and now we are just waiting for the home study papers to be finished and signed (which we will do early next week).

As soon as we have approved and signed the home study, we will be in the pool of waiting families and could be chosen at any time!

Please continue to pray for us and, more importantly, pray for the mothers who will be looking at our profile. As much as we want to be chosen, we cannot even begin to imagine how difficult it is for her to choose. We are so grateful to her for choosing life and for considering us as parents for that precious life she carries so selflessly.

It might seem easier to choose confidential adoption because the child would not be placed with us until he was legally available for adoption, we would know very little about the birth parents and they’d know very little about us, so the risk of them reclaiming their child would be slim. Confidential adoption would make it seem like our child would only know us as parents and not be confused about who her “real” parents are.

Open adoptions, it might seem, would open us up to the potential for more loss and heartache. Some misconceptions of open adoption say that since the birth parents would know where we are, they might try to kidnap or reclaim their child, and that child might be confused about who her “real” parents are. There would be a greater responsibility on our part because we’d have to maintain a relationship with people who gave us their most precious child and WHAT IF THEY CHANGE THEIR MINDS?

At it’s essence, however, open adoption means only that there is a continuing relationship between the adoptive parents, the birth parents, and the child, hopefully built on honesty, honor and respect for the losses suffered by all. Because adoption is built on loss – for everybody.

Only by working through the pain and loss of infertility are we able to commit ourselves to an open adoption. Only by working through the pain and loss of choosing not to parent their own child are the birth parents able to commit themselves to an open adoption. Only by making and living that commitment are we able to lessen our child’s pain and loss of not being parented by his/her birth parents.

Open adoption is often compared to the relationship of in-laws. When two people marry, they marry because they love each other and make a commitment to each other, but there are others in that new family equation. Sometimes, the in-laws don’t meet until very near the wedding and don’t get the opportunity to form a relationship beforehand. Nonetheless, the bride and the groom actively choose to make a relationship with their in-laws because they love their spouse; in-laws actively choose to make relationships with their child’s spouse because they love their child. Granted, not all spouses and in-laws would readily choose each other but sometimes, like in ours, the chemistry is right and we’ve formed close personal relationships outside of our common bond.

Open adoption is, in some ways, the same thing. With an open adoption, the birth parents and the adoptive parents meet relatively shortly before the child is born and because of their mutual love for that child, choose to form and maintain a relationship for that child.

There are many misconceptions about open adoption. Hopefully, your fears will be eased as ours were as we learned more about good open adoptions. Sometimes, it is easier to define something by what it isn’t rather than by what it is. Following are some common myths about open adoption and the truths that dispel them:

Myth: Open Adoption is Legally Insecure

The legal security of an open adoption is a matter of process. The birth mother does have a short period of time after the child’s birth to change her mind and if she chooses to do so, we are legally required to return the child to her, and rightly so. Making the decision to not parent your own child is a difficult one, and sometimes she finds that it is just too hard. Who are we to say that we have more rights to this child than the woman who gave him life? For that reason, she has until the hearing (up to 30 days, but usually much less) to change her mind. However, after she has signed the consent to terminate her parental rights, she can no longer reclaim the child and the adoption is, in that sense, “legally secured.”

Myth: Open Adoption Fixes Problems

Adoption will not “fix” our infertility, and adoption will not “fix” an untimely pregnancy. These are issues that we must work through before we can be truly ready for this journey through open adoption. For us as the adoptive parents, the issue of our infertility may always be in the back of our minds, but pregnancy is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It’s not about being pregnant, it’s about being parents.

Myth: Open Adoption is Co-parenting

No! A child adopted through open adoption is not co-parented. There is only one set of parents, only one set of people the child calls Mommy and Daddy, only one set of people who can make decisions regarding that child: the adoptive, legal parents. Us. Decisions on raising the child are not made in consultation with the birth parents; there are no visitation rights as when divorced parents have joint custody. The only people co-parenting our child will be the two of us.

Myth: Open Adoption is Like Baby Sitting

Open adoption is not taking care of a child until the birth parents are ready to parent the child themselves. Open adoption is forever. The common reaction to this myth is that the adoptive parents will raise the child for 20 years then she will go off and leave the adoptive parents. But isn’t that the point of parenting? Our primary job is to prepare our child to be an independent adult with all the resources, skills, and self-knowledge necessary to make sound decisions.

Myth: Children are Confused About Who Their Parents Are

There is only one set of legal parents, and only one set of parents the child is attached to. There is only one set of parents the child knows will be there in the middle of the night when the monster is growling under the bed. There is no misunderstanding of who that child’s parents are.

Sometimes, the birth parents are considered like close family friends or a special aunt or uncle. While it’s easy to pin those labels on that relationship, it’s important to remember that the child and the birth parents, no matter how attached the child is to her adoptive parents, will have the unique bond of birth. We will do our best not to be threatened by that bond and to honor that bond.

