Fall Adoption Training Seminar

It was so good to get together with other waiting and adoptive families for our training seminar this past weekend!  I would like to say that it was super fun, lively, and inspiring.  However, I think that the words emotional, draining, info-packed, and... I don't want to say it, but... discouraging, are a little more accurate.  

The emotions brought up by a good interview with a birth mom who placed her child just five months ago aren't necessarily a bad thing, but they do kinda add to the draining factor.  I can't seem to hold it together very well when I listen to a birth mom tell the story of how she came to the decision to relinquish her child.  

Listening to the birth mom explain how she chose the family for her child was interesting and will no doubt be helpful as I revamp our profile book this month!  After she described looking through a profile book of a couple who showed off all of their awesome travel photos, she said, "I am looking for a loving home for my baby, not a destination!"  Uh oh, better count how many vacation photos I put in our profile book.  Then she described the things about the family's profile that helped her to know that it was the right one for her.  In what they wrote, they had emphasized their love for the Lord and their focus on raising their children in a home with strong Christian values.  From everything I have read or heard so far, it really seems that the birth moms just know when they have found the right family.  We can't all write the same things, or the right things, or have the perfect set of family pictures that will be sure to get us chosen.  I have to continually remind myself that God has all of this down already.  He knows who will choose us (if indeed that is His plan), and nothing that I can do with our profile will change the outcome.  

I sure can't stop tinkering with that photo book online though, lol.  

The seminar was info-packed, to say the least.  Our topics this time centred around the time when you get the call, and what all occurs between then and the adoption finalization.   A lot.  That is what happens.  And, it is different every time.  No two adoptions go the same, and it appears that there is no real textbook scenario for how this all goes down.  When the baby is born, the birth mom will sign papers a day or two later.  Then, after the papers are signed, ten days need to pass before you are out of the woods.  Until midnight on the 10th day, the birth mom can change her mind.  This gives her a chance to continue to think through her decision.  Fortunately, a lot of counselling goes on before the birth in hopes that she will be quite certain ahead of time.  

We were given some advice about what to do during this time.  It was suggested that we ask if we can take some pictures of each person (maybe some of the birth mom and her family members) with the baby, and print them off to give to the birth mom before she leaves the hospital.  We were also advised to keep in touch with the birth mom throughout the 10 days and offer opportunities to visit, in order to reassure her that her child is safe and well.  We were also told that this will be the hardest 10 days of our life.  We will have a baby with us, but it won't be truly ours.  

I think that I may need to pray a bit during this time.  

After that the baby bliss begins!  Actually, I believe that is when the sleepless nights and spit-up on the sweater begins.

There was a lot more information talk, but I will spare you the details.  I think that it was the sheer amount of information that made it draining.  Like, when your brain has reached its max information uptake for the day, but there is still three hours left in the seminar.

So, the discouraging part.  I was so hoping to hear this weekend that a whole ton of adoptions had gone through since the last seminar, and that we are just cruising down the list of waiting families, soon to be shown to expectant parents.  Uh, no.  That is about the opposite of how things have gone the past six months at CAS.  Not only has there been only three adoptions completed this whole calendar year, but one adoption was revoked before the ten day period.  This stat is an anomaly for the agency as last year they placed 11 babies and the year before it was around nine or so.  Anyways, what this means for us, is that we are no closer to getting a placement.  While it does depend on the birth mom choosing us, we also have be close enough to the top of the list that our profile will be shown.

I have to keep all of this information in perspective though.  A fellow adoption blogger had this quote on one of her posts recently, and I really identify with it.  

All things are made beautiful in His time,  Ecclesiastes 3:11.  God needs us to wait.  So we will wait.  And we will pray for our birth mother, and for the baby we will eventually call son or daughter.

Initial Consultation with the agency

I must say that one of the most nerve-wracking meetings was the initial consultation we had with one of the social workers from the CAS agency.  This meeting was done after we completed the application, but before we had the home study.  

The setting?  Small neighbourhood coffee shop in Edmonton sitting around a table near a fireplace.  Drinking lattes, of course.  Ben and I arrived early, trying to calm our jitters.

We knew that the meeting was meant as a way to determine if we were 'right' for the agency and if the agency was 'right' for us.  There are a few things that set this agency apart from other private agencies in the province, and those things needed to be discussed.

