Mid-June 2015 Update

Another month has escaped us.  We have been given 11 more situations since I last wrote and have chosen to present on 6 of those.  4 of the ones we chose to present on have come up in the past week and we are currently waiting for the birth mom to make a decision.  The baby is already here on 2 of the current situations so IF we were to be chosen, I imagine we would travel immediately.

It is still hard.  We go between highs, like now, where we are waiting with hope for the "yes" we have been praying for, and then we have weeks with nothing but silence and doubt if we will ever be picked by a birth mom.

Each time we are told "no" cuts a little deeper.  We have had 6 so far, with a couple being especially tough because we were really drawn to the particular situation.  I have given up trying to figure out maybe this one is the "one" because the circumstances fit so well.  We got one of the tough "nos" last Monday morning while at work, and it made for a hard day.  I considered asking our consultant to hold the "no" emails until later in the day so I wouldn't be distracted and upset at work, but I'd rather know as soon as possible than keep holding out hope we got picked.  Most of the time, we end up waiting a full week or more from the time we first hear of the situation until we get a response so it is hard enough waiting those 7 days in anticipation.  I am a planner by nature and initially I would spend that waiting time thinking about the "what ifs" if we were to get picked with each situation:  How much advance notice are we getting? What arrangements will we need to make for our children?  What kind of travel (car, airline, car rental, what airport, etc) would be involved?  What about a hotel/place to stay?  What will we need for this particular baby depending on size and gender (if known)?  What kind of funding are we looking at needing?  What will we get the birth mom?  How involved will we be with the delivery?  How involved does the birth family desire to be after placement?  What kind of arrangements do we need to make with our jobs?  I'm sure all this thinking makes me more emotionally attached so I have been trying not to think much about the situations.

We know one of our biggest disadvantages to adopting domestically is the fact that we have 3 biological children.  Birth moms often want childless couples and/or infertile couples.  We miss out on many situations because we have children and probably are not considered on many once the birth mom sees we have children.  It is a common misconception that an adoptive family will favor biological children over adopted children--if only they knew how much was involved to be eligible to adopt and how expensive it was!  I can't imagine anyone going through all this to treat the adopted child like a second class citizen!

Micah 7:7 But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD,  I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.

Early May 2015 Update

Here we are mid-May still trudging along.  The second half of April through May 1 we were presented with 7 more situations!  Due to the circumstances (outside our parameters) we chose to not present on 3 of them.  Of the 4 we did decide to present on, 2 chose other families, 1 stopped returning calls from her agency and never picked a family, and the last situation we were told the agency got proof the birth mother did not have intentions to place her baby for adoption so they did not present our profile.

After more than 2 weeks of no situations, we got another one today that we decided to present on.  The birth mom will hopefully look at profiles on Monday so maybe we will hear something early in the week.

This waiting never gets easier.  I'm not sure if it is harder to wait when we are expecting to hear back from a birth mom who has seen our profile or harder to wait to get a situation to present on.  One of our situations the end of April really touched us and we really felt like it was "the one.". It was honestly really tough to find out we were not selected.  We had lots of people praying for us and just really were expecting God to do big things for us in this circumstance.

I just completed an online Bible study called "What Happens When Women Walk in Faith" by Lysa TerKeurst.  It was really appropriate for me right now in this adoption journey.  I love Lysa's books because she has a knack for showing just how applicable even Old Testament stories can be to my life now and she pulls patterns she sees in the Bible to show how consistent God is throughout time.

We are preparing for summer as school ends this week.  Another prayer we had was that we would get a baby earlier in the summer so I could be off while the kids are out of school.  I've never gotten to be off in the summer, and it would save us money on childcare.  That can still happen but is obviously becoming less likely.

I guess that is all for now!  We pray we will have some exciting news soon!

