At the beginning of this process, we were led to believe that we couldn't have any birthmothers look at our profile with the adoption agency until our Home Study was completed. We were wrong. As soon as we were approved to begin the Home Study, we were also approved with the agency. They said if we got our pictures and information to them soon, they could go ahead and post our profile. We quickly gathered all of the information and got it to them. We are still waiting on them to get back to us on what changes need to be made and what pictures we may need to add. That is the frustrating part. We rushed to get everything together and we are still waiting 2 weeks later. We were also doing this while we were preparing for our Home Study. I was trying to gather things, write a heartfelt letter to the birthmother and clean my house at the same time. I knew I need pictures of the rooms of our home for the Home Study so every piece of clutter I saw made me cringe. I was so stressed out during this time.
We finally got it all out of our hands and scheduled our interview with the social worker. We had to drive an hour to get to her office. We then spent two hours talking with her. We pretty much had to restate a lot of what was in our autobiographies except this time answering her questions. After two hours, we were drained. At the end of the interview, she wanted to schedule the next two interviews. We happen to be doing all of this when summer has just begun and people are going on vacation. So, to work around our vacation with friends to FL and her vacation, we ended up having our last two interviews one day apart. I was again in a mad rush.
Our first interview was on a Friday- this was one with the two of us, the second was on the next Tuesday with me alone and the third was on Thursday with Gary alone and at our home. I fought the waterworks in our first interview. We have told our story so many times about our family and how we met so that was no biggy. But, she did delve into our infertility also so we had to retell that story. I could tell that Gary was still a little raw about the whole thing. He tends to talk too loudly when he is passionate about something. His voice got louder and louder as he kept talking. I held back the tears though.
The part that really made me tear up was when our social worker started giving us advice. She herself has two adopted children so she was easy to relate too. She asked us when we would tell our child that they were adopted. We couldn't pinpoint a day or time. At her advice, there won't be a specific day or time for our child/children. She said it is best to always talk about adoption even when they are infants. We should keep a picture album/journal of meeting the birth mother, trips to the hospital, the birth etc. to show to our child. We could even add facts about the state where they are going to be born. I thought these were wonderful ideas. The waterworks came when she began talking about how difficult it will be at the hospital. The tears. The birthmother. The raw emotion. Since her job is to be at the hospital during adoptions, she has seen birth mothers who cried so loudly you could hear them in the hallway of the hospital. That ripped my heart out. Here I am trying to adopt a baby knowing the pain of never being able to get pregnant. And, I picture a birth mother laying in a bed at the hospital after carrying a precious life inside of her for 9 months and growing to love her baby only to have to go through the pain of delivery and then the pain of watching someone else carry her baby out of the hospital. To feel that kind of pain so we can feel our kind of joy. It is so selfless!!! What a wonderful gift to give. I haven't that emotional since we decided to adopt and forgo the fertility treatments. I have felt we are again in control and doing something. I know I will have tears for a whole different reason in the coming months or years. However long we have to wait.
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