CAS has three requirements that applicants must comply with in order to move on to the home study part of the pre-adoption screening.  Openness, Christianity, and infertility.

Discussing our infertility is usually the first thing that I like to talk about with people I have never met and in a public setting.  Not.  Actually, once we got the ice broken with some introductions and small talk, there is really nowhere to go but to the nitty gritty! The reason we were there was to discuss these topics, so we might as well get down to it.  Something about the social worker, made it very easy once the conversation was going.  She needed to know that we for sure were unable to become pregnant on our own, were not continuing to try any other infertility treatments like IVF, and that we had grieved our losses.  We actually didn't know that we would have to talk about this, so emotionally it was a bit stressful for me.  We were definitely done with all other attempts at having children through reproductive technology, but to say that we have grieved our loss completely was a bit of a stretch.  The loss is still huge, and I don't think that it will ever be completely gone.  However, we did feel ready to wholeheartedly welcome an adopted child!  I think that our losses will always be with us, just like they are when someone experiences the loss of a child through miscarriage...healing can happen, but the memories and love and pain are still there.    

Christianity was the second requirement of CAS.  When birth parents go there to look for an adoptive family for their child, they are specifically choosing for their child to be raised by a Christian family.  They may be Christians themselves, or not, but see the benefits of their children being Christians.  Another reason that birthparents may chose Christian parents for their child is that they believe they will get a stronger commitment to an open relationship.

This brings us to the third requirement, openness.  Open adoptions are the norm nowadays.  It is required through CAS that we commit to having some form of visitation with the birth family (whoever wishes to be involved). The amount of visitation varies based on what the birth family and adoptive family agrees on.  This is also part of how they match us as well, depending on what we would like in terms of openness.  Part of the openness agreement will be sending pictures or letters telling about milestones and achievements.  Often visitation and the need send pictures will decrease as the years go by and the birth parents become more comfortable with the adoptive family.  

We admit that openness seemed like a difficult thing to commit too.  I know it is selfish, but somehow the idea of going home with your baby and never looking back is more appealing.  However, once we were able to do some reading (before the consultation) and listen to the social worker talk about the many benefits of openness we know that it is absolutely the better option for all families involved!  Knowing who their birth parents (or at least their birth mother) is, greatly reduces the unknowns for the adopted child.  It is also encouraged that we, as adoptive parents, tell our child their story (with only age appropriate details) from the time that they are very young.  Adoption is not secret or shameful, it is done out of love and hope for the future!

Both Ben and I left the meeting feeling very encouraged! The social worker was so warm and she answered soooo many questions for us.  We had two hours of easy conversation and came out of there knowing so much more about adoption than we did going in. 

From there it was on to the bigger stuff like writing our home study self report and then getting the home study started!       

Filling out the Application

Overwhelming.  That is about the only word to describe the pile of paperwork needing to be completed when applying to an adoption agency.  However, like the meme suggests, there are just some things worth spending time on!

For our agency the necessary documents include:

-detailed application: covers all basic information about your family including financials 

-criminal record check

-request for intervention check (to see if the ministry of families has been involved in any situations...so, probably a good idea)

-medicals

-letter from employers confirming employment and salary

-statement of faith

-4 reference forms: 1 pastor, 1 coworker, 2 friends... people who have known you for more than 3 years

-a 12 page photo album of your family/life (more pictures than words)  This is your profile book that will be shown to the birthparents.  It doesn't need to be completed until your application is approved.

And finally, the dreaded...

-Home Assessment Self Report:  This document can be completed after sending in all of the aforementioned forms, but will take a while!  In this report, you are asked to answer just under 80 questions about yourself from topics like, personality, health, education, employment history, religion, family history, relationships, home and community, and motivation to adopt.  For Ben and I, this took us about 10-12 hours each.  Some of the questions require a short answer and others and couple of sentences.  We wrote our answers in paragraph form.  

This kind of questioning can at first feel somewhat intrusive, but the beauty of it is that it is actually meant to prepare you for the interview aspects of the application screening.  By getting us to answer all of these questions we had to do a lot of thinking about our lives, past and present.  We had to think about the strengths and weaknesses of our marriage, and the reasons that we were hoping to adopt.  It's one thing to think that we would be able to answer those questions in an interview, but getting the chance to hash things out in conversation and writing over a week or two is such a blessing!

