The Nursery!

What do you I do while we wait?  Well, I probably spend a little too much time thinking about and planning the nursery!  Who says you can't nest if you are waiting for an adoption placement?  Hubby, on the other hand, doesn't feel the need to get too much nursery stuff done and so, sad to say, half of my nursery is still an office :)   

There are a few different opinions out there about when the right time is to get the baby's room ready and when to buy supplies:

1. Get it all ready as soon as you are approved to adopt and then close the door.

2.  Get it all ready as soon as you are approved to adopt and then go in and out of the room several times a day...sit in the chair...dream about baby....tweak the room a bit....think about what else you need to buy...etc...etc...etc...

3. Get it ready once you have been chosen by a birthmother (which sometimes happens at the time of birth, so you may have 2 months - no time at all). With this option it is possible that you will have to do the nursery while you have the baby already at home!  Yikes! 

4. Do only the bare minimum until the adoption is past the crucial 10 day period (adoptions can be revoked before the 10 days).  With this option you would buy diapers and other essentials only.

For us, we had to make a few compromises :)  Ben was thinking that if I put my heart into doing up the room and making a quilt for the baby, and then we never got chosen or it took a long time (2-3 years), that it would be too hard on us (especially me, lol). We would eventually have to take it all apart and sell everything.  While that possibility is quite real, I still really wanted to get everything ready once we were approved!  I couldn't see myself feeling ready unless I physically had the room done!  

And, I just really wanted to do it :)

So..... here is the progress:

The first move I made in doing up this room was to choose some cool fabrics for the baby's quilt!
Making quilts is one of my favourite things to do, and sewing this one for the baby was very special to me.  I chose
a pinwheel pattern because I think it is just so classic and cutesy.

You may not notice, but I still need to sew the outer binding onto this quilt :)

This is a bird mobile that I sewed before Logan was born.  I did a gender neutral nursery
 that time too, so it was easy to work it into this room. 

This is a vintage applique quilt that my mom made sometime in the 70's.  Each square has a different
adorable picture and I just love it!

These little cowboy boots were handed down to us by Ben's nieces :)  They have now
been worn by 3 little ones.

So, as you can see, Ben let me go for it in there ;)  I avoided taking pictures of the other side of the room that has the office desk and printer, lol.  That side will be the future home of the change table/dresser. I know that this room will slowly evolve as we wait and as I get new ideas.  Somewhere in there I would like to add some artwork with the text, "you are so loved."   

Spring Training Seminar

Back in April we were able to take part in session one of two required adoption training seminars led by CAS.  I had no idea just how valuable this training would be and we are glad that CAS offers this kind of training prior to making a placement.  While we have been reading up on adoption and what to expect, the more we get into the process, the more we realize we don't know!  

Both the spring and fall training seminars must be completed before our profile book will be shown to expectant mothers. 

The full day spring session covered topics like living with infertility, and open adoption relationships.This seminar was also a fantastic opportunity for us to meet 11 other couples that are currently waiting to adopt in Alberta (though a few were just in the checking-it-out stage) through CAS.  We sat at tables with other couples and shared our stories and hopes!  Being in a room with so many other infertile couples, all of whom have felt the pain of that loss, was really encouraging for us.  We were able to discuss how it is to live with so many fertile couples around us who either have children or are expecting.  The pain in the room was palpable.  Some couples had suffered miscarriages, others IVF failures, and others had been waiting many years and not been chosen.  Others had gone through failed adoption through foster care situations or had babies revoked before the adoption completion date. Ben and I couldn't help but feel a little extra thankful for our son.

We were able to look through some of the older profile books that families had with the agency.  This gave me a lot of ideas on how I can update our book latter this fall.  There was also a table of adoption related books and other resources that we could look through.

Later in the seminar we got to meet with an adoptive mom, dad, and their three year old son.  The little boy's birth dad and birth grandparents also came.  They shared a little bit of their story, and then let us ask them any questions we wanted to ask!   This was an awesome opportunity to see first hand how an open adoption relationship could potentially function.  I kept looking to see how the little boy interacted with his dad and with his birth dad.  I would say that his interactions with his birth dad were about equivalent to how you might expect an uncle and nephew to interact.  He was bringing his birth dad carrots from the food table, and talking with him a little bit.  With his dad, however, he was very close.  He was sitting on the floor near his feet and playing with toys, coming up onto his lap and cuddling, then going down to play again.  The physical and emotion bond appeared very strong!  

