One Year

I just realized that today marks the one year anniversary of the acceptance of our home study and the day we became "a waiting family". Last year I wondered what it would be like - the waiting. Even though I had no idea what to expect from this waiting period, I think my expectations were reasonable. I certainly didn't think we'd have a child by the end of last summer or not even before the end of the year. But I did not expect after one full year that we would still just be waiting. I thought something, anything would have happened by now. But, nothing. Nothing at all.

I'm not going to get all down on myself. Looking back I realize how little I understood the adoption process a year ago. For about 2 years before we took the plunge, I read everything about adoption. I asked people we knew who had adopted. I thought I was pretty adoption savvy. Now I realize I didn't know squat.

Our social worker turned me on to the blogger world. She suggested it as a way to network for our adoption. I don't know if this little bit of blogging is really doing us any good. But I am thankful to have found all the adoption bloggers I currently read. And I find new ones everyday. They are people from all sides of adoption and they are the ones who have really taught me what I now know about adoption today. The kind of things you can't learn from a book. They have shared real life experiences, the good and the bad and the ones they are still trying to figure out for themselves. Situations that I never would have dreamed about. Most of all, they opened our eyes to open adoption. Last month we sat down with our social worker in order to change our home study to include open adoption situations. So I thank you, adoption bloggers, for taking the time to document your journeys and for giving me encouragement.

I have also recently been branching out and visiting other blogs. I think it started with a few blogs which featured gardening and from there to blogs about travelling - two of my favorite pastimes. I've also started to read another bunch that fascinate me so much. The expats. It's amazing that they are so brave to pick up and live in a foreign country. It is something I dreamed of when I was younger, but never had the nerve to do. All of these blogs provide such interesting reading. Looking at gardens and listening to tales of travel is a great way to keep my mind occupied during this waiting period. So I thank those bloggers, too.

And so now, with a year behind us, I will take all that I have learned and look forward. As Scarlett says, "After all, tomorrow is another day!"

The Year of Learning (about open adoption)

It was this time last year we started our home study process. I remember setting up the first appointment with our social worker. She said there would be a lot of paperwork to go through for the first meeting. So I didn't stress about the meeting too much.

However once we got there, the "interview" began. She hit us with questions about our infertility struggle on the very first meeting. I wasn't expecting this. It was probably a good thing. I didn't have time to over think it. There were tears. It had been about 2 years since had finished our last Invitro fertilization round(IVF). But, we got through the initial interview and set up our next appointment in which we would be interviewed separately.

That was the one that gave me a headache. The questions delved deeply into our marriage, into our individual upbringings and our relationships with our families. Our social worker was always kind. But it was a very long session and I had to have an aspirin afterwards. We got in the car and I told Hunter how the session had given me a headache. He confessed to the same.

We went on to have the home visit. I swear, by that time I was happy to just clean the house. I thought the meeting would be free of questions. Wrong! But they were mostly about how we would react to certain scenarios concerning an open adoption. I, like most people, was wary of the contact with the birth mother. Then all these situations were presented to us like contact with grandparents or contact with siblings. These were situations I never even contemplated and the thought of it all definitely overwhelmed me. We answered very conservatively about such contacts. After our home study was approved our social worker suggested I start blogging and sent me two examples of adoption blogs.

So I started reading and reading and reading. I was glad to be exposed to people writing about their experiences with adoption. I try to regularly read blogs by people on all sides of the adoption equation. Through reading these experiences, I have learned so much and am now firmly a believer of open adoptions.

What a difference a year makes!