A quick pre-Christmas Update

Today we are getting ready to head out to NH to be with our families for Christmas. We will spend Christmas Eve with my dad, brother, and sister and we will be going to dinner in the North End of Boston which is a tradition we have carried on for some time now. Christmas morning will be brunch with Jon's mom and dad and then Christmas afternoon will be spent with my mom and my uncles, aunt and cousins. We are looking forward to our visit!

The month has gone by quickly since our first visit with our social worker and we have been busy working on preparations for the next meetings. Jon will meet with her on Jan 7, then I will have my meeting with her on Jan 12, followed by our home visit on Jan 13. The biggest project we have been working on is our profile book. My mac was fixed relatively easily and I am psyched to have it back so that I can use the iPhoto program for our book. It is sooooo cool! This program will make an actual book - hard cover, children's style book, complete with a paper dust cover! We have been compiling photos from our collection and from friends and have even gone back in the archives for some prom photos and wedding photos - all of which were "pre-digital" and needed to be scanned. The book is about 25 pages long and includes photos of us throughout our 16 years together, our travels, our dogs, home, family and friends. Each page has between 3 and 6 photos and a caption. I have to say that it looks really good! Thanks so much to our friends who have graciously provided photos to include in our book! In addition to photos, there will be a couple of text pages which we will use to write our "Dear Birthmother" letter. This is the hardest part! I've been reading a great book which has helped us focus a bit on concise, meaningful content for the letter. We will hopefully get a good start on that over break. 

We also have scheduled an appt. with a pediatrician to talk about those difficult substance questions. That will be on Jan 7, as well. Thanks to Jeannie, Ellen and all the other ladies who have recommended Essex Pediatrics! 

Jon and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a restful, relaxing, fun break (short or long). Enjoy your time with family and friends. We can not thank everyone enough for your loving support of our adoption. It means so much to both of us. Merry Christmas! 

Preparations for the next meeting...

We have lots to do to prepare for our next meetings with our social worker on January 7, 12, & 13. First, we need to begin looking for a pediatrician and schedule an appointment to help us understand better the health risks to the baby as a result of certain substance exposures in-utero. It is quite uncommon to have a baby that has had picture perfect 9 months prior to delivery complete with pre-natal care and free of tobacco and/or substance use. In order for us to make some informed decisions about what we are comfortable accepting, she recommends we meet with a pediatrician to get some sound medical advice about the varying risks.

We also need to make a decision about whether or not we are open to a baby of any race. This decision has so many implications on this process and the future. We are grateful for the comments our friends/family have given us but ultimately we need to work through this together and arrive at a decision. We plan to do some reading about transracial adoptions and also attend a Transracial Parenting workshop to help us gain some clarity around transracial families and raising children of different races.

In the next month we will be preparing our Profile Book which will include photos and narration about our lives, our family and friends. This is the book that will be presented to the birth-mothers. I am waiting for my Mac to get fixed so I can take advantage of the great iPhoto feature in order to being working on this!

Our First of the Home-study Meetings

So we are happy to report that we had a great meeting yesterday with our social worker. She is super nice and very knowledgeable and reassuring. She will work with us through the duration of the process - right through our placement and the adoption finalization in court 6 months after placement. It's fun to think about that far into the future when we actually have our baby!

We were with her for 3.5 hours! Mostly we talked about ourselves including our relationship, the path that lead us to adoption, our views about parenting, the greatest challenges we face, etc. Lots of talking! She was also able to give us lots of information to help us clarify the process and our own questions/concerns.

She explained in more detail how the matches are made. Just like we have ideas about our preferences for the child's age, sex, gender, race, etc., birth mothers also have their own preferences for the adoptive family. Although there are many families who are actively waiting for a placement, each family really is only "in competition" with a handful (3-4) of families whose preferences are the same as theirs. When a birth mother makes an adoption plan, her social worker contacts one or more agencies in order to find a match. In the case of a local adoption, all of this would happen within our agency because Lund works with both adoptive and birth families. Our social worker will then present the birth mother (via her social worker) with only the profiles that match her preferences. She then chooses the family that she wants to adopt her child. I'll post some more info in the next few days...too much to post in one sitting!