Early April 2015

So to update from the last post:  we finally got a situation on March 30 within our parameters and were excited to present.  We weren't sure how long we should expect to wait before we heard anything because we didn't even know when the birth mom would actually be seeing our profile.  Of course I was checking my email about every 5 minutes because that is how we get most information from Courtney.  So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday went by with no word.  Early Sunday morning (Easter) after church I checked my email (again), and there was another situation from Courtney.  This one was technically outside our parameters (including our home study parameters) because it was for a 2.5 year old girl.  Brad immediately wanted to go for it.  I was more hesitant.  I am a planner and have been preparing to bring home a baby, especially since the domestic adoptions our consultant sees are almost all newborns and our home study approves us for 1-2 children up to a year old.  Sure, we have been prepared in the past to adopt all age ranges but this time it was  supposed to be a baby.  After our close call with the birth mom in February, I have an infant car seat, Ergo baby, diaper bag, newborn travel bed, newborn clothes and diapers, and other baby essentials.  All this stuff I have purchased and collected would be useless with a toddler.

After church we talked more about this situation and prayed about it.  Long ago I told God that I would be obedient to His will, regardless of whether His will matches my expectations or personal wishes.  I LOVE babies and my ideal situation would involve being present for the birth of our adopted child.  But I decided that if I truly believe our adoption is God's desire for our family, then I needed to step out and trust His plans.  So we decided to present.

We had not heard the outcome of our first situation, but Courtney thought she would hear that birth mom's decision before we presented on the toddler's situation.  So all day Easter I was checking my email and all day Monday was the same.  Finally, at 10:00 pm Monday night, I got an email from Courtney saying that the family who had just adopted the toddler's siblings had changed their mind and decided to pursue adopting her as well.  This is obviously the best situation for the toddler because she would be raised with her biological siblings.  Within a few minutes, we got another email stating that the birth mom in our first situation had chosen another family.

I was honestly prepared to be turned down.  It was only our first time really presenting and the expectant birth mom preferred a family with no children.  I think I took it pretty well considering we lost 2 situations in a matter of minutes.  But here we are 5 days later and we are just waiting again.  Thursday was 4 weeks since we "officially" became active with FAC (though we were given 3 situations prior to that time).  The hours feel like days and I am dreading the anticipation that we will likely present many more times before we are chosen.  It feels like it will never happen, especially since it has now been 4 years since God first planted the seed of adoption in my heart.  It is hard, especially because we can't see what God knows.  I guess that is life in general.

I was touched by something Brad told me Tuesday evening when he got home from jail.  Ha!  No, seriously he helps in the local prison ministry and goes weekly to do a Bible study.  He sees a lot of the same men each week.  One in particular is in jail due to not paying child support, but has talked to Brad about how he wants to do things differently when he gets out of jail.  He asked Brad how our adoption is going and told Brad he is praying daily, often multiple times a day, for our adoption. That is amazing and humbling to me that a man who is incarcerated for not taking care of his children is now praying for our future child.  I am so humbled that someone who must have a lot of tough things to deal with in his own life is taking the time to pray for us.  I pray that he is truly a changed man through Christ.

Please pray for my patience and faith.  The waiting never gets easier.

March 2015 Update

After our "close call" in February, we were hoping to have some exciting news by now, but we do not.  It has been so frustrating but so typical of our journey.  First, our home study did not actually GET to FAC until March 14 (after it was signed February 24).  Thanks to all the crazy winter weather that caused work and mail delays, it apparently took almost a week for our signed home study to get from Birmingham to Huntsville (to our social worker), and then it took several more days for our social worker to get it into the mail to FAC. Then, it took 6 days to get from Alabama to Georgia!  I keep reminding myself that it is all in God's timing and that His timing is the only thing that could explain the delays we've been dealing with the past 2-3 months.   

