We’ve shown our book to 2 expectant mothers so far, and neither one chose us to parent their child. We were officially “in the pool” in early July, that puts us at about 6 months in right now. So if we are consistent with the agency’s timeline of 3-12 months to be matched, we should find our birth mother within the next 6 months.

We are constantly feeling a strange mix of excitement, anticipation, hope, confusion, and disappointment. What a wild journey this has been so far! We are still feeling optimistic most of the time and are looking forward to meeting our mystery child. We’re also very anxious to know when it will actually happen.

I want to thank all of you who inquire about our progress and have given us support through this whole crazy thing. Here’s to good news in ‘09!

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What does “paper pregnant” and “in the pool” mean? It means that Kate and I will now be shown to birthmothers for consideration to adopt their child. This is the closest thing us adopters get to being pregnant, so feel free to yell out a “yippee” or two!

The “pool” in this case is the figurative pool of other adoptive parents. Kate and I have expressed certain preferences (health of birthmother/child, level of openness, etc.) to our agency, as have the birthmothers. Our agency plots these preferences and matches an adoptive couple and a birthmother based on as many similarities as is possible. This means we won’t be shown to every single birthmother, but I was told by our social worker that (paraphrasing) “After seeing your family book, I can say you are very, very attractive to birthmothers.” Go us!

Our gestation period is a bit off. How off? Kate and I could be matched anywhere from 1 hour to 14 months from now. Yeah, that helps with planning Generally speaking, our agency shows Family Books to birthmothers around month 7 of pregnancy. The hope is that the birthmother has been working with the agency for many months up to this point. The agency has found 7 months to be a good time to give adoptive parents some lead time, but mostly to make sure the birthmother’s plans are solidified to minimize the chance of a changed mind at the last minute. The birthmother may still change her mind at the hospital and decide to keep the baby, there’s nothing anyone can really do about that. “That would suck” is an understatement, but percentage-wise this is in the minority. Once the birthmother signs the release forms, the adoption is iron clad and there is basically nothing that can be done to reverse custody. Kate and I have the State of Oregon to thank for the adoptive parent protection. Thanks Oregon! Of course, the hope is that everything goes smoothly and both parties will be 100% satisfied with their decision

Kate and I will most likely have a month or two notice before the child arrives. However, that is all best case scenario stuff. There is the chance that they’ll call with a match for a baby that is being born in a day or in a week. The agency also have what they humorously call “instant babies”. An instant baby is when the agency gets a call from a Hospital with a mother that has decided on the spot to not keep her baby. When that happens, the agency makes a mad dash to find an adoptive couple. Wild.

For the first time in our adoption process, Kate and I have nothing more to do! We are simply thrilled to be at this point. As Kate says; we’ve been waiting over a year, so that we can officially begin waiting. I guess it’s time for Kate to start knitting booties!

We started out making decisions about what the most important things in our lives were.  We settled on; our relationship, us as individuals, our families, and our close friends.  This settled, we began the great search for photographs depicting all of these things in the best light.  Most of our photos are digitized, so this wasn’t too difficult.  We also dug into our family and friends’ stashes.  The search for the best photos took about two weeks.Our biggest challenge was finding photos of Joel.  He is behind the camera 90% of the time.  We managed to get enough after much searching.  Having a photographer in the family means lots to sort through   I, as token English teacher in the house, was in charge of the birthmother letter and captions.  Joel, as token graphics designer in the house, was in charge of layout.  One might look at these qualifications and say that we had it in the bag.  Not that easy.

We wanted to make sure that everyone was similarly represented, that we had serious and crazy times, that we showed the full gamut of our lives. We spent the majority of two full days on the task.  After several versions and updates, the first draft is complete and we’ve sent it off to our social worker today.  Phew!

She gave us a little advice and her seal of approval, we’ll be ready to print up a few copies of the book and send them to the agency by the end of the week, then we’re in the pool!

We had a brief scare a couple of weeks ago. Our social worker had previously told us we could go into the waiting parent pool before we took the mandatory adoption class.  About 3 weeks later we got an e-mail telling us that she’d changed her mind and wanted us to wait until after the class, which would have set us back another two months. Thankfully Joel was able to convince her that that was not the best decision for us and we can now hop into the pool as soon as our family book is done and take the class in mid-August. But really, this was considerably less stressful than anything we went through with the first round of adoption attempts. And thank goodness for that.

