UPDATE: read all about it!

Finally, I can announce that we have completed everything for adoption through the state foster system. Tonight was our final home visit! We started this process back in February and it is such a relief to finally be finished. Now, our social worker will complete our home study and it will be submitted for a final review at the state. After it is approved we will wait and see what doors God opens for us and what kids we are matched with. It feels like I am on the interstate and there are several exits I can take that all get me to the same store, but instead I am pursuing becoming a mom and I am looking at several ways to grow our family. We know we want several kids and so we are open to sibling groups under the age of 8.

When we were going through the classes it seemed like the home study would be so hard and they would be asking prying questions, but that was not the case at all. The process that led up to the home study included 10 weeks of classes from 6-9 for a total of 30 hours. During each class we would go over different topics, for example one week we discussed how to discipline abused children. Obviously, a child that has been abused and beaten is not going to respond well to spankings and so we discussed alternatives. From that meeting we would do a homework assignment called Strengths/Needs. Taking what we learned we would write one strength and one need. For example, I would write that a strength was learning alternative discipline methods when I was studying for my psychology degree and a need would be to maintain consistency and follow-through each time. They were not hard at all, but they really made you think!

The home study basically takes all the strength/needs we submitted and we talk about them in more detail. They use these to learn more about our personality and how we handle different situations. Our social worker was really surprised that we don’t fight in our relationship- we never have. We had to go into detail discussing how we handle conflict if we don’t fight (I guess not too many people know this, but you can disagree and discuss issues without fighting and screaming?). We were also surprised at the questions she asked in concern to dealing with the grief of our babies. We have had peace about all three babies and know that God has a great plan for our life. She said that most couples that would have gone through that would not have been able to remain married. What shocked me the most is that she asked us to go see the agency counselor so they can have in the file that we met with someone to discuss it and that we have handled the grief. I was also a little surprised that I was asked to get a formal letter from my nephrologist stating that my disease is not life threatening and I would be healthy enough to parent. The reason that was so shocking is that I already had a physical for this whole process and there was an entire paragraph written at the physical discussing my kidney disease and that it is stable and not life threatening.  I was so scared when I had to get a physical because I normally call my nephrologist for any problems I may have and I don’t have a family doctor. So when I got my physical I was seeing a stranger and he didn’t know a thing about me, I was so scared he would say I was not healthy enough.

I’m so glad that this process is complete, we should hear from the state in about 2 months that our home study has been approved and then we wait to be matched. 

If you’re excited about the good news leave me a smile please! :)