First off, we want to say thank you for all the love everyone has given us in the past few days! We are so happy that so many people share in our excitement about our adoption. Since we will have so many people following along, we want to share our plan of action since it might look a little different than a typical adoption.
The first step in any kind of adoption (yes, there are many different kinds!) is to complete a home study. This is when we hire a social worker to learn about us, and to literally come and visit our home to make sure it is safe for a child and that there is enough room. They also look into our finances, complete a comprehensive background check, verify employment, collect letters of recommendation from our friends and family, and make sure we are who we say we are. Our home study required two visits with our social worker, and tons of documentation that needed to be collected and turned in. It took us about a month to complete this step, but we are “home study approved” and legal to begin our search for our family!
Through our home study visits, we were asked a lot of tough questions. We were also questioned about what types of children we are willing and wanting to adopt. This is a tough question to be asked, as most everyone would want to say “any of them!”. Our social worker reeled us in, however, and wanted us to be realistic and make choices that are going to make our family successful. After many tough decisions, we were able to narrow our answer down to what feels right to us and our family. The fancy way to say it is we are pursing a domestic infant adoption. That means that we are searching all 50 states for a newborn baby (or twins). We are not going to be specific about gender or race, and are open to sibling situations in special circumstances.
The way we will go about finding our family is what makes our adoption maybe a little different than you would imagine. We have chosen to do our search on our own, instead of hiring an adoption agency. This is called an “independent adoption”, and it is starting to become a more popular way of going about things. Although many agencies are ethical, and have great and caring people that look out for birth families, there are some that are profiting from adoptions. These profits can drive some unethical behavior, and in these cases birth families can be manipulated and used for the purpose of getting their newborns. This did not sit well with Aaron and I, and we want our birth family to feel comfortable and confident in their decision.
That leads into the next decision we had to discuss and make. We are looking for a semi-open to open adoption plan. This means that we want to have an open relationship with our birth family. We will maintain contact, send pictures and updates, and our child will have a relationship with their birth family.
Since we are attempting to find our family without an agency, we will be relying heavily on YOU! We will be paying for advertising of our web page, but the best way to get our story out there will be for those closest to us to share our story by word of mouth, and also through social media. If you haven’t already, please like our Facebook Adoption page. You can find it HERE. This is where we will posting updates, and things to share. There will also be a dedicated sharable at the top of that page to make this easy to do.
We can’t thank you all enough for helping make our dream come true! We love you all!
And welcome to our very first “Share it Sundays!”
Adding Andersons 