We are still working on the book. Now that I am done with school for the year (yipee!!!!!) I can go to work in earnest and get our “Dear Birthmother” letter written, and Joel and I can settle on which photos will go into the family book. We’re hoping to be finished with the book by the end of the month. It will be so nice to be in the final stages of waiting. We’ve been working for over a year to be waiting. What a strange thing to want!

Thanks for checking in. I’m going to try to post at least once every couple of weeks, more if things start to get exciting

Sorry for the lack of writing, but here is a quick update on our progress.

We had what we’re calling our “Mini-Home Study” on May 7th. Our previous agency was able to give us our entire dossier back because we hadn’t gotten to the point where it had been sent over to Vietnam yet. So along with all of our medicals and fingerprints, we also got our home study. Our current agency was able to use that to create a new home study for us, so we didn’t have to go through all the rigmarole again. Woo Hoo!

However, our social worker did want to come over to the house and fill in a few holes that weren’t in the Vietnam home study. It was pretty much the same as the first one, except with a lot fewer questions and a very different social worker. She is very laid-back and conversational. It’s nice and calming.

The next step puts the ball in our court. We are in the process of creating our family book. The family book is a scrapbook that showcases us as a family (thank you Captain Obvious!). It begins with a Dear Birthmother letter. This is a letter from us to the expectant mothers who are also working with our agency and talks a little bit about us and our journey to adoption. Then there are pages of photos showing us as a couple, our families both immediate and extended, our social group, and us as individuals. The goal of the book is to give expectant mothers a look into our lives so that they have a better idea of who we are and whether they want to place their baby with us. Once the book is finished and turned into the agency we will be in the pool of waiting families and are officially “Paper Pregnant”! So here’s hoping for quick publishing!

We arrived early, which was good because we got through pretty quickly. As directed in our official appointment letters, we arrived with our letters and picture ID in hand, with no cell phones or recording devices, yes, this was the only thing they insisted we not bring. The building is kind of sketchy looking, as Joel said, “if the lights were out I’d think it was abandoned.”

A very nice security guard checked our credentials, handed us yet another short form to fill out, and sent us into the main lobby; a faded, pale blue room decorated with 20 year-old, government issue photos of purple mountains majesty, and other various all-American imagery, florescent lights, and rows and rows of hard, gray, plastic chairs. Everyone there looked very somber. We filled out our form and gave it all back to the nice security guard, who made a few extra marks and sent us into a line at the back of the pale blue room. When we got to the front of the line, another nice, cordial gentleman stamped our forms and gave us a number, and sent us into another, smaller, pale blue room, similarly adorned, to wait for our number to be called. Our numbers were called very quickly and we were again helped by very nice gentlemen. My prints took longer than Joel’s, they kept finding blank spots where the prints didn’t pick up on the computer. When we finished up with that, we were sent on our way. Simple as that.

Overall it was a quick and painless process. The first so far! So, now we wait again, hopefully for no more than a month, for our final document to come home to us. This will mean that our dossier is complete and we are in line for our little one. Whew!

The appointment is Jan. 2nd. What better way to shake off the New Year hangover and start the year on a good foot by being fingerprinted by Homeland Security? But when it’s for a good cause, USCIS can capture my biometrics any time

The next step is to get our last piece of paperwork for our dossier (the packet of papers about us that goes to the Vietnamese government). This is called the I-171H, and it is up to the Oregon State government to get it back to us (ugh). Then our dossier goes on a couple of trips to various government agencies before being sent to Vietnam for translation and finally to the Vietnamese government for final approval. Then we get a number that will make us officially paper pregnant, which means we are waiting to be matched with a baby.

These are the photos of the house that we sent in our dossier, look how clean it is!

It feels very good to get this scheduled. I said to our social worker at the agency ‘It feels like we’re making “real” progress now.’

We’ve got roughly three weeks until the home study. Our plan is:

1. Get as much (hopefully all) of the dossier paperwork completed so our social worker can take it with her afterwards.
2. Clean the house. Three weeks should just be enough I’m joking, right? Right?!