Our Home Study

This afternoon we had a visit from the social worker handling our home study. Glenn & I were really glad that we had the Pathways class (read Glenn's post about it) the day before hand. It helped us gain more insight and to know what to expect and to alleviate our nerves. Though I will admit, we still did have some right before we arrived. I wanted to make sure our home looked nice and it did. I even baked some chocolate chip cookies to offer her. (Glenn and I ate more than she did!) She was very nice and very thorough and helped us a lot.

Anyway, today was to go over all our paperwork that we had completed and to sign some more release forms. We have just about all the paper work done. Just need to make some minor adjustments and find out some more info to get to her.

She toured our home which she seemed to think will be fine for our baby. She asked what kind of baby we would like. We are open to a boy or girl and any race or mixed race. Of course, all expecting parents want a healthy child, as do we. But with adoption there are sometimes greater risks of not knowing exactly what health conditions of both birth parents are. So, we have to make very specific decisions about what we are willing to accept and able to handle. Whew! It can be a bit overwhelming. We just want a baby to love and wish we didn't have to think about things like this, but it is part of the adoption process. So will willingly go through it all. She gave us a lot of information and advised us to do more research and to let her know what we decide. So that's what we're going to do.

I tend to be a positive, open-minded kind of gal and believe that all is well no matter what, and whatever happens is meant to. But I do realize we must be fully aware of what our limitations are, and to weigh all the pros and cons to come to a conscientious decision about something that is as huge as this.

It's just odd, because when someone has a biological child they know what they are and are not putting into their own bodies so they can rest a little better knowing the changes of them having a healthy baby. When the child will come from someone else's body, it is out of your control. The desire is great to take any child because you want to love it and take care of it no matter what, but one must search deeply into their hearts and minds and their own situation to figure out what is best for the baby and for them. So that is what we are doing.

We meet again with the our home study social worker both separately. I meet her next week. Glenn will meet her the week after. Once she completes the home study we will be in the system for birth mothers to start choosing us. It takes a while to get all the results back from fingerprinting, since we're dealing with government agencies and they are backed up with work to do, and to cross all the 't's" and dot all the 'i's". So, the home study process should be done by November, maybe even sooner. We will be so happy!

We will get another social worker assigned to us that will do the matching of us with birth moms and take us through the whole actual adoption. She will be the liaison between us and the birth mom.

It's been a full weekend about taking closer to being parents. That makes me very happy!!