The home-study begins!

Happy Friday! We received a call from the social worker that will be working with us for the duration of the adoption process. What a great way to end the week! And, to top it off, her mom used to work with me at Essex! Small world! The home-study process involves three meetings, the purpose being to get to know us, to educate us about adoption in general and the adoption process and to complete the home visit/inspection. We have set up our first of three meetings for December 3. This meeting will take place at the Lund Center and will involve the three of us. The second meeting will also be at Lund, but will be meetings with Jon and me individually. The third will be our home visit. The 2nd and 3rd meeting times will be set at a later date. We'll keep you posted!

Local vs. Interstate Adoption

The Lund Center coordinates local and interstate adoptions. Because the Lund Center works regularly with young pregnant and parenting women, their clients may choose to place their child or baby for adoption with Lund and therefore the child would be adopted by adoptive parents who are adopting from Lund. The Lund Center is also connected to adoption agencies nation-wide and also gets referrals through this network.

A local referral would be made when the birth mother is about 7 month pregnant. We would likely meet the birth mother throughout the remaining time prior to delivery. We could meet her once or multiple times depending on her comfort level and ours, always at the Lund Center. In this case, we would likely be at the hospital during her delivery. We learned that in about 85% of these situations, the adoptive parents are actually in the delivery room with the birth mother! We would get to stay at the hospital and would take baby home from the hospital. In the state of Vermont, birth mothers may revoke their consent for adoption up to 21 days following birth. Talk about a long 21 days! The agency did tell us that this is very rare (phew!) and has happened only a handful of times in the last decade.

An interstate referral would look rather different. The birth mother would choose us, but we wouldn't know this until after the baby was born. After receiving "the call," we would drop everything and fly or drive to wherever in the country the baby was. We would then spend between a few days and a few weeks in the birth city in a hotel with baby waiting for state clearance to bring baby home. This time frame varies from state to state. In this situation, there's no anticipation time, but there is great family bonding time with no distractions during that waiting period out-of-state. Consent would be granted before we left the state, often before the birth mother even leaves the hospital.

We will prepare a life-book or portfolio which will be presented to birth mothers. In both cases, birth mothers choose their adoptive families. Each situation (local or interstate) has pros and cons, as you can see. We can not specify our preference for local or interstate ahead of time. We will be presented with situations as they arise and are free to accept or decline the situation(s) based on our preferences and circumstances. She said we may accept the first situation that is presented to us or we may decline 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 situations before finally accepting one. She assures us that when it's our baby, we'll know. Wild!

How to post

So, I'm new to this blogging thing, but it appears that you can post using your gmail account (if you have one) or by setting up an ID - see the bottom right. You can also select "Follow this blog."

The beginning

On September 30, 2008, we met with the Lund Family Center to learn more about adoption as a way to begin our family. After our very first visit, we knew that adoption was the right choice for us. The Lund Center coordinates primarily local and interstate adoptions. Each one will take us down different paths, but both lead to a newborn baby!

We have spent the last month preparing our home-study application. This 15 page application includes detailed biographical, professional, educational and financial information. In addition it includes information about our decision to adopt, our beliefs about parenting, and how our family and friends will support our decision to adopt. This application, accompanied by DMV records release, fingerprints and FBI background check, physicals, birth and marriage certificates and reference letters, is just the beginning of our adoption journey. We delivered this completed application to the Lund Center on October 23. We are grateful to our dear friends Jeannie & Chris Quintin, Ellen & Tim Emery, Colleen Birner & Evan Fitzgerald, and Holly Redding Cooper and Jeff Cooper for writing such beautiful reference letters on our behalf. We are thrilled to be beginning our adoption journey and are looking forward to one day bringing our baby home! Thank you for accompanying us and for your continued love and support.