Adoption Update

driving somewhere between Yellowstone NP and Grand Teton NP

the road to our destination is rarely as straight as this: there's always twists and turns and ups and downs and changing scenery to distract us along the way

It’s been awhile since I talked about our adoption plans.

We were waiting until May, when Mr M’s work schedule calmed down a lot, to start our paperwork, but ended up not having the time to do so before we left on our road trip.

Now we’re home and getting caught up on things like emails, and one email caught my attention. It was a newsletter from an adoption agency and it mentioned some kiddos that had been matched with families this week. It also mentioned some info on China’s recent changes to their adoption policy. Since we’re super early in the process and not in a position to be grandfathered into anything, I thought I’d better find out what those changes were. They went into effect while we were gone and I’d missed them completely.

I followed the link and found some less-than-welcome news.

A number of changes were made, but there’s one that impacts us: the youngest child in the adoptive family has to be at least three years old before the dossier can be submitted.

Our cute little Ocean just barely turned two, so we’re a year from turning in our paperwork.

However, there’s a lot of work to be done before we can submit our paperwork, so we don’t actually have to wait until next summer to get started. I confirmed this with our adoption agency, and they recommended starting the process seven months before Ocean’s birthday.

So the current timeline will look something like this (we can’t really pinpoint anything because there’s way too much we don’t have control over):

Jan 2018: start filling out paperwork, do home study, get everything ready to go

July 2018: submit completed dossier to China

Sometime in 2019 (hopefully the first half of the year): travel to China and bring home our little girl

A number of changes were made to their adoption policy, but there were three that stood out to me: the minimum age that I mentioned earlier, a cap of 5 children already living in the house, and you can only adopt one child at a time, unless they are siblings.

I’m not sure of the reasoning behind the last one, unless it’s to limit adoptions. They’ve also made it so you can’t reuse paperwork from a previous adoption and you have to wait a year in between submitting applications. Though I guess adopting just one at a time, and not too close together, would make it easier to provide the attention and care the child will need.

I feel like that’s the case with the minimum age and the maximum number of kids rules: to make sure adoptive parents aren’t overwhelmed and have the time and energy to properly care for the adopted child, as well as any other children in the family.

On the one hand, it’s a bit frustrating since I’m an impatient person and I wanted to be able to move forward with things. On the other hand, it gives us a bit more time to get in a better position to pay for an expensive adoption and to get my businesses to the point that they don't need quite so much hands-on attention from me.

Having the timeline taken out of our hands also removes any stress we might have about when we’re moving forward. And it also allows us to make some plans for next year or so. We were hesitant to make any plans because we thought we’d be making a trip to China sometime in the coming spring-summer-fall. With that off the table for now, we can move ahead with other plans for the summer.

So that's where we're at for now. Once we start the paperwork and home study I'll probably talk a bit about them, but that's a number of months in the future. Lots of other things to do in the meantime!

Adoption Update

Christmas morning. River wasn't thrilled with the picture taking so this is as good as it got. 

At least Sunshine is happy :)

I haven't mentioned adoption for awhile now because a lot has changed and we've had a lot to think about and consider. First, our adoption plans were put on hold when we got pregnant with River. Then about 6 months later we received notification that our agency is no longer doing home studies. They'll work with us through the rest of the process (web site with our info, birth parent counseling, etc), but we have to choose someone else to do our home study and coordinate the adoption.

This means our costs would be at least doubled and we would have to redo our paperwork, since our original home study has expired.

When we realized this, it raised a lot of questions. We initially decided to hold off on any decisions since we were already "on hold" until River turned a year old. Of course, we still considered our options while we waited.

Some of my thought processes over the last 10 months or so: 
My original thought when I got pregnant with River was that it would make it possible for me to nurse the adopted baby, as long as we were able to adopt before he stopped nursing.

I have a really hard time believing that paperwork for the adoption process costs as much as agencies try to make us believe.

We don't have that kind of money sitting around, which makes it a lot less likely that we would go through with a domestic infant adoption.

{pre-current-pregnancy thought} Do we still want to adopt? We don't know. I was finally ok with just having two kids. It took me years, time in therapy, and the birth of River to get to that point, though.

{pre-current-pregnancy thought} On the one hand, I felt for some time that I might have a second pregnancy in me, but never felt strongly about a third. So if I don't get pregnant again, are we still supposed to adopt, or was it a place holder to keep me sane while waiting for River to join our family? Either way, planning on adopting did help me stay in a better place than I otherwise would have been.