Think about today’s society in which a child can have multiple parental figures. There’s mom and dad, dad’s first ex-wife and his current wife, mom’s second husband… And don’t forget to count the various grandparents and step- and half-siblings! Open adoption can’t be any more confusing than what a child in that situation has to deal with.

Myth: There is No Privacy in Open Adoption

There is privacy in open adoption because the amount, location, and type of contact between the birth parents, adoptive parents and the child are all agreed to. The agreement made at the time of placement is not binding and will probably change over time. The important thing is that all the parents have committed to maintaining that relationship because that’s what is best for the child. And, as always, we have the final say in the amount of contact between us, our child and the birth family. While we will do everything we can to maintain a good relationship with the birth family, we will always do what is in the best interest of our child.

Myth: Birth Parents can/will Reclaim Their Child

When birth parents choose who raises their child, can watch their child grow, maintain a relationship with them, and can be assured that their child is in a loving and nurturing environment, the are less likely to want to reclaim their children. This is due to the fact that they have the truth; there is no fantasy about the child and no fantasy about the adoptive parents. They don’t have to worry (so much) about their baby. And, as we’ve previously discussed, a birth parent cannot legally reclaim their child after parental rights are terminated.

Myth: Open adoption leads to Power Struggles

Hopefully, power is never an issue in our open adoption. Hopefully, we and the birth parents of our child will continually put our child’s best interest ahead of our own. Hopefully, power will be in our child’s knowledge of who he is, where he came from, and ALL the people who love him. Nonetheless, throughout the adoption process, the one with the “power” is defined as the one with the legal guardianship of the child. That would be the birth mother from the time of conception until she signs the termination of rights, and us from that time forward.

As we wait to begin our open adoption, we know that we are blessed beyond compare. We have families with whom we are very close and friends so close they are part of our family. Things will change once our child comes into our home, just like they change when a child is born into a family. We will host all the requisite rituals and gatherings like everyone else; baptism, birthday parties, confirmation, recitals, baseball games, graduations…you know, the usual.

For all of these things, we hope you will join us. For all of these things, we hope our child’s birth parents will join us, too. For all of these things and because we will all love this child, we hope you will welcome our child’s birth parents with warmth, respect, and honor because they will be a part of our family also.

Elly emailed us last Friday and said she was ready to set up our home visit and asked if we could do it this week, before she left for vacation. We thought we would have a lot more notice, so we (meaning I) went into panic mode. We originally set it up for Monday, but there was a birth that morning so Elly had to stay and help the birth and adoptive parents get everything sorted out, and we rescheduled for Tuesday.

That gave me a total of 4 days to prepare. Ah!

Now, I know everyone says the home visit isn’t really that scary.. and we don’t need to worry about all that cleaning, and she won’t care if our baseboards haven’t been scrubbed, and she won’t notice if I didn’t lint roll all of my curtains, and it doesn’t matter if I haven’t washed the outside of that window in a year or two, and a million other little things. But.. I did it anyway.

And guess what? She didn’t even check my baseboards! Turns out everyone was right. She really just wanted to make sure that we were relatively normal people with a safe home in a safe neighborhood. The good news is, my house has never been so clean!

So Elly came and sat with us in the living room for a couple hours and talked with us about pretty much everything. She asked specifics about our extended families, our siblings, our upbringings, and our plans for the future. We talked about favorite vacation spots, holiday traditions, and what we do for fun.

We also had to come up with each other’s strengths and weaknesses, which apparently are required by the state?

Weird.

In case you wondered, Kyle’s weakness is lack of attention to detail and mine is a tendency to be a little “pessimistic” .. at least, those are the only ones we were willing to admit to!

A lot of it was just going into more detail about what we had written in our family assessment. It wasn’t bad at all, and we actually enjoyed the chance to sit and chat with Elly. Brisa did, as well.. but she was so pesty that I had to go stash her in the bedroom. Elly said she’s never seen met such a “friendly” cat.

After we talked, she wanted a quick tour of the house.

She commented of the fact that we have a real dining room and a nicely-sized kitchen (my favorites, too!).

She had no interest in actually seeing either the basement or the garage (thank you, Lord).

She laughed with us about the mystery of our “mystery room” (that’s the room off of the upstairs bathroom that has no apparent purpose, but will soon be an AMAZING walk-in closet).

And she even spent a while admiring our gallery of Maurer Movie posters. How awesome is that??

Once our little tour was over, and she was satisfied that there was no hidden meth lab or blatant safely concerns, we sat back down in the living room to talk about our next step.

She assured us that we were, indeed, “approved” and she would be sending us a copy of the home study write-up sometime within the next week or two for our review.

Do you know what that means??

That means we are close! In a matter of days, we will officially have a completed home study!

The next thing for us to do is put together our profile book, which we will be working on in the next couple of weeks. We hope to have it mostly done by the time Elly returns from vacation on the 12th.

And then we will be in the pool, ready to be shown to birth mothers. We will be a “waiting family!”