When you're looking to add to your family through adoption, it's not unusual to find yourself in the following conversation, or some version of it:
Other Person: So, how is that whole adoption thing going? (insert tentative grimace on their face)
Me: Blah blah blah - usually short and sweet
OP: Well, my mother's co-workers' friend's granddaughter is pregnant and looking for someone to adopt her child. Would you be interested?
Me: Sure.
OP: Well, I'll let me mother know about you and she can pass along the information.
Then you never hear another word. That's fine. You never expect to.
Except . . .
Last weekend one of our friends who is a social worker (not with D*C*F*S or any subsidiary thereof) mentioned that one of her co-workers knew a lady whose niece was pregnant for the second time. She already has one child who is being raised by the birth mom's mother, and Grandma can't/won't do anymore. Was I interested?
Of course I said yes, and my only caveat was that we'd want to find out if birth mom was taking any kind of drugs, not because it would be a deal breaker necessarily, but because we wanted to know what we'd be dealing with.
To be honest, I forgot all about it, until I called my friend this morning about something completely unrelated and she said, "My co-worker talked to the aunt and the family says it sounds good to them."
My eloquent response?
"WHAT sounds good to them?"
Apparently they are interested in us for this baby.
I have no information. None. Other than no drugs are involved.
I don't know the sex, the due date, any health problems the baby may have.
Nothing.
So I e-mailed my friend with some basic questions, cause clearly this family is further down the track than we are in terms of information about each other. I'm waiting for a response.
I spent an hour on the phone with an attorney's office this morning, first with the attorney and then with the woman in his office who handles adoption. Got all my questions answered. They just need the go ahead and they will draw up adoption papers and take care of getting them signed. They even said they'd pick up the baby and bring it to us if that's what we all decide to do.
The state does require one home study visit, but happily our home study through D*C*F*S covers that.
I called our social worker because there was some talk that the family was just going to put the child "into the system" after they'd been told they would have to shoulder some of the legal costs of having the child adopted. I let my friend know that that was 100% wrong, and that the adoptive family pays the legal expenses. (The attorney confirmed that.) Anyway, if they choose to go the D*C*F*S route, my question for our worker was whether they could request that the baby be placed with us. They can, but of course the workers would then be legally required to spend six months offering services to the birth mother and trying to return the baby to her. As J said, if they are wanting the child adopted, D*C*F*S is not the way to go. She even said to give them her phone # and she would explain the way the system works and also let them know about us and all we had to go through to be approved to adopt through the state. So generous!
I assumed that the family would like to know more about us, so I'm working on yet another copy of my ABC scrapbook of our family and life here to give to them. I'll also include a letter of introduction and try to answer some of the questions that I'd be wondering about if I was a birth mother. That should take up a huge chunk of my weekend.
Holy cow. No really. Holy cow. What in the world is going on?
I've told one of my girlfriends and she got all squealy and happy and started talking about the "hand of God" being all over this. I told her that I appreciated her enthusiasm and excitement but that I had spent waaaaaay too long in this process to be putting my eggs in this basket right now. In fact, I don't even SEE the basket yet. It's fun to think about - that's about where I am right now. It's entirely possible that the birth mother will choose another family and I won't hear another word.
But if nothing else, this shows me how quickly things can change.
We're still "in the game" regarding the adoptive placement we were approached about, by the way. Just waiting to see what foster mom and foster dad decide and we'll go from there.
Better run. There's scrapbooking to do! Happy weekend all!