{pre-current-pregnancy thought} I do feel like there's a girl out there waiting for us, but while I was able to get pregnant with River, I don't have a strong feeling that I'll get pregnant again- before him I felt like there might be one more pregnancy.  This girl has a specific name, which wasn't the case with Sunshine or River- we weren't completely sure about River's name even after we came home.  {Now that I'm pregnant: I'm really curious to see if this baby is a girl. If it's not, that raises a whole slew of other questions.}

{pre-current-pregnancy thought} Pregnancy and L&D weren't great with Sunshine, but they were a much better experience with River. Was this to leave me with a better memory/impression/feeling because I'm done, or because there's another kiddo waiting to be born to us and I need to not be put off by the bad experience I had with Sunshine?

Present-day thoughts:
And now that I'm pregnant again, it raises more questions. If our original agency still facilitated adoptions, we would no longer be able to work with them anyway, since once you have three kiddos you're no longer eligible to adopt through them. This allows other families with fewer (or no) children to benefit from their services as well. We had originally thought we'd take the hold off our profile when River turned 1 year old. When we prayed about which agency to go with, we felt best about the one we chose. This makes me think that that decision was to help me cope while we waited for River to join our family.

The prospect of two under two is a bit daunting, especially since it's taken so long to get to that point. It's not like we're young newlyweds popping out the kiddos. This baby will be born just before our 14th wedding anniversary. While I'm looking forward to it, I know it will be a lot of work.

Acknowledging that makes it easier to make an interim decision about adoption and our family. We don't have the money to pursue a domestic infant adoption (our original first choice) and having two littles already drastically reduces our desire to pursue infant adoption.

We could pursue an international adoption (which was never on our preferred list), but they are also very expensive and the adjustment period can be hard on everyone. That's a bit more than I think I can handle with two little ones. Not to mention an extended stay in a foreign country that may or may not be celiac friendly while we wait for paperwork and red tape to be resolved.

We could look into adoption through foster care, which would require little to no expense on our part (and may even pay us money), but the children in foster care are there because their home life was too chaotic or unsafe for them to remain there. As a result, they usually have at least some emotional/physical/mental issues that I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with at this point in my life. Especially since we never know when Mr M may be deployed again, leaving me to deal with all the issues, and how they affect the other children, all by myself.

So what did we decide?
We'll hold off for now. When River and the baby are older (probably Sunshine's age or older) we will most likely look into fost-adopt. We feel like the kiddos need to be old enough to understand why their new sibling is having a hard time adjusting or dealing with life, and our children won't be that old for awhile. And being realistic, I know my limitations and it would be difficult for me to deal with a tween, two littles, and a foster child and still take care of my other responsibilities and commitments.

Our adoption plans really did keep me sane and help me cope with life in the years of dealing with infertility and miscarriages and I'm grateful for that. Our plans may not be turning out how we thought they would, but that's ok. It just means we make new plans and see if those turn out like we think they will. The need for foster parents is definitely a real one, so I can see us keeping that in the back of our minds while the kidlets grow and starting the process when we all feel we're ready.

Family Pictures

Way back at the beginning of January we did a photo shoot so we could update our adoption profile. A few weeks later we found out I was pregnant and a lot of things got put on hold. Like posting those photos. So, now that they're 6 months old, here's our most recent family photos.

The Three of Us

Mr M and I

Mr M and LMS

I love this view! I've taken several similar pics over the years of the two of them- I need to make a collage or something to show them off. (the second pic in this post is my favorite in that group)

LMS and I

Little Miss Sunshine

Adoption Update

LMS hunting for 4 leaf clovers- it was drizzling and she felt she needed to shelter under her giant pink umbrella from IKEA

When we found out we were pregnant, we knew that it would affect our plans to adopt. Not that it would change our minds about adoption, but that it could change the timing of the adoption.

I was hoping there would be some way we'd be able to adopt around the same time I give birth. Life would be crazy, but there would be several benefits.

1. I could breastfeed the adopted child- having my milk already in would make that so much easier (I've been trying to figure out how to avoid having to use commercial formula when we adopt)
2. Raising two children close in age would make for built-in playmates, something LMS has missed out on
3. We could get through milestones/stages at or near the same time
4. The Little Miss would be in heaven with all the opportunities to help

I finally got around to calling our agency (I'd waited till the first trimester was over, then ended up losing track of time) and talked with them about the situation.

Their policy is that our profile will be put on inactive status until the baby is a year old. Then we can update all our information and reactivate our profile.

This isn't what I'd hoped for, but it's not unexpected. We're disappointed, but it'll all work out. We just have to be patient. Which isn't always my strong suit....

We're Approved!

Almost a year to the day from when we first met with our case worker at LDS Family Services, we have been officially approved to adopt!

YAY!

Our profile is now live on itsaboutlove.org, and we can start searching for a birthmother.

Want to help?

LDS Family Services works with birth mothers regardless of religious beliefs or financial situation, so if you know of anyone who is pregnant and thinking about adoption, please let us know.

I won't link directly to our profile from here for privacy reasons, but email me and I can send you the link. We'll also be sending out emails, so if you're in our address book, you'll be getting the link in an email in the next few days.

