Last night we walked into that office standing tall, handed over our 19 page thick home study questionnaire and paid our bill in FULL for the home study. It was a glorious moment. So much work done! We also got to meet our social worker last night! She is really nice and we met some families who worked with her as well and they loved her. Her name is Linda, and she will be doing our interviews, home inspection and working with us throughout the rest of the process. Things are really moving along!
The class last night was good. We talked about dealing with the grief of infertility. I think we were surprised as we both began to talk about our pain in the past tense. There is still residual pain, and this will always define us in a way, but last night we realized that we have dealt with our grief and are now in a really good place. God is so good and faithfully He has healed our hearts.
The second half of the class they bring in a panel of people to share their experiences of the adoption process. This time it was three couples with their newly adopted babies. They each told their story of meeting the birthmother, doctor appointments, the birth, emotions, bring home the baby, and the relationship they have with the birthmoms now. Each story was a little different but all of them were really encouraging.
While they talked, all I could think about was: that will be us, we are going to be sitting together with our little baby smiling at us, because we are their mommy and daddy. We will be a family.
Showing posts with label adoption class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adoption class. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Adoption Class# 2: The Profile
We had our second adoption class and it was awesome. We really like this agency more every time we are there. A lot of the same couples were in the class again so it was nice to see familiar faces, and build those relationships.
This class was about creating our adoption profile. The profile is what they show to expectant mothers to help choose a family. They talked about what should and shouldn't be in the profile, and had a ton of examples that we could look at. That was really helpful because you could see what caught you eye. We got to take home copies of a couple profiles that we really liked to help us make ours.
The profile should tell a little bit about who we are individually, as a couple, our extended family, what we do for fun, where we work, why we are adopting, and how we see a baby fitting into our lives. It should also have lots of pictures highlighting these different areas. This is going to be a lot of fun to put together, and we are already scheming up ideas of how to do it. We also need a separate photo album of just pictures with small captions for them to look at if they want to get to know us a little better.
Over Christmas we were camera happy with our families because we knew we would need lots of pictures of them, so we got that covered. Now we are camera happy all the time because we need pictures of us at work, at play, with friends, with kids, just us, etc. The new phrase is "Profile moment!" when we feel the moment would be a good pic for our profile. Cheesy I know, but that is who we are.
If you have any great ideas for our profile we would love to hear them! When we actually start working on it we will post some of the pictures for yall to see.
We thought we would start with this one, what do you think?
This class was about creating our adoption profile. The profile is what they show to expectant mothers to help choose a family. They talked about what should and shouldn't be in the profile, and had a ton of examples that we could look at. That was really helpful because you could see what caught you eye. We got to take home copies of a couple profiles that we really liked to help us make ours.
The profile should tell a little bit about who we are individually, as a couple, our extended family, what we do for fun, where we work, why we are adopting, and how we see a baby fitting into our lives. It should also have lots of pictures highlighting these different areas. This is going to be a lot of fun to put together, and we are already scheming up ideas of how to do it. We also need a separate photo album of just pictures with small captions for them to look at if they want to get to know us a little better.
Over Christmas we were camera happy with our families because we knew we would need lots of pictures of them, so we got that covered. Now we are camera happy all the time because we need pictures of us at work, at play, with friends, with kids, just us, etc. The new phrase is "Profile moment!" when we feel the moment would be a good pic for our profile. Cheesy I know, but that is who we are.
If you have any great ideas for our profile we would love to hear them! When we actually start working on it we will post some of the pictures for yall to see.
We thought we would start with this one, what do you think?
Friday, December 19, 2008
Adoption Class # 1 Update
Sorry we didn’t get a post right up after we went to the class on Monday. This week we had to wrap up a lot of things in California before we head out North Carolina. We are in route somewhere over Texas as I type.
Well the class was pretty amazing. We were thinking it would be a 3-hour lecture from their staff on Lifelong Adoption Issues, but most of our time we spent with a real live adoptive family, interacting with them, hearing stories, and bouncing questions around. It was great to get the mother’s perspective of what we’ll have to go through in our adoption process. Even more valuable was hearing from her three teenage girls (all who were adopted at various times along the way.)
Let me back up and give some details of the people there and I’ll return to some of the big issues we discussed. There were about 8 couples there, ranging in race. We were the youngest couple there, at least by 5-years. Most couples seemed to be in their mid-30s and all had come from infertility backgrounds. One of the couples had an interview with a prospective birth mother; it was interested hearing their experience. Another couple had an adopted 5-year-old girl and were in the process for her younger sibling arriving. Again, we gained a lot of insight from them.
So here is what we learned while there.
1.) We Can Do It
There was a sense of “can we really parent and gain the respect of a child that did not come from our biology?” The resounding answer is “Yes We Can!” (I know all our democratic friends will like that one.) The mom there was not super mom, but she was a loving caring parent. We can do the loving caring parent thing. We don’t have to be Betty Crocker, June Cleaver, Tim the toolman Taylor, Bill Cosby, Super Mom and Super Dad all in one.
2.) The Issue of Loss
They said it and we talked about it: loss. The pain, the grief, the healing, the thoughts of blame, and unworthiness. We talked about it. We realized that all parties enter into this relationship through a loss. For us, our loss has been infertility. For the child, it is not growing up in the history and subculture they were born into. For the birth mother, it is losing her baby. For a child, I likened the feelings to a parent’s divorce, and everything the child feels in that situation. There is loss throughout the process for everyone. The sooner we realize it, the better we can understand everyone else. The sooner we can emotionally deal with our loss, the sooner we will be ready to acknowledge the loss of others. Not easy steps, but glad we brought it out into the open.