The finished document says a lot about who we are as a family and was a great way for the ladies at the agency to get to a deep understanding of us in a short time.  

I think that I remembered all of the forms here!  Really, it took me about a month to have all of those things completed, not including the photo album.  The hardest parts are the ones that require getting someone else involved, like the medicals, references, employer letter and criminal record check.  That, and having enough quiet time to write 18 pages single-spaced for the Home Study Self Report!

In my next post I'll write about the meetings that we had with the ladies from the agency, including the Home Study, dun, dun, dun...

And the story begins part 2

The decision to adopt now had been an easy one.  We had considered it years earlier, before Logan, and said that we would probably revisit the idea later on.  We were so excited to get the process started!  We feel that being called to this amazing path will be such a blessing to us.  We are learning so much with every step that we take.  

When the time came for us to put some real adoption plans into place I started researching online.  We didn't know very much at this point about what agencies were out there, or which one we should choose.  I had known of families who had adopted or were currently adopting through Christian Adoption Services, so that was the first agency that I looked into.  There are two other private adoption agencies in Alberta as well, Adoption By Choice, and Adoption Options.  I made a few phone calls and ordered the application packages.  When speaking with the ladies at the agencies it became apparent that the statistics for how long families wait before they have a child placed is very similar among the agencies.  Usually, you are waiting two to three years.  Of course, there is a chance of a shorter wait period and a chance at a longer one.  With birthmothers choosing the family for their child, it doesn't go in the order of how long a family has waited.

In the end, we decided to go with Christian Adoption Services for a couple of reasons.  When I phoned, I was able to talk to someone who had been with the agency for 20 or more years.  She was knowledgeable and kind, and ready to answer my questions.  The cool thing was, I told her that I really didn't know what to ask, that I was trying to determine which agency we should apply with, but that I didn't even know where to start!  She then told me all of the basics, including what things I should weigh when making our choice.  One of biggest things that solidified our choice was that the agency is small.  We have a chance to KNOW the ladies who work there, and they KNOW who we are as well.  Since there are about 20-30 waiting families, we are not lost in a crowd.  I'm not sure how big Adoption by Choice is, but at Adoption Options, there were over 150 waiting families when I contacted them.  When I phone CAS (Christian Adoption Services) or send an email we get a quick reply from one of the ladies that we've met or already spoken with on the phone.  I know that it might sound like a small thing, but when going through something as emotionally charged and personal as an adoption application, home study, wait period, and actual adoption, I appreciate knowing who the small group of ladies are that we will be working with.  The other clincher for us, is their mandate.  Not only are they facilitating adoptions, they are doing it with the worldview of Christianity.  Their mission is to "demonstrate the love and compassion of Jesus Christ by placing children in permanent and loving families."  Sharing a faith in God really helped us to connect with CAS.

Don't get me wrong, I think that the other two agencies would have been excellent choices as well; we just had to go with the good feeling we got after speaking with CAS.

Once we had made our decision and got working on the application package, the feeling of urgency was pretty strong!  All of a sudden, knowing that the application and home study would take several months was a painful thought.  Why hadn't we started this earlier?

This is getting to be a pretty long post, so I will continue with the application process in my next post.  

Our Road to Adoption

Welcome to my first blog!!!  Having a blog is never something I have thought about doing until now... now that we are going through the adoption process.  We are now waiting to adopt in Alberta, Canada, through Christian Adoption Services.

As Ben and I started to look into adoption I found myself reading information books and information websites, but mostly, people's stories.  Out of all of the things I have read, the blogs written by families who were adopting helped me the most.  So, I thought maybe I would do the same!  

If our story is able to help anyone learn more about how adoption works in Alberta, or about what it is like to go through the process, or about the fact that there are families ready and excited to adopt, then I will consider it a success!

This is also a way for us to keep our friends and family up to date on our adoption process, share in our waiting, and share in our excitement!

I hope that you enjoy reading this blog.  I plan to update it as things happen.....which can take a while...we are talking about adoption here, lol.  I will need to do a few posts to catch up to where we are now in the process, and I will be working on those right away.  Please feel free to comment on any of my posts!