The Birthmother Match

So our adoptive parent profile has only been online since July 8th. About a week after that (last week), we were contacted by Mary, an Adoption Advisor from our agency, that she was going to present our profile packet to a birthmother for review. This birthmother had been working with them since June and was very picky, having already been matched twice only to have the couples back out after matching (which really makes me sad). So our profile was being presented with the profiles of 10-12 other couples. We were given a brief overview of her file to make sure we wanted to have our information presented since she didn’t exactly match what we were looking for. We agreed and Mary put our profile in the stack with the others.

Two days later, Mary called me again to say that the birthmother really really loved our profile. She had narrowed it down to us and one other couple (no pressure there, right?) but had a few questions for us (REALLY no pressure now). She wanted to know about James’ deployment schedule, whether he would be going overseas again anytime soon, how long I would be at home with the baby before starting school again, how we feel about private schooling, and a couple other questions. I gave Mary my answers and told her to let me know how things went.

No call Thursday. No call Friday. Then we had to wait all weekend. No call Monday. Finally I emailed Mary back to ask her if she’d heard anything because I was about four seconds away from a full anxiety melt-down. I didn’t care if the birthmother had picked the other couple instead of us. I just needed to KNOW! Mary said the birthmother still hadn’t decided yet, and that she’d let me know.

Tuesday afternoon Mary called me and said that the birthmother had decided on us and was ready to present us with the birthmother’s profile. So she told us about the birthmother’s history and how she got to where she is now. She told us about her family and a little about her health history, her lineage, her due date, the gender of the baby, and lots of other stuff. We discussed the financial commitment we’d have to make, including the match fee to our agency, supporting the birthmother until six weeks after delivery, and the attorney’s fees for finalizing the adoption. It was more than we’d anticipated, but not more than we could handle. So after James and I discussed it (off the phone), we called Mary back and told her that we’d agreed on the match.

So today we had our match meeting, which was a long conference call with Mary, the birthmother, and both of us. The birthfather was originally supposed to be on the conference call too, but we’ll get to him later (and oh boy is HE an interesting story). We were on the phone for a little over an hour and at the end we all agreed to the match.

So it’s official. We are expecting a healthy little girl on October 17th. We’ll have to stay in the birthmother's state for the first 10 business days after she’s born. So we’ll be bringing her home on or around Halloween (if she’s born exactly on time).

I hope everyone knows how grateful I am for all your love, prayers, and support since we announced we’re adopting. We truly have the best friends and family in the world and I hope you know how much we appreciate everything you do for us.

Webpages are Live!

We just got emailed that our adoptive parent profile webpages are up and running! I’m so excited. Our profiles are listed on three different websites. The agency's website allows us to track how many times our page is viewed. It’s already been viewed 5 times since this afternoon, but I think 2 or 3 of those might have been us. Oops. We’re still working on our home study, but we should be finished with it by the end of the month. We meet with the social worker again on Friday.

First Home Study Visit

So we met with our social worker, Amy, for the first time today. And, of course, Piper jumped all over her as soon as she walked in the door. Perfect. Juuuust fabulous. I was a little freaked out that our first meeting would be here at the house because I only had a day and a half to panic-clean the whole house from top to bottom. But she didn’t come to check out the house. The first visit (of three) was just about getting to know James and I. She asked us questions about our parents, what they were like, our childhoods, our siblings, high school, college, what we do for a living, what our personalities are like, etc. It took about an hour and a half, but it was ok. Our second meeting is next week.