Thursday, February 19, 2009
Paperwork delay....again.
It really seems as if this entire process is all about paperwork. We have made it to the stage where the last piece of paperwork that is between us and the kiddos is in process. This last piece of paperwork is called the interstate compact (ICPC). We had been told the ICPC would most likely be done on Monday. Monday, as in three days ago. It is still not done and that means we are not going to be able to visit the kids for the first time at the end of this month. Our social worker said she will work on it over the next 2-3 days and then can get it sent back to Texas. However it has to go back to the state of IN, then to the state of TX, and then finally back to the specific county in TX. Hopefully we will be able to visit the kids mid-March. They have their spring break then so maybe we can stay a little bit longer. Trying to look at the bright side....
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
About our journey....
Well I have never been a blogger before but it seems to be the way to go so I'm going to give it a shot. My mom gave me a journal for Christmas to keep track of our adoption journey but I just don't seem to be able to keep up with it. I find myself thinking about all of the things I want to right down but never get around to it. Hopefully I will be a better blogger then I am a journaler (yes, I think I just made up that word!).
My husband and I are in the middle of our adoption journey to our four, beautiful children. We are adopting a sibling group of four kids from Texas. They are currently in foster care. There are three girls: Yulissa (11), Jenavi (10), and Laci (5). Johnny (8) is the only boy. It truely is a God thing that we are in this place. I want to outline this journey with the hope of preserving this life changing experience for our children in the future. I also want to encourage others who may have a heart for adoption and children.
How we chose adoption:
For some reason Chris and I both had a feeling it would be difficult for us to get pregnant. No real reason behind that feeling....it was just a feeling. Looking back I think maybe God was preparing our hearts for a different route to parenthood even in those early stages. After trying to get pregnant for about 18months we went to the Dr. We had some basic tests run which didn't show any problems. We tried a few months of oral fertility medicines which proved to be ineffective for us. When that didn't work we started looking into our options. We both knew up front that we didn't want to try in vitro fertilization so I started researching adoption agencies. In the midst of that I was encouraged by a coworker to go to an infertility specialist. We decided to do so but didn't really get any better answers as to why we weren't pregnant. The Dr. gave us good statistics on our chances of getting pregnant with intrauterine insemination (formerly called artificial insemination) so we decided to give that a chance. We tried two rounds of that without success. My last negative pregnancy test came on my 25th birthday and it was a terrible, terrible day. I realized I didn't want to do this anymore and after the tears stopped I started researching adoption again. We had officially made the choice to go that route. Now it was time to figure out how it worked.
How we decided on foster-adoption
We picked an adoption agency and went to the information meeting. At this point we had pretty much decided that we were going to do domestic infant adoption. The process for that included completing a homestudy with the agency as well as background checks, fingerprints, criminal clearances, family profiles, etc. The paperwork involved is crazy! After you finish all of that you have to create a family profile which will be shown to pregnant mothers who wish to make an adoption plan for their child. At this stage of the game you are just waiting to be chosen. The reasons you could get chosen vary so greatly that it is a highly unpredictable process. You could wait a week or your could wait years. We jumped into the process but I knew Chris' heart wasn't 100% in it. He was happy to do it for me and knew he would love whatever child we ended up with but he had some misgivings. I kept praying the God would change his heart because I wanted so much for him to be as excited about this as I was.
As we went through the process I turned to our adoption agencies website chat room for support. I met an incredible group of women there who were going through the process or had already been through it. They were full of support and advice. One of the women I met has 18 kids - several of them were sibling groups that she adopted together. Over the many nights we spend chatting together she talked about the joys of adopting sibling groups and encouraged me to check out a webite that listed hundreds of children available for adoption. One night I did look through the website and found a sibling group of three beautiful girls. I talked to Chris the next morning (really thinking he would just laugh in my face when I suggested three kids at once) and asked him what he thought of the idea. He never once faltered! He was excited immediately. On Monday he started making phone calls and we found out that this group already had enough families inquiring about them and they were not accepting any more applications. At first I thought "okay, thats it...back to what we were doing." But then Chris and I started talking more and I realized that I still wanted to pursue adopting a sibling group. At that moment we decided to officially change our course with the adoption agency and I realized that God had been sneaky. While I was praying for a change in Chris' heart he had done a 180 in my heart.
