Into the Unknown
Did you sing that in your head? If you've seen Frozen 2 you probably did and you are welcome for getting that song stuck in your head. Now it may seem cheesy to title a blog post after a song in an animated film, but truly this is how we have felt about starting the adoption process.
My life has crossed paths with a fair amount of people who have gone through the adoption process, so I thought I had a pretty good grasp of what we were getting ourselves into...but I thought wrong. There is so much behind the scenes of adoption and there are so many unique aspects due to us living overseas that at times we feel very in over our heads. However, we are more determined and driven than ever to add a precious babe to our family.
This past week I had the great privilege of holding one of my dearest friend's baby when she was only 4 hours old and oh so fresh from Heaven. From the second I picked her up I could feel the special spirit she had about her and I can't wait to welcome that sweet spirit into our home, with our own precious babe.
Given the level of detail I shared with out IVF journey, it should come as no surprise that I want to share about our adoption journey as well. I hope that our experiences can help others who may feel their hearts drawn towards adoption and that it will help friends and family understand our current life situation.
Here is a quick rundown of what we've done so far:
-End of September: we reached out to highly recommended home study agency that specializes in working with American families living abroad. We had a Skype interview with our amazing social worker that got the ball rolling. She asked us some basic get-to-know-you questions and how committed we currently were to the adoption process. Even though we had only been seriously considering adoption for a few weeks, we told her we were very much committed and wanted to get things moving as soon as possible as we knew the process can be lengthy. She told us that she had a trip planned to Europe mid-October and could work in our home study visit if we thought we could pull everything together in time. At that point we were in our home, but our household goods hadn't been delivered and we had this skype call sitting on a loaner couch from base. We told her we'd get back to her.
-First and second week of October: While watching General Conference (our church's semi-annual conference of religious sermons by out leaders), Jimmy turned to me and said "let's do it". We emailed our social worker and let her know we wanted her to visit. Our household goods were delivered and my sister came to visit. This was a crazy time! We were working to get the house put together and we had a three day trip to Amsterdam with my sister where every night we worked our way through what ended up being a 100 page document answering questions about every last detail of our lives. It was intense.
-Third week of October: The day of our home study arrived. We had worked so hard to get our house put together, but it was far from complete. The garage was a disaster, the office looked like it had vomited books, and the guest room had become a dumping ground for all the random things we didn't know where to put. We were stressing hardcore as we felt we were about to undergo a scrupulous judgement process to determine if us, and our house, would be fit for a child. Luckily, it was nothing like that at all. We picked up our social worker and she immediately put us at ease. While she did look around our house and she did ask us questions about pretty much every aspect of our lives (covering everything from how we felt about how we were raised to how much money we make and everything in between), we felt as if we were just having a conversation with a close friend. At the end of the visit we breathed a huge sigh of relief as she said the words "I see no red flags or cause for concern, you are approved for adoption"-WAHOO!!!
-End of October to now: After our home study visit it was time to finish up paperwork and to choose an adoption agency to work with. We were given a list from the home study agency of adoption agencies that worked with families living abroad and so we started sending out emails to pretty much every agency on the list. Slowly we were able to get it down to about 5 agencies, then down to 3, and then finally we picked one. It came highly recommended and it is based in Utah (which will make it easier on us when the baby is born because we will have immediate family support and a free place to stay). We are currently working our way through their paperwork and waiting for the finalization of our home study (which should hopefully be this month!).
So, this has been our experience so far. We are hoping that all paperwork goes through smoothly and we are aiming for our online profile (that birthmothers will look at) to go live sometime in January. After that, it becomes a waiting game.
Our adoption journey started hard and fast, but it feels so good to be moving forward. This journey may be long, it may be expensive (Like $35,000 expensive), and it may be intense, but we absolutely cannot wait to bring a sweet babe into our home and to become "mom" and "dad".
(I can't help but swoon when I see Jimmy with kids; he is going to be the best dad!)
We have been so overwhelmed with the love and support we have received from loved ones and strangers alike. Y'all have had more impact than you will ever know and I feel like we can never express the amount of gratitude we feel. Thank you for being in our corner.
Stay Messi,
Jessi
PS. If you would like to donate to our adoption fund, you can do so through:
Paypal: jessica.niepraschk@gmail.com
Venmo: @jimmy-winegardner
