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!