Here's my adoption blog! Ta da! Although it's a private blog no one can see, so if anyone is seeing this now then that means we've commited to a child and made this public! How exciting! I'm a Mommy of two! Yay future us!!!
*ahem* But since right now we're still a family of three, I'll continue.
This blog is pretty much for all the things I can't talk about out loud--an outlet so that my adoption plans stop slipping out to strangers at Target.
I feel like it's the first trimester in a very long pregnancy. Usually in the first trimester you don't announce anything because that's the most dangerous time for the baby in your belly. For my "first trimester" I am keeping quiet because there are so many unknowns. But it's been well over three months since beginning our Home Study and I'm getting ansy.
We started this process back in July! And we did counseling sessions to talk out how this would affect our family. And we prayed like we never have about anything. And God didn't give us more information than the next step. So we have been at this one tiny step at a time. And that's so oh oh not how I do things. I like to know everything in advance and have the money to do it up front. Please and thank you.
I guess I should put out there that I have zero fertility issues and my daughter's condition is not genetic. Adopting kids with special needs from insitution settings is a great need and one we're willing and able to fill. That's all.
I could go on and on and on about institutions overseas, but I do that often enough so I won't here. (*cough* links *cough*)
So where are we now? We just finished our Home Study a few weeks ago, which is the first step in the adoption process. Pretty much our lives were an open book that just got flipped through a couple times. We had interviews in our home, had three close friends write reports on us with our strengths and flaws, and had to produce paperwork on everything from where we've lived the last ten years to vet reports on our cats! Plus fingerprinting. Plus school reports. Plus copies of birth certificates and marriage license. Oh and we also had to take five online classes! We passed. F..I..N....A..L.L.....Y!
Right now the only thing we're waiting on is finding our child so that we can get a placement agency. Then there's the dosier process that I don't know enough about. The plan is to find our child on reecesrainbow.org. We are looking at boys and girls, but more at boys since they are typically less likely to get adopted. We were told in our counseling session to look at kids younger than our daughter so we don't mess up the birth order for whatever reason. We did look at a six year old briefly. I emailed about him and was told another family was getting him. Lucky kid.
So what am I doing right now? Right now, every morning, I go on Reece's Rainbow and cross my fingers. I've typed one word into the search engine so many times that it auto finishes it for me: arthrogryposis.
While there are many conditions that would get a little kid thrown into a torturous institution in EE, the condition we're most familiar with is arthrogryposis. (It's a beast, but it's the beast we know.) We've decided not to look at children with multiple diagnoses. And I have to remember I agreed to that every time I see that sweet little baby with arthrogryposis AND convulsive disorder. Or that darling little girl with arthrogryposis AND a small heart condition from not being stimulated enough and enlarged ventricles in her brain (which wouldn't affect the function of her brain). Or that little guy Laelia's age with AMC and vision problems. I want so bad to make them mine. Ugh!
Now I say we're only looking for one diagnosis of AMC, but it's not like AMC would be our child's only diagnosis. If that makes sense. A child who spends their first couple of years in an institution has special needs just from being there even if they were born typical. We look forward to teaching our child how to trust, bond with his or her parents, make connections in his/her brain by being out of a crib and touching things, eating, swallowing, adjusting to different smells and noises, culture shock, second language learning, etc. And then on top of that do treatment for AMC including casting, daily stretches and surgeries.
All that is the real reason I changed jobs to stay home. It will be a bonding process that may take a year before I can leave the house for a girl's night out again.
So right now I wait. And I pray that God puts our son or daughter into that darn website I check everyday.
In the meantime I've been contributing to a blog about arthrogryposis adoption. None of my co-bloggers know I'm adopting or that I've even done a Home Study. Is my first trimester over yet?????
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