Just a little note to let you know that at the moment we’re on hold. Jeff and I are taking a cruise at the end of August, so when the remainder of the money was put down at the end of June we temporarily had our file pulled so that we won’t be selected. Once we return in mid-September we’ll go back into the list and await the big day.
Otherwise, no news to report. No new calls or e-mails since my last update. As soon as I have something to report I’ll post it here.
We received a promising little e-mail from our social worker two months ago.
Just figured you would like some good feedback since I got some today. One of the other offices had a website inquiry sent to them and they were interested in your profile and another couple from the website. It was just an initial inquiry, and the social workers have not met with her yet, so we don’t know if the situation is a match for your key, but I wanted to know the website is working, and there is interest in your profile. If we eventually get an application from this woman I will let you know!
So for two months I’ve been patiently waiting to here more on this lead. She hasn’t written again though (on this subject). So I wrote her an e-mail this evening asking if she had any follow-up information on the lead. I doubt it’ll go anywhere, but one never knows. I’ll let you know what I hear back.
Update: Our social worker got back to us fast. Here’s her response:
The birth mother never responded to our contact. A placement from this inquiry never occurred. However, the positive piece is that you got some good feedback from a potential birth parent.
So nothing for us there. Oh well, was worth looking into.
I’ll let y’all know when there’s more to report.
About a month ago we got another call, this time about a birthmother working with their Pittsburgh office. She was due in two weeks, and was in excellent heath. She had tested HIV-negative and had been receiving prenatal care since the first trimester. All good signs.
The reason this was outside our key (and most keys) was that the birthfather’s race was something of an unkown, so they wanted to have approval from adoptive parents before their profiles were shown to the birthmother. According to my social worker, the mother is white but there were five possible birthfathers. One was Asian, three were white, and one was black (busy woman!).
Jeff and I talked it over, and we said we’d be glad to have our profile shown to her. Jeff figured nothing would come of it, but I spent the next week tip-toeing around the house wondering if I was about to become a daddy.
Sadly, it was not to be. Our social worker called us back and said the birthmother had picked another family. Ahh, poop.
Our day will come though, and so we remain patient but hopeful.
It’s been a few months since I’ve written so there’s a bit of news to report.
First up, we got another call from our social worker. This one was about a mother in the Delaware office who was giving birth that day (via C-section). The birthmother was relatively new to the agency, and they hadn’t had a chance to talk to her much about her situation. The social worker had met with her once but was unable to ask her about her drug history because the birthmother had brought her two children along. One can’t very well ask, “so how much cocaine have you been doing?” when her kids are there.
Unfortunately, it would have been good to know. The woman was giving birth several weeks prematurely and had tested positive for cocaine during routine bloodwork. Premature birth is a common side effect of cocaine during the third trimester.
The birthfather was another issue we were being called. She is white/Hispanic, but had no idea of the race of the birthfather. So the agency wanted us to understand that fact in advance.
The birthmother had told the social worker she wanted nothing to do with choosing the adoptive parents (and presumably, no contact with them later on). So under agency policy, the “winning” adoptive parents would be the parents who were being considered that had been waiting for a child the longest. We had only been waiting about three months at this point, so we probably wouldn’t be picked if we said yes.
So I gave Jeff a call at work and we did a crash session with Google to find out the effects of cocaine on unborn children. Premature birth was the biggie, but it was also linked with social development issues and potentially lower intelligence.
So after thinking about the issue we decided to pass. So we have no idea what became of the baby, but hopefully he or she found a loving family and will turn out okay.
Got a call from the agency a week or so ago. A case came up that was just outside our key, but close enough they wanted to ask if we wanted the birth mother to see our profile.
The case was a white mother with a half-Italian, half-black father. She discovered she was pregnant last November, well into the second trimester of her pregnancy. Unfortunately she had been drinking a fair amount (4-5 drinks, 2x week) during her pregnancy. She stopped drinking immediately after she learned she was pregnant.
After talking it over, Jeff and I decided to pass on this one. The race/ethnicity was slightly off our key, but that wasn’t the issue and we’d have been fine if that was all that was up. It was her drinking that concerned us. Drinking that much into the second trimester of the pregnancy puts the child at risk for fetal alcohol syndrome, something we just didn’t want to risk.
So we passed. No news since.
