It has been a few months since I have updated here about our adoption process (or anything else for that matter! Ha!) But I wanted to document all that has been happening, so we always have a record of this part of our journey toward our newest little love. These past few months have been challenging, I'm not going to lie. Not in the sense of actual difficulty, but at times, keeping up the mental and emotional energy to keep plugging toward the goal of being "officially ready" has been difficult. It felt like just when one aspect was completed, another big thing was in line, or things had to be edited, proofed, re-submitted etc. There were many elements in motion all at the same time which felt a little exhausting too because I never felt that anything was ever finished....
We have been beyond blessed to have worked with some amazing and I mean AMAZING people along the way and I'm excited to tell you about them. When you are fortunate to work with people who know what they are doing and who do it really well...it takes a lot of pressure off to feel like you have to have things all figured out because you can actually trust someone who knows the way to help guide you through your own unknown. What a gift this discovery has been along this path.
Back in October, in addition to working on completing our home study paperwork, I began researching what are called family profiles. As we have learned, a prospective adoptive family puts together what is called a profile about themselves which includes dozens of photos and what is known in adoption circles as a "Dear Birth Mother" letter. This profile "booklet" is what is presented to potential birth mothers when they are making a decision for their child's adoption plan. It is basically our most important, life-altering first impression that we will ever make! No pressure.
The photos you include in this book tell the story of your family, your history, your interests, your home, your hobbies, your friends and family...and included along with these photos is your 'Dear Birth Mother' letter which is a letter you write telling the prospective birth mother about your family and how you will raise her child and why she should pick you as her child's forever family. It is an incredibly difficult letter to write and it took me WEEKS to write ours. As I worked on our letter, I researched and learned that some adoptive families make their own profile books while others hire a professional to put theirs together. I spent a lot of time looking online at people's profiles as well as researching companies who help adoptive families with this online. We finally landed on hiring a professional to make our profile. It just made sense to us to have someone else help us with this as the more I pondered this, the more 'in the weeds' I felt. I was getting overwhelmed by the enormity of its potential impact on our lives and knew if I was in charge of making it, I would never finish....the tweaking could/would potentially go on forever! When we spoke with Sharon from Forever Family Designs, it made our choice to hire her a cinch. We loved her work and she, herself was fantastic. (You can click on the link above and find out more about her, see some of her samples and learn a little bit about her passion for what she does.)
Sharon was AWESOME to work with. She gave us some tips, some feedback, she edited some of our photos, she has an incredible eye for design and was so patient and professional throughout the process. We basically submitted hundreds of photos to her (so she could choose the ones she thought were best), as well as our completed 'Dear Birth Mother' letter and she went to work. She sent us a variety of proofs and mock ups and we gave her feed back on what we liked, did not like, fonts, photos etc, and she would tweak it based on our feedback and then would send us another proof and on and on and back and forth it went for the creative process for each of the 12 pages. She was 100% focused on making sure we loved our profile, and in the end, we absolutely do love it. She helped us learn about how to print them and even hooked us up with one of her favorite professional printers to use which was a relief for us to not have to research that as well. All in all, the process took almost two months, but that included several out of town trips for us, sick kiddos on both sides, the Thanksgiving holiday, she moved in the middle of it (and never missed a beat!) and just a general busy time of year for everyone. She was absolutely wonderful to work with, we were THRILLED with the finished product. It goes without saying that we would recommend her to anyone looking for help in this area in a heart beat!
On November 18, 2013, we had our home visit portion of our home study. This entailed a friendly social worker, Miss Rachel, from our chosen local agency, Adoption and Beyond, Inc. coming to our home, interviewing us (individually and together), meeting Lily, watching us interact with her, touring our home, and just spending time getting to know us. I was not really nervous about this meeting because in my mind, we are a normal family with nothing to hide, Lily is a great little girl and our home is safe, spacious and warm, so I was not too concerned about "passing" more just about getting it behind us so we could continue down the path. Overall, it was an actually pleasant morning. The appointment lasted almost three hours. At the end, she told us what to expect next as far as the preparing of our official home study documentation and time lines etc. We were super excited to be over this next hurdle in the process and that much closer to having this all-important piece of paperwork/documentation ready for our adoption.
It was Christmas time when our home study was officially-official and done and it was just before Christmas when our profile was officially completed, so we had the two most important portions of our paperwork completed. Now all that remained was the giant stack of paperwork for our adoption consultants we hired. I will fill you in more about them in my next update... the important thing, was that we were finally getting SUPER close to being "active" where we could be presented to potential birth mothers and potentially finally meet our little sweet pea....
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