He's Here!

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It is my great joy to introduce you to our son, Collin!  He was born in September and we met him November 1- three years to the day from when we first submitted out application to The Cradle.  The last few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind of meetings, introductions, and paperwork.  Words fail me for now, but as I get the chance to gather my thoughts and truly reflect on all that has transpired, I will share more of the story that brought this little guy into our family.

Allie and I are thrilled to hit the ground running, wrapping up the adoption portion of our journey and begin parenting our little nugget.  Sam, too, is beyond excited to become a big brother, seeing God's faithfulness in answering his prayers over the last few years.

Please join us in prayers of thanksgiving for this wonderful addition to our family!

We're Waiting!

ALL the way back in April, we completed our home study, and we are a waiting family.  Friends and family have asked a lot of questions about how that's going, so we wanted to take a few minutes and answer those for you here.

What does it mean to be on the waiting list?

We've completed all of the necessary paperwork, training, background checks, etc. and have our home study approved which says that we are ready to adopt.  With all of that behind us, there's not much left to do except wait.  This can take days, weeks, months, or even years.  Our counselor told us that last year the shortest wait was less than two weeks while the longest wait was almost three years.  The average was around 15 months.

So far we've been on the list for about five and a half months, though that is not any indicator of how much longer we will wait until placement.

So, you're just waiting for "the call," right?

Our counselor is actively working to match our family with a birth mother who is considering an adoption plan.  (That's code for "it's complicated.")  Many factors go into finding a match, not simply going down the list of waiting families.  That's part of why the wait times vary so much.  For our part, we’ve created our family profile- a book which includes pictures and stories to introduce ourselves and describe what our family is like.  When our counselor identifies a potential match, she will send us a request for profile (RFP) or referral, asking for our permission to send our profile to a birth mother.  If we say yes, the birth mother will be given our profile along with those of several other waiting families to decide on the best match.  If she chooses us, then our counselors will arrange a meeting where we can get to know each other and explore what an open adoption might look like.  Even in this match, the birth mother will ultimately decide whether to proceed with the adoption or to parent the child.  We have little control over this whole process, but we've been told by other adoptive families that when it happens, it will all make sense.

Are you ready?

Absolutely!  Yes!  Sort of...

Are we ready to adopt and parent another child?  1000% yes!  Every day of every week we continue to pray that it will happen soon.  Each time my phone buzzes, my pulse races just a little hoping that we have a message from our counselor, only to find a mass market email that I don't remember subscribing to.  This literally happens hundreds of times each week, and I don't expect that to go away.

We've had to get used to making last-minute plans.  In a typical pregnancy, you can reasonably expect a nine-month time-frame to work with.  The doctor gives you a "due date" and you consider all decisions regarding your schedule and commitments in light of this one point in time.  On the waiting list, we are perpetually only a few weeks away from this date, except that we don't have any idea when it is.  It's a constant and unavoidable tension.  For that reason, we have to maintain near-total flexibility in our schedule.  Anything more than two weeks in the future comes with the spoken/unspoken caveat, "...unless we have a baby then."

Logistically, we have a car seat and bassinet, though neither is set up.  The nursery is still just an extra bedroom.  We have not stockpiled diapers and formula.  We have not installed the latest array of high-tech baby monitors.  I keep a short list on my phone of the essentials we need from an emergency Target run, but that's it.  We can "finish" getting ready quickly, but we're waiting to do that until we have a match.

Is it time to get excited yet?

We received our first RFP after only a week on the list.  (The waiting can be fairly short sometimes.)  We carefully reviewed the details and agreed to have our profile shown to the birth mother.  She, in turn, looked over several family profiles and chose to move forward with someone else.

That week was intense- both for us and for her.

Although we were not selected, we were thrilled to be part of the process.  We prayed for this mother to have clarity and peace in a difficult decision- that one family would stand out to her, even if it wasn’t ours.  By submitting our profile, we gave ourselves a chance, and perhaps more importantly, we helped give that mother a real choice.  I’m sure it wasn’t easy, but she was able to see several different families and decide on the best fit for her child.  That’s a big deal, and part of creating a healthy environment for the child to grow up.

We've received two other RFPs since then with the same result, and we continue to wait.  Because of this, you can understand why we aren’t going to post much about each RFP we receive or get too worked up over these steps.  This could happen many more times before we get into a match.  It could happen every week, or it might not happen again for a year or two.

When it’s time to get excited, trust us, you’ll know.

Questions?

Leave us a comment with any questions, and we'll get back to you shortly.

Waiting expectantly,

Adam