We're so excited to finally be moving forward in our adoption journey!

Adoption Progress

Yesterday we had our individual interviews with our caseworker and today we turned in the last of our extra paperwork and had our home study!

Next week we'll finish our required training and we'll write our letter to birth parents and put together our profile. After that, I think we're done with everything and will just have to wait for our approval and then we'll officially be waiting to adopt.

Being close to being approved is just a bit surreal. It's hard to believe that 10 years after first talking about adopting sometime in the future, that sometime is almost here.

We mailed in our adoption paperwork today!

handing the envelope to the mail clerk

I spent a crazy morning tracking down the last-minute papers, determining what still needed to be signed (and notorized), which checks need to be written, calling the agency to make sure I'm not forgetting anything, and so on.

We got the forms notorized while Mr M was on his lunch break, then LMS and I took them to the post office.

I have one section left to fill in for the online information, then we'll be done with all the online questions as well.

Next up:

Home visits and adoption training.

We're finally making progress! Yay!

How do you think adopting a child will change your life?

Cool photo of a recent foggy am. No relation to the post :)


(full disclosure: possible TMI ahead)

We're getting closer to turning in all our paperwork for the adoption. We could do it in a couple different chunks, but we decided to just gather it all together and take care of it at one time. Yesterday I was working on the essay question portion that Mr M and I have to individually answer.

Question: how do you think adopting a child will change your life?

The questions are to help the agency get to know us and get us thinking about different things, but as the parents of a five year old I don't think we have any illusions (delusions?) of how parenthood will be :)

Anyway, I was reviewing the lists of paperwork that has to be mailed (some is mailed, some is submitted online) and came across an infertility report that needs to be filled out. We've done the physicals, but I hadn't realized I need another paper signed by my doctor.

I haven't been to a specialist here (kinda don't see the point), but I have to get my over-due annual exam done, so I'll take my stacks of medical files (from doctors I've seen in three different states) and hopefully she won't have a problem signing off on my paperwork.

Good timing all around, really, since I should have had my annual exam a long time ago and I've been meaning to go in so I can get checked for endometriosis. Hopefully I can kill all three birds with one stone. I really hate going to the gynecologist. Like REALLY hate- I've yet to have an exam that didn't hurt like the dickens, even when I've warned them about my tilted uterus and they've assurred me they'll be gentle. A friend recommended the nurse practioner I'll be seeing, and I'm hoping she lives up to the hype. There's a reason I put off my annual exams...

Instant gratification

Our neighbors with the one year old daughter stopped by the other day to pick up a bowl they left here and to share the good news that they're pregant.

LMS has apparently been pondering this (I didn't realize she even heard them), because the next day she asked me why some kids get brothers and sisters and she doesn't.

We've talked about how some families are big, and some are small, and some are in between, so I reminded her of that. I also reminded her that she has at least 3 or 4 friends her age who also don't have brothers or sisters. Of course, that didn't really help: she wants a baby sister NOW. Like by this weekend.

Poor kiddo. We're still working on the paperwork, so it'll be awhile.

Siblings

LMS has decided she needs siblings.

She's talked about it before, but she's holding onto the idea a lot longer this time around. In the past I told her she needed to talk to Heavenly Father if she wanted siblings, but that was it. This past week when she brought up siblings again, and I gave her my standard answer, she headed off to her room to pray that Heavenly Father would send her a sister, a brother, and a baby sister :)

The next day we had a discussion about prayers, mainly that we should pray in the morning and at night, and she has now taken to saying her own prayers in the morning. I believe this is so she can pray for siblings. Though she's now just praying for a sister and a baby sister. She told me she didn't need a brother because he would probably break her toys.

She's in for a rude awakening when she realizes that sisters break toys too :)

She was requesting an older sister, by which she means a sister close to her age that she can play with, and a baby sister, but then she decided she didn't need a baby sister, just two sisters to play with.

We've talked to her about adoption and she's asking more questions about if we're going to adopt some sisters for her. Luckily we're getting closer to the point where we can start the process, but we're still not quite there.

When we were at the grocery store the other day she told the checkout people that we were going to adopt some sisters for her.  :)

The main question we need to answer right now is should we pursue an adoption through LDS Family Services or a local agency. If we go with LDS Family Services we'll be paying a big chunk of money, we won't know when we'll get a baby (birth moms do the choosing), and infants are usually the only ones available for adoption. If we go through a local agency the cost should be less (we need to do some more research on this), we won't know when we'll get a baby/child, and we might be able to adopt a sibling group, which we're open to as long as they're younger than LMS. There could also be issues such as abuse or neglect that we would need to help them deal with. Lots of things to think and pray about.

If you know anyone who's thinking of putting their baby up for adoption, let us know!