some progress!

The new year has already started quite well with regards to our adoption journey.

We received notice that our home study was officially completed and approved, and we're now "in the system." This was on the first Friday of the new year.

Then we found out who our social worker for the placement process will be. This past week, we met with her. She said most parents don't ask to meet with her, so it was a bit unusual to have an in-person meeting. But she took an hour and a half with us, answered all our questions and then some, and made us feel even more excited and hopeful about our adventure. She's the perfect match to help us - very friendly, open, talkative. And she loves Coffee Bean. We think she'll be a great ally in this next phase.

So a lot of folks have been asking, what is the next phase? Do we just sit and wait for someone to "pick" us?

The answer is yes and no. We're not auditioning for the role of parents (even though it feels like it sometimes), and the prospective birth mothers don't get a giant encyclopedia of waiting parents to weed through. The social worker meets with the birth parents, learns what they feel comfortable with, and then determines which adoptive parents from her roster of clients most closely fit the bill. Sometimes it's a specific attribute, like religion or family life - and sometimes it's a gut feeling, something intangible. Then the social worker gets the adoptive parents involved, and they all work together to make sure the situation is right for everyone - especially the child. These matches can happen very quickly or take months, and sometimes matches that look promising don't happen at all even late into the process.

So there is an element of waiting - a very large element. But we can also do some outreach ourselves. We are considering some advertising options, but more likely will be looking to friends, family, and the larger community to see if we can find a birth mother on our own. Our social worker encouraged us to put it out there - so if you reading this can think of someone who might know someone who might be a birth mother considering adoption... please get in touch with us. We'll be looking to some of the people we know who are involved in social work, or volunteering, or health care.

We're both getting more excited every day, and are talking about how to really transform the guest bedroom into the baby's room (which will require making changes to the office and our bedroom as well). We spent some time at the library today and got some more books on adoption, parenting adoptive kids, etc. The reality is sinking in that sooner, rather than later, we will be bringing a new child into our hearts and lives forever. I even told my coworkers, so they wouldn't be surprised if suddenly one day I had to take some time off for a new baby.

Which brings me to my next point. We're generally very open people, tend to not keep secrets, wear our hearts on our sleeves, and often give out more information than is really necessary. But with respect to our adoption, we must for the sake of our child, set some informational boundaries. Our child's birth story, whatever the details, belong to him or her alone. We, as parents, are merely the keepers of that story. But what we cannot do is be cavalier about it, for a million different reasons. So the reality is, for our friends and family, we are planning to keep that story to ourselves. It's not because we don't trust you, it's because it's simply not our decision to make. We just ask that you be understanding and respectful of that.

All of which is to say that it feels more real than ever now, and all the more exciting.