This month we have been presented with 5 birth mom "situations" (March 5, March 10, March 16, March 30 and March 31).  3 of the 5 were outside our parameters, and most had unusually high amounts of money "at risk" (money that we would lose if the birth mom did not choose to place her baby for adoption).  None of the situations were really what we were "expecting.". I guess there is really no such thing as "typical" when you are talking about someone's life story, especially situations where a birth family is choosing adoption for their child.  When we received the information about the third situation, Brad called Courtney to talk to her.  She eased some of our concerns that we were not seeing anything that was within our comfort level.  We asked her if our parameters are too restrictive, and she said they were not.  She said she evaluates each circumstance and will send some that are outside our parameters in case God moves in us to pursue it.  She said she could stop doing that, but we told her to keep sending them.  We never know if God will nudge us to pursue something we originally thought was outside our comfort zone.  I mean, He's been doing it for 4 years now. . . first with just the idea of  adding to our family through adoption. . . .then with considering other race/ethnicities. . . .then opening up to a sibling group. . . then came the financial risk with international and now domestic adoption.  He has challenged us and pressed us so much along this journey so we can never predict what will happen next!

I am pleased and excited to report that our 5th situation (which we received tonight) we decided to present on!  I think maybe God was just working in us to have more faith in our call to adoption.  There are so many risks, but the greatest rewards often demand higher risks.  This situation met all the criteria that were most important to us and we are excited to be considered.  Though we may find out this is not our baby, we have finally taken the plunge!  It at least gives me hope. 

Please keep praying for our family, our baby, and the birth family!  Hopefully we will have a positive update soon!

Whirlwind Weekend

We had a crazy few days.  Thursday evening (Feb 19) we got an unexpected call from Courtney with FAC.  She said there was a special circumstance involving a birth mother who'd delivered a baby girl a few weeks before and had chosen to parent her baby (after having picked an adoptive family prior to the birth).  Now she was reconsidering adoption but was having trouble picking a family.  Courtney wanted to know if she could show our profile PDF to the birth mom.  It was a good situation for us because we would not have to pay anything or travel unless she picked us (because the first matched family had already paid prior to the birth).  It was an African American baby girl.  We agreed to present while realizing it was a long shot.

Friday evening we heard from Courtney and the birth mom had asked to speak with us and 2 other families on the phone the next morning.  We were in Birmingham for the Mercedes Kids Marathon and the call was scheduled for right before we needed to head out to the race.  Courtney called us ahead of time to answer some questions and give us some tips for the call.  Brad and I prayed for the entire situation before the phone rang. 

The call itself went well.  The birth mom had some questions for us, primarily about how we would handle raising a black child in a white family.  I guess she was satisfied with our answer because after calling Courtney from the car on the way to the race, we got a text a few minutes later that the birth mom really liked us!  Later that day, we found out that she had spoken to 2 other families after us and liked both of them as well.  We were asked to have another call with the birth mom the following morning.  We decided to head home for the call because if she picked us, we would need to be prepared to travel within a day or so.

We got home midmorning and rushed around picking up the house and getting set up for our call.  Nothing about the adoption came up in this call, but I was writing down every tidbit of information that she revealed to us in case she picked us.  I wanted to know as much as I could about her to tell her/our daughter one day.

Over the next couple days, the birth mom still had not made a decision.  We found out some other information that had us concerned that this birth mom really did not want to place her daughter for adoption.  That information combined with her continuous delays and inability to "choose" between us and another family and some scheduling problems resulted in us asking Courtney if we could withdraw from this situation.  It was hard but we felt this was the right thing to do.  We have not gotten any specific information since that time about this situation, but we think that the birth mom still has not signed consent for adoption.

We did get all our paperwork sent to Courtney except our children's medical and our home study, which SHOULD get there in the upcoming week.  We found out there was one additional clearance required by Alabama for ICPC that we had not completed yet.  In the middle of doing all this we had  some crazy weather that brought snow and missed school days.

Courtney said she would start presenting us when she got our final documents.  It was a crazy stressful whirlwind few days, but it did help us to get prepared when it finally does happen for us.  Hopefully March will be an exciting month for us!