Special thanks to Willis and Sara for helping us take this picture to use with our “dear birthparent” letter.
Today we were videotaped talking about ourselves and our desire to adopt. Once we finished we turned in some paperwork, 15 copies of our “dear birthparents” letter, and a five thousand dollar check. Once the paperwork and videotapes propegate to the various offices we are “in the book” and officially waiting to be picked.
So this blog will be slowing down for a while. It’s a three-week to two-year wait to be picked. You’ll hear from us once the excitement begins.
After going back and forth between us we have managed to craft our dear birthparent letter. It reads…
Dear Birthparents,
To us, a family is a close-knit group of relatives who take care of each other in both good times and bad. Between us, our ever-growing family has four parents, six brothers and sisters and their partners, nine nieces and nephews, but no children. Jeff’s family lives in Iowa and we visit them twice each year. Stephen’s family is scattered around the country, with some being nearby, some in New Hampshire, and others being more distant.
We are a committed couple of 15 years living together in north-central New Jersey along the edge of the Watchung wildlife reservation. The community we live in has excellent schools, beautiful parks, and many community activities.
We would like to maintain contact with you through yearly visits, as well as letters and photographs of the child as he or she grows up. This is important to us because we want the child to have an understanding of where he or she came from. We realize you may not be comfortable with this level of contact, and would accept less if you wanted.
We both have master’s degrees. Jeff’s degrees are in art and art education, while Stephen’s degrees are in psychology and college administration. Jeff is employed full time as a web designer and Stephen is self-employed as a Internet webmaster. Because Stephen’s work schedule is flexible, Stephen will be a “stay-at-home-dad” for the foreseeable future.
Among our many hobbies are reading science fiction and fantasy books, playing computer games like World of Warcraft, listening to 80’s music, taking walks, playing with our three three-legged cats (yes, you read that right), watching television together, following liberal politics, and playing chess. We are intellectuals (but not nerds!) and so we tend to prefer quiet, bonding activities rather than sports and athletics.
In short, we are a loving couple that can offer a child a welcoming home with all of the opportunities a child needs. Love, security, and open-mindedness will always be central to our home.
Stephen & Jeff
Yesterday we had one of our final meetings with our social worker at the agency. This meeting was to learn about the “key” (the mega-detailed form that describes the type of child we were willing to adopt), how to write a “dear birthparents” letter, and what the actual process of adoption is like.
As I said, the key is extremely detailed. It covers everything from health to ethnicity to prenatal drug and alcohol use to mental illness to the circumstances of conception. Jeff and I talked a little about this on our way home from the meeting and it’s clear that we’re in some disagreement about how to fill it out. Jeff’ wants to be more strict while I favor a more relaxed approach. Well, we’ll see what we come up with. Something in the middle I imagine.
The dear birthparents letter is going to be at the same time both simple and difficult. How do you write a letter to convince someone that you are right to raise their child? It ain’t easy. But we read through a dozen or so sample letters, and we have access to plenty more if we really want to study examples. Yet the letters are mostly us talking about ourselves, and that’s something I’m very, very good at. I’ll sit down probably this weekend and whip something up.
Finally, we learned about the Interstate Compact and how that affects our adoption. Unless we’re lucky enough to have a mother that gives birth in New Jersey, we will have to travel out of state to pick up junior. That means the courts will have to approve the adoption before we can take the child over state lines back home. That’s where the Interstate Compact comes in. It’s a court review process that takes up to two weeks and requires we reside in the other state during that time. We’ll find a hotel or something to park out in, although we’d prefer something more cozy like a bed & breakfast. Well, we’ll see.
That’s pretty much it for now. Next step: put together the key and paperwork. And have our videotape session done on December 8. If we’re fast enough on the draw we can be “in the books” by December 10 and the waiting period can begin.
Well, we have completed our home visit and so our background check is now complete and we have been approved to adopt.
The home visit itself was considerably less stressful than we thought it would be. We had been told that it “wasn’t so bad”, but wasn’t expecting that it would last only 20 minutes! Our social worker arrived, sat down, and asked us a few background questions about the neighborhood and our views on discipline. Both were subjects that had been covered in the paperwork we had handed in. We proceeded to give her a tour of the house, after which she announced she was done.
Easy and simple. We thought it would be at least an hour. We weren’t disappointed, but… surprised.