We concluded the afternoon by listening to and interviewing a birth mother who had placed her daughter roughly a year before.  That was a very eye opening experience!  There was not a dry eye in the room as she described what she all went through and how she made her decision to place.  She shared a lot about the ups and downs of her open relationship with the adoptive family.  Overall, I think we learned most about the things that we can do to make this better for the birth mom. Through communication and consistency, whether it be in regards to visitation or sending photos, we will need to be very clear about what her expectations are, and what our expectations are.  She really needed to feel like the lines of communication were open and dependable in order to feel at all comfortable as the months went on after the placement.  She had both Ben and I, and many others, in tears several times as she spoke about her emotional roller coaster after the placement.  Though I thought I had empathy for birth mothers before, I now have seen firsthand just how painful this process is for them and I know that I will have a lot of love and understanding for our birth mother.  Honestly, the thought of the sadness for her overwhelms me even as I write this.  

We are very excited to be attending the fall training seminar this October!  Here is the flyer:

CHRISTIAN  ADOPTION  SERVICES

AUTUMN ADOPTION WORKSHOP

Surviving the Real World of Open Adoption

 The “Nuts and Bolts” Session

You have been matched with a birthmother and have made it through that nerve-wracking first meeting. You receive the call that your birthmother has gone into labour.  What now? At this session we will walk you through the hospital process and the 10 days after the Consent is signed.  We will run through possible open adoption scenarios and we will discuss topics such as: “Will I feel like the child’s mother when the birth mother is visiting?”, “Am I the “real” mother/father?”, and “How legal is an open adoption?”  

Hear from a birthmother and from a family who have adopted through us.

Bring your own questions.

This is one part of a two-part required course for all of our domestic couples. 

If you’ve been waiting on the list a while, feel free to come again; this would be a great refresher!!

Call to register; there is no charge to couples already in our parent bank.  The cost is $250 if you are not yet on the waiting list and will be applied to your fees should you proceed to the parent bank. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. 

Phone Sandy at 403 256-3224 or toll free at 1 877 256-3224.

Sounds like it is going to be a great seminar!  Updates to follow :)

                                                                                  

Our 'Dear Expectant Parent' letter

One of the things that needed to be written is our 'dear expectant parent' letter.  This is a letter that gets included with our profile book, and is read by birthmothers when they are trying to chose a family.  Some of these things are written in our profile book as well.  

This was a tough letter to write, knowing that it may only get read if someone has already connected with our pictures, or that it might get scanned over quickly along with several other letters.  I wanted it to be clear and easy to read... a quick snapshot of us and how we view adoption. 

I may revise it as time goes on and as I think more and more about what I would want to say to a birth mother and what I would want her (and her partner/family) to know about us.  We are also attending an adoption training seminar in October, and I bet I will revise it tonnes after that too!  It is a bit of a work in progress.

I included our letter here:

"Welcome!

We are Ben and Ali, and we thank you so much for taking the time to look at our profile to learn more about us.  We are grateful that you have chosen to consider adoption and commend you for your courage and strength to choose life for your child.  We share in your desire to make the best decision for you and for your child.  We pray that God will give you the strength and peace you need on the road ahead of you.                

                                             

Please me us introduce ourselves.  Ben and I grew up in northern BC.  We met in 1999 and married in 2003.  While we dated, I completed my elementary teaching degree and Ben completed his power engineering.  We knew from the start that I was medically unable to carry a baby and that we would need to be patient and trust God's plan for our family to unfold.  It has been quite a journey through infertility and longing to have a family, but the Lord has been faithful and we are so blessed.  He gave us many years together as a couple to build our marriage and help us grow into the people we are now.

  

  We have one son named Logan, born in 2010, who was carried for us by a friend as a surrogate mother. This was such an incredible gift to us!  We are not pursuing having any other children this way and are excited to expand our family through adoption!  We are a happy and loving family with strong family values and a foundation in God's word.  We can offer your child all the love and nurturing of a dedicated and established family.  We have completed our home study and are approved to adopt in Alberta.

As a family we love to bike ride, camp, go to parks, eat ice cream, go boating, go fishing, attend Bible study, go to Church on Sundays, go skating, play ice hockey, go swimming, read books, play lego, have BBQs, and travel!  We have brought Logan to swimming lessons, gymnastics for toddlers, library programs, preschool, and skating lessons.  While we do keep busy, I am a stay at home mom, so we have lots of down time together at home as well.  

We feel so blessed to be able to pursue adoption as a means of creating our family.  We know that this is a call from God and we are willing and ready and very excited to bring another child into our family.  If we have the honour of parenting your child we promise to provide a loving and secure home where God is the centre of all we do.

We have every intention of keeping in contact with our adopted child's birth family if they choose, and if it is a safe situation for everyone involved.  We would like our adopted child to know who his/her birth relatives are and that they have so many people who love them and care about them.  We want them to know their story...of how they were loved very much before they came to live with us and the hard decisions that were made by their birth parents in order for them to become part of our family.  We would like to make a workable plan with our child's birth family for things such as photos, emails, phone calls, and visits (depending on circumstances).  We believe open adoption is a healthy option for both baby and birth parents, to help in the healing process.