February 2015 update

I wish I could say we have moved on to the next phase by now, but the past month has been very frustrating.  I never imagined we would be midway into February and still just waiting on our paperwork to move forward.  Then again, how many times during our adoption process have we found ourselves waiting longer than expected?  It is almost comical at this point, yet I don't know whether to laugh or cry.


Since last month, we have finally completed our profile book after making a few suggested cosmetic changes, namely to make the background of the pages more "colorful and adventurous." Brad got a kick out of that suggestion and used it in a Valentine surprise for me:



Our profile is being printed into books that will be shown to potential birth moms, and I got the shipping notice on the books today.

We have not seen our home study yet because we have been waiting on our fingerprint clearances to come back.  For the past month we have been trying not to nag our social worker too much about the delay and if there is a way to confirm everything is okay (as in it was received and is being processed).  I had this fear that it was never sent or received and all this waiting will have been in vain.  Last Friday (the 13th) Brad called DHR in Montgomery to ask them about it and they said something to him about it being sent to our county of origin.  We were originally fingerprinted at the local DHR for foster care.  So he called them but the person who answered was new and all he got out of that conversation was that Lifeline was not a vendor in their system.  We also spoke with our social worker and another person at Lifeline who handles the clearances and we really didn't know what to make of this.  Apparently this is not typical--of course.  Yesterday was President's Day so DHR was closed.  A friend spoke with a social worker at DHR (who maybe remembered us from foster care), and we were instructed to call her when DHR opened today to see what she could do.  Brad called and she said she could easily get us the "Letter of Suitability." We weren't positive that's what we needed so he called our social worker and asked that she call DHR.  Well, praise the Lord that is what we needed!  I was working through lunch and answered a call at our office number from a friend and former coworker who now works at DHR and she said "I have your letters.  You can come by and pick them up.  I wish you'd told me sooner that you needed this because I could have done it for you." I'm hoping that one day we will see God's timing and sovereignty in this 2.5 month long wait for a letter we could have probably gotten 2 months ago if we'd known who to call.

The next step is simply to review our home study for any corrections and then just wait for our social worker to mail us notarized originals.  She also has 1 other piece of paperwork we need.  Once we have those items in our hands and our profile books, we will be mailing a large packet of documents to FAC and hopefully be able to start presenting to birth moms!  It is finally starting to feel real!

There are a lot of babies coming on my side of the family in the upcoming weeks.  I had a cousin have a baby boy earlier in February, a niece due in March, and another cousin expecting a baby boy in April.  Here's to hoping little baby Bernard will arrive in May.  :)

January 2015 Update

We got a little behind schedule due to the holidays.  Our hope was to have all our paperwork completed and ready so we could "go live" presenting our profile at the beginning of January.  We are now over halfway through the month, and we STILL do not have our home study update completed due to our clearances (FBI fingerprinting and Child Abuse & Neglect) not being back yet.  We think they were sent off in early December, so I guess the holiday closings are making things run slower than usual.  This is at least the third time we've had these clearances done, so I don't know why it would take so long, but either way, we have not seen our home study update as a result.  Once those come back our social worker will send us a draft of our home study for corrections.  Then we will pay the fees for the update and the home study will be notarized and mailed out.  Our social worker has several other documents that we need from her to send to our consultants, so the whole process will take a good 2 weeks once our clearances are back.

We are almost done with our profile book.  A friend and coworker of Brad's has been doing the computer graphics for us and she is doing a great job!  We hope to be able to send a PDF of our profile to FAC the end of this week for them to review.  Maybe we will get lucky and there won't be any major changes.  Once we get the go ahead on our profile, we will have to get several copies printed up and mailed to FAC.  That could easily take a couple weeks as well.

Best case scenario we are looking at early February before we are ready to present.  We have to mail all our documents to FAC in one package, but we have scanned all the documents we have so far to them.  I man getting anxious to have this phase of the adoption completed.  The paperwork stage is ALL we've ever done (3 times) and it really sucks.  There is no gratification in it except being done!  Hopefully we'll have some progress to report in February. . .