The Adoption Process (Part 1)

If you and I are friends on Facebook, you may have noticed a status update about my husband, Ben, getting new position with his bank/transferring branches. He's moving to high-volume branch, will be working 40-hour weeks, and we're both relieved to have a TINY bit of financial wiggle room. If you saw this status update, you also read that we are hoping to adopt a child within the next year or so.

I've been asked by a number of people if we are trying to adopt because we (or I) can't have children. NO, that is not the answer. I've been asked why we don't just have our own, if we "SERIOUSLY" think we want to handle the system or the wait time. I've been asked a lot of questions about why we might go through this process instead of trying to get pregnant. Let me clear this up.

Ben and I do WANT and PLAN TO have our own biological child(ren). That has always been the plan. What has also always been the plan is to adopt a child as well. Over the past five years when he and I have talked about our lives, our futures, our family... an adoption has always been on the table. Why? Because there are thousands of children in the state of Missouri that need loving, happy homes and we feel like we could provide that for them.

We are early in the process. We filed an application with the local Children's Division office last week - we mailed it on February 5th. On February 10th we received a call from Healthy Families, which is a division of Cornerstones of Care, asking us for a bit more information before they sent us the steps to take to set up our initial home visit/interview. It's a small step, but we're headed in the right direction. Ahead of us are many interviews, medical exams, background checks, reference checks, and almost 50 hours of training sessions before we can even be licensed to foster - a step you must take to adopt through the state.

I must say, I wasn't sure if I was going to share this journey with everyone. We initially didn't know if we would tell anyone until things were more serious down the road. In the end, I decided that I would regret it if I didn't document these events. Buckle up for the ride; we're trying to be parents!