Humbled by the weight of your decision, we hope that we can help you fulfil your desire to find a loving family for your child.  If you feel our family is the right one for your child, we would be honoured to welcome your child into our home.  We are excited and ready to begin this journey with you.  May you find strength and peace through this time in your life, and may God bless you for the amazing courage you have!  

-Ben and Ali "    

               

Home Study

Okay, back to the application process!  

After being given the go ahead to schedule a home study, work really began.  We had to have our massive Home Study Self Report (consisting of about 18 pages of typed answers to questions about our personality, health, education, employment history, religion, family history, relationships, home and community, and motivation to adopt) completed so that we could give it to the social worker during our home study. 

We were super nervous about this part of the process probably because of how personal things had become.  No longer were we sending off papers in the mail, now we were exposing our pasts, our home, and our future goals to a stranger.  A stranger who had a fair amount of say in how our adoption dreams played out.

Now, luckily, there is another family in our church who is a few months ahead of us in this process.  That adoptive mom and I were able to get together once and talk about how the home study would go.  This was a huge deal for us because she calmed a lot of our (my) fears about what would actually take place when the worker was at our home.  The worker wouldn't be opening closet doors, kitchen cupboards, looking for child proofing, or anything like that.  So, while I did want my home to be clean and organized, I didn't have to have it perfect!  That was important, because I did feel a little overwhelmed at that point with trying to have everything prepared well.  The other thing that this mom told me was that the worker won't think it is a bad thing for there to be a little bit of 'kid mess' here and there, besides, you do live in the house and raise a child there!   

The first home study meeting took place on a Sunday afternoon.  The worker arrived and was very chatty and had a sense of humour, so we knew right away that it would probably be easy to keep the conversation going.  We pretty much went straight to our kitchen table and did the rest of the meeting there.  

I thought that since we had covered so much ground with our home study self report that we would talk about other things with this worker.  Nope.  She basically asked us all of the same questions that were in the report.  I must say that it was easier to write those answers than say them when you are nervous.  When writing you can think for a bit and then even revise it later. Here, you had to be quick to answer and hope not to jumble your words or say something that you didn't really intend.  

While it was good to be answering questions that we had already written answers to, it was tough to talk about some of the topics.  Nothing in your past, present, or future was off limits.  I do feel that it is very important for the worker to get the best sense of who you are as people, what your struggles have been, how you parent or hope to parent, and what you hope for your future family.  So, even though some things were hard to discuss, we understand the process and were happy to get through this part.  Don't get me wrong, a lot of the discussion topics were super easy to chat about as well :)

One thing that we weren't all that prepared for was taking a test/survey about ourselves, families, past, and relationships.  It was one of those tests were you had to answer questions about your spouse and they had to answer those same questions about themselves.... and they needed to match :)  I think we did okay.  

We were a little worried about the part in the interview when the worker would ask our son questions!  What would he say?  Would he talk to her at all?  He was barely three at the time so just a little on the unpredictable side!  Anyways, he did well.  I don't remember what she asked him, maybe what he likes to do with his mom and dad or something like that.  He wouldn't say much to her, but he did say that he wants to teach his new brother or sister how to drive.

Once about two hours had gone by the interview was over and the worker took a short tour of the house.  She didn't even open all of the doors, so I had done a lot of extra cleaning!  But, could you imagine taking the chance and not making your home look as welcoming as possible?  No.  We felt good when she left.  Nothing had been too hard.  We hadn't said anything incredibly stupid.  

Did you think we were done?  Nope, not yet.  After a few weeks we had to meet up with this worker again for one on one interviews.  On her turf this time.  We thought that the first home study interview was personal.  This next one went to the next level.  I definitely can't say that the worker doesn't do her job to screen out the people that maybe shouldn't adopt.  She knows more about the two of us than anyone else out there!  And we passed!

It took a couple of weeks of waiting before I sent an email to the worker to see how she was doing on writing up our report.  She hadn't really started, but the email did get her going.  After a couple of revisions, which we had a say in, our report was complete about a month after we met the worker.  

It wasn't long after that that we received our approval letter.  That was such a good feeling!  Those four months of applications, forms, and meetings were stressful and hard work at times.  But, once you get approved it is pretty easy to forget all of that and just look forward!  That was January, 2014.  Now we are in September, 2014, and while the wait is long, and only going to get longer, we are hopeful and ready.  

God knows what the future holds and we rest in that.  We pray for patience and for the health and safety of the child who will someday be ours.  

Now is the fun part.  In my next post I will share a sneak peak at our adoption profile book!