Adoption Journey - Timeline 1

For some of you, this will be some of your favorite posts but for others, not so much. I say that because it really depends on the season of life that you're in as to whether or not posts about Adoption is something you want to read. With that being said, I encourage you to read them because you never know what God may put on your heart ;) God used this blog to help me learn about Adoption and it forever changed mine. 

I would like to share three disclaimers. First, every Adoption story is special and unique to each individual family. Sure, some adoptions happen weeks to a couple of months after the Home Study is complete while others can take up to a year (or more). It's a blessing to not have a cookie cutter experience; however, my prayer is that all adoptions would bring glory to God and redemption to families. Second, there will be some things we won't share for the safety and privacy of our family. I mean, this is the wide world web so I would rather not share specific details or names of anyone involved in our adoption journey (i.e. Agency name, location, social worker and certainly not our expectant family information). Thank you for understanding! Third, there is a lot of detail here but it's because I want to soak in every. single. thing. about our sweet journey that will lead us to our baby. 

Timeline:
5/22/17 - Inquired with our Agency
5/23/17 - Agency sent us our Child Preference Checklist (Basically, you read through this checklist and mark what your family is looking for and comfortable with regarding a child. It was everything from age range to medical conditions and let me tell you, it was an incredibly tough checklist to fill out.)
*There was a date from 5/23 to 6/6 where I looked on their website and they had a message saying they capped their Adoptive Family list and I was SO bummed and I may or may not but definitely cried. I felt like this agency was an answer to prayer and this was a setback that I wasn't prepared for. But both, my darling husband and one of my best friends (who also happens to be my personal consultant and a huge blessing as she's adopted twice!) both told me to just call and ask them if that included us since we sent an inquiry. I was hesitant because we hadn't emailed our CPC form back but I finally did and praise the Lord, she said it DID NOT include us! Of course I felt silly for crying but adopting makes your hormones all crazy too so I blame it on that. 
6/6/17 - Emailed our CPC form back
6/27/17 - Received the Agency Application
*Went on vacation for a week. Budgeted out application fee
7/20/17 - Emailed our application to agency and mailed our application fee
7/27/17 - Agency received fee and began working on our references (which were a lot)
*There was a time here where the Florida Adoption Laws made an update to the amount of Adoption Training hours needed for Adoptive families to have so our agency was working to ensure they had what they needed to abide by the law.
8/15/17 - First Home Study visit scheduled for 9/6/17
8/23/17 - Received the family resume to fill out (WOW. This was kind of a lot. It asked about our relationship with our parents, our relationships with Christ, our finances, our marriage and what led us to adoption.)
8/24/17 - Emailed what we thought was the completed family resume
9/1/17 - Emailed the pages of the family resume we forgot the first time
9/4/17 - Home Study visit rescheduled because of Hurricane Irma
9/27/17 - Agency added a December date for the Adoption Training class and we signed up (we had a prior engagement for the one in September that we could not get out of)
10/05/17 - First Home Study visit RESCHEDULED
10/19/17 - First Home Study visit
11/15/17 - Home Study Part 2
12/09/17 - First Adoption Training class


Well, that's where we are thus far. I'll update this every few months as we move forward in our adoption. I was going to do a specific post on the home study visit but I don't feel as though it deserves its' own post so I'm going to share about it in this one.

I totally worked up this home study in my head and it was not nearly as scary as I thought. Now, every home study is different as every agency is different and this was only the first part. I have no clue what part 2 will look like. We sat down in the living room and went over our family profile that we filled out. Basically, we reviewed what we answered and elaborated on why we answered the way we did. We took a break after about an hour and a half and that is when we showed her around the house. Afterward we sat back down and talked a little more. She asked us questions about us (the first part were questions about each of us individually) such as our goals, why or what led us to adoption and how we rated our intimacy ... yes, you read that right. I knew to expect that question but it still doesn't change how awkward it is to answer. You should be fully aware as well. You're welcome. That was it friends! It really was like a friend coming over to hangout and get to know each other better. Our social worker is so incredibly sweet and you can tell she is for us. I have heard horror stories so I was a little nervous about that but she was great! To end this ridiculously long post, I give you a picture of us on our home study day (we took it right after).






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