Chris and I started spending hours looking through profiles of children who needed a home. I had been looking into groups of 2 or 3 kids and then Chris approached me one day saying "what about this group." The first comment I made to him was "umm.....there are 4 of them." He said "I know" like it was no big deal. Well after reading their profile, doing a lot of inquiring, praying and praying some more we decided to officially submit our application for the group. We had a good connection with their social worker right away. A few weeks later the social workers involved with the kids held a staffing meeting and we were officially chosen to become the adoptive family for Yulissa, Jenavi, Johnny and Laci!! And then we began more paperwork.....
My husband and I are in the middle of our adoption journey to our four, beautiful children. We are adopting a sibling group of four kids from Texas. They are currently in foster care. There are three girls: Yulissa (11), Jenavi (10), and Laci (5). Johnny (8) is the only boy. It truely is a God thing that we are in this place. I want to outline this journey with the hope of preserving this life changing experience for our children in the future. I also want to encourage others who may have a heart for adoption and children.
How we chose adoption:
For some reason Chris and I both had a feeling it would be difficult for us to get pregnant. No real reason behind that feeling....it was just a feeling. Looking back I think maybe God was preparing our hearts for a different route to parenthood even in those early stages. After trying to get pregnant for about 18months we went to the Dr. We had some basic tests run which didn't show any problems. We tried a few months of oral fertility medicines which proved to be ineffective for us. When that didn't work we started looking into our options. We both knew up front that we didn't want to try in vitro fertilization so I started researching adoption agencies. In the midst of that I was encouraged by a coworker to go to an infertility specialist. We decided to do so but didn't really get any better answers as to why we weren't pregnant. The Dr. gave us good statistics on our chances of getting pregnant with intrauterine insemination (formerly called artificial insemination) so we decided to give that a chance. We tried two rounds of that without success. My last negative pregnancy test came on my 25th birthday and it was a terrible, terrible day. I realized I didn't want to do this anymore and after the tears stopped I started researching adoption again. We had officially made the choice to go that route. Now it was time to figure out how it worked.
How we decided on foster-adoption
We picked an adoption agency and went to the information meeting. At this point we had pretty much decided that we were going to do domestic infant adoption. The process for that included completing a homestudy with the agency as well as background checks, fingerprints, criminal clearances, family profiles, etc. The paperwork involved is crazy! After you finish all of that you have to create a family profile which will be shown to pregnant mothers who wish to make an adoption plan for their child. At this stage of the game you are just waiting to be chosen. The reasons you could get chosen vary so greatly that it is a highly unpredictable process. You could wait a week or your could wait years. We jumped into the process but I knew Chris' heart wasn't 100% in it. He was happy to do it for me and knew he would love whatever child we ended up with but he had some misgivings. I kept praying the God would change his heart because I wanted so much for him to be as excited about this as I was.
As we went through the process I turned to our adoption agencies website chat room for support. I met an incredible group of women there who were going through the process or had already been through it. They were full of support and advice. One of the women I met has 18 kids - several of them were sibling groups that she adopted together. Over the many nights we spend chatting together she talked about the joys of adopting sibling groups and encouraged me to check out a webite that listed hundreds of children available for adoption. One night I did look through the website and found a sibling group of three beautiful girls. I talked to Chris the next morning (really thinking he would just laugh in my face when I suggested three kids at once) and asked him what he thought of the idea. He never once faltered! He was excited immediately. On Monday he started making phone calls and we found out that this group already had enough families inquiring about them and they were not accepting any more applications. At first I thought "okay, thats it...back to what we were doing." But then Chris and I started talking more and I realized that I still wanted to pursue adopting a sibling group. At that moment we decided to officially change our course with the adoption agency and I realized that God had been sneaky. While I was praying for a change in Chris' heart he had done a 180 in my heart.
Chris and I started spending hours looking through profiles of children who needed a home. I had been looking into groups of 2 or 3 kids and then Chris approached me one day saying "what about this group." The first comment I made to him was "umm.....there are 4 of them." He said "I know" like it was no big deal. Well after reading their profile, doing a lot of inquiring, praying and praying some more we decided to officially submit our application for the group. We had a good connection with their social worker right away. A few weeks later the social workers involved with the kids held a staffing meeting and we were officially chosen to become the adoptive family for Yulissa, Jenavi, Johnny and Laci!! And then we began more paperwork.....
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