On June 20th and 21st, Paul and I had our 2 day adoption workshop. There were two other couples there with us. One was going for domestic, like us, and the other couple was going for going for an international adoption from Azerbaijan, which the social working had a fun time saying several times throughout the day.
The first day we had to introduce our spouse to the rest of the group by stating fun facts, likes and dislikes, and things like that. Then we played an ice-breaking game which involved throwing a ball to someone and saying their name. It was easy when there was only one ball involved, but then the social worker threw more and more balls into the mix and it quickly became chaos. The game was meant to show us what the adoption process is like. There are times when we think we are on top of things and can handle everything and then there were times when things just seemed to be chaos, but it all worked itself out eventually.
After the ice-breaking game, the couple that is adopting internationally was taken into a different room and the two domestic adoption couples stayed in the room and went through various types of training of the adoption process.
After talking a bit about the domestic adoption process and timeline, we talked about coping with loss. It's important to realize that all of the parties involved with an adoption lose something. The birthmother obviously has to deal with the loss of a child, but she also has to deal with the possible loss of family members and friends. The adoptive parents have to deal with the loss of not having their own biological child. The adopted child deals not only with the loss of their birthmother, but also with the loss of their culture and in some parts, a loss of their identity. It was a very eye opening presentation. It made us think more about the other parties involved in the adoption process and not just ourselves. It made us want an open adoption. Originally, we were thinking about a closed adoption, but we realized that the openness of the adoption is more so for the child's sake than for our own. We want to have a good relationship with the birthmother, whoever she may be.
After lunch, we talked about the legal process that we have to go through. There's a certain period of time between when the baby is born and when the birthparents terminate their legal rights as parents which is known as legal risk. It is anywhere around 1 to 3 months, depending on the situation. In that time, the child would be placed in our home, but at any time the birthmother could come and say that she wanted to parent and we would have to give the child back. Though it is a scary idea, Shannon came up with the idea of doing what's known as "cradle care" for the baby. We would care for the baby, like a foster family, until the parent terminated their rights. That way it would not be as painful if the birth mother decided to take her child back. Shannon said, "It's either our child or someone else's, either way we will take care of them until we find out."
We want to name our son Benjamin Riley, and it would be awkward to name a child that and then have the child taken away, so we decided during that "legal risk" period to name the baby after the actors who played the Doctor on Doctor Who. One name a week. Should be fun. That way we can say the baby is the Doctor :)
At the end of the first day, we met with parents who had recently adopted and heard their stories. One family who had adopted domestically had gone through the entire process in one year, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes for us.
On the second day, we met with a birth parent who had recently decided to give her son up for adoption. It was really interesting to hear her side of things and it really drove home the point that we would like to have an open adoption. Though adoption is built on loss and pain, we hope that together with the birthmother we can raise a wonderful child together.
The next part of the process is getting a home study done. A social worker will come into our house and check out the environment and make sure it is conducive to have a child live there.
After the home study process though, we will not be able to put much online for a while. HIPPA Laws prevent us from announcing when we would be meeting with a birth mother or even to announce the day that the baby was born. Until the baby is legally ours (six months after the baby is born), we cannot even post pictures or videos online. So our blog might go dark for a while. But when the baby is finally ours and our adoption is finalized, we will be massively uploading all sorts of videos and pictures and fun stuff for you all to look at.
Thanks for reading. I know this is a long one, but there's a lot going on! All we can do is just sit back and enjoy the ride. To quote the 11th Doctor, "Geronimo!"
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