3.) Respect
We have committed to each other not to denigrate or tarnish the image of the birth mother for any reason. At this stage we don’t even know her. But it is important to love and respect the child by respecting the birth mother. We have committed to do so.
4.) “Where Facts Flounder, Fantasy Flourishes”
They said that most kids make up a story as to why they were adopted. Some are putting themselves to blame and some are fantasy tales of arriving on the back of a dragon. The point is the more information you can give a child as to their history, the less they will have to make up. Confidence in who they are and who you are is everything; this is what will allow them to be comfortable with their being adopted. The daughters there were able to be open with us because they knew their own history, sometimes knew their birth parents and why they were adopted. It made us realize things we can do now to help in future years for our children to see the process we went through (how much we wanted them) and once we get matched with a birth mother, finding out as much about her, the child’s father, their talents and abilities, their weaknesses, everything.
5.) Ways to help adoption make sense to a young child.
Adoption can be a scary thing for a child (dealing with the issue of loss and within that guilt, ect.) We learned two phrases that will really help us discuss adoption to our kids and let them know they are/were loved and at the center of the process (in a good way.) So here they go: “While you were growing in your mommy’s tummy you were growing in my heart.” And “Your birth mommy knew she couldn’t be your everyday mommy, so she searched for a mommy like me to be your everyday mommy.” So I know the first is kind of cheesy, but it gets the point across, you are special and I love you. The second one just makes sense.
So it has been a lot of information. They gave us another stack of paper work to read concerning issues of adoption and the make up of children who are adopted. Melissa has been reading away, makes notes, underlining things all day throughout our travel. Our next class is late January.
We’ll keep you updated with events from our trip home. We’ll be having many conversations about adoption, all the issues so we’ll let you know of the relevant things there as well. I think we are over Georgia by now so North Carolina, here we come!
Well the class was pretty amazing. We were thinking it would be a 3-hour lecture from their staff on Lifelong Adoption Issues, but most of our time we spent with a real live adoptive family, interacting with them, hearing stories, and bouncing questions around. It was great to get the mother’s perspective of what we’ll have to go through in our adoption process. Even more valuable was hearing from her three teenage girls (all who were adopted at various times along the way.)
Let me back up and give some details of the people there and I’ll return to some of the big issues we discussed. There were about 8 couples there, ranging in race. We were the youngest couple there, at least by 5-years. Most couples seemed to be in their mid-30s and all had come from infertility backgrounds. One of the couples had an interview with a prospective birth mother; it was interested hearing their experience. Another couple had an adopted 5-year-old girl and were in the process for her younger sibling arriving. Again, we gained a lot of insight from them.
So here is what we learned while there.
1.) We Can Do It
There was a sense of “can we really parent and gain the respect of a child that did not come from our biology?” The resounding answer is “Yes We Can!” (I know all our democratic friends will like that one.) The mom there was not super mom, but she was a loving caring parent. We can do the loving caring parent thing. We don’t have to be Betty Crocker, June Cleaver, Tim the toolman Taylor, Bill Cosby, Super Mom and Super Dad all in one.
2.) The Issue of Loss
They said it and we talked about it: loss. The pain, the grief, the healing, the thoughts of blame, and unworthiness. We talked about it. We realized that all parties enter into this relationship through a loss. For us, our loss has been infertility. For the child, it is not growing up in the history and subculture they were born into. For the birth mother, it is losing her baby. For a child, I likened the feelings to a parent’s divorce, and everything the child feels in that situation. There is loss throughout the process for everyone. The sooner we realize it, the better we can understand everyone else. The sooner we can emotionally deal with our loss, the sooner we will be ready to acknowledge the loss of others. Not easy steps, but glad we brought it out into the open.
3.) Respect
We have committed to each other not to denigrate or tarnish the image of the birth mother for any reason. At this stage we don’t even know her. But it is important to love and respect the child by respecting the birth mother. We have committed to do so.
4.) “Where Facts Flounder, Fantasy Flourishes”
They said that most kids make up a story as to why they were adopted. Some are putting themselves to blame and some are fantasy tales of arriving on the back of a dragon. The point is the more information you can give a child as to their history, the less they will have to make up. Confidence in who they are and who you are is everything; this is what will allow them to be comfortable with their being adopted. The daughters there were able to be open with us because they knew their own history, sometimes knew their birth parents and why they were adopted. It made us realize things we can do now to help in future years for our children to see the process we went through (how much we wanted them) and once we get matched with a birth mother, finding out as much about her, the child’s father, their talents and abilities, their weaknesses, everything.
5.) Ways to help adoption make sense to a young child.
Adoption can be a scary thing for a child (dealing with the issue of loss and within that guilt, ect.) We learned two phrases that will really help us discuss adoption to our kids and let them know they are/were loved and at the center of the process (in a good way.) So here they go: “While you were growing in your mommy’s tummy you were growing in my heart.” And “Your birth mommy knew she couldn’t be your everyday mommy, so she searched for a mommy like me to be your everyday mommy.” So I know the first is kind of cheesy, but it gets the point across, you are special and I love you. The second one just makes sense.
So it has been a lot of information. They gave us another stack of paper work to read concerning issues of adoption and the make up of children who are adopted. Melissa has been reading away, makes notes, underlining things all day throughout our travel. Our next class is late January.
We’ll keep you updated with events from our trip home. We’ll be having many conversations about adoption, all the issues so we’ll let you know of the relevant things there as well. I think we are over Georgia by now so North Carolina, here we come!
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