Our first official adoption meeting…
So if I could just bottle a little bit of the excitement I experienced last night I would (as I’m sure I’ll need it for the rough patches ahead). The meeting went far better than I expected. It was a packed room full of people who I imagine share similar stories to ours. Some had done this before but many were hearing things for the first time just like us. We have timelines, pricing guides, checklists and most importantly our preliminary application. Going in we were not sure where God was leading us. But now we know. And that is a wonderful feeling. We have chosen domestic infant adoption. We heard about the pool of families that are on the list for caucasian infants…which can only be 15 at a time. First come first serve sort of thing. But african-american or bi-racial babies never have enough families willing to adopt them. At this time there is only one family interested and they have to look in other areas to pull family profiles. This was just the answer I needed. I poked my DH and he grinned a little…this was our avenue. Caucasian baby=18+ months. Bi-racial=12 months or less. The very thought of having our baby in our arms by the end of this year feels so surreal…although I’m very prepared to wait as long as next Christmas as well. You just never know. So here is the process (in a nutshell):
- Group information meeting (check!)
- Preliminary Application
- Formal Application
- Education Workshop
- Assessment Interviews
- Approval
- Agency circulates profile
- Support Groups
- Possible meetings with birthparents
- Placement
- Post-placement supervision
- Finalization through local court
- Post-finalization services
We are guesstimating a fee of around 15,000. About half of what I was expecting.
So all in all, I was pleasantly surprised and super excited. Now to get ready for some major question answering…bring it on ;)
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