We are excited to share that we are adopting a child!
The standard questions we are asked often are, “Do you have children? How old are they? Do you want more children?” We are usually pretty honest with our answers and let people know that it wasn’t in the plan for us to only have one child at this point in our marriage. Through our honesty and confession about the stirring to adopt, God brought specific people into our lives to give us a word of encouragement and others who pointed us in the direction of New Life Adoptions. Through these friends and Rachel's medical diagnosis, God has made the path toward adoption very clear to us. We are eager to follow His lead.
Adoption is very expensive. In order to make adoption a reality for our family, we are inviting others to financially and prayerfully partner with us. The exact amount required by the agency is $24,000. We also have up to $1,750 in additional fees that will be given to the attorney once adoption is finalized.
Any money donated beyond this amount will go towards formula, diapers, clothing, and other expenses related to the needs of our adopted child.
We appreciate your financial partnership greatly.
It's been a while since we've posted an update and would like to give you one. Our home study was completed on April 20 and approved. Thank you for your support as all the funding we've received thus far paid for that. The agency is eager to show us to expectant mothers. We've received wisdom from adult adoptees as well as adoptive parents which helped us realize that we needed to take some time to reflect on this process rather than rushing into the adoption. While we've chosen to temporarily "pause" the physical/tangible preparations, we are very actively preparing our hearts which is ultimately more important than painting a room or buying baby clothes. We are doing the hard but holy work of seeking counsel, surrendering to the Lord, and making some painful but necessary changes in our lives. We are thankful for what God is doing in our hearts in this season, and we fully believe our foundation for becoming adoptive parents is growing firmer with every passing day. We have a big adoption training in mid-September, and we also plan to complete our physical preparations by the end of that month. This gives us ample time to continue to prepare our hearts and our home for the baby. Thank you again for coming alongside us during this journey. We appreciate your support and ask that you will pray that God will provide for all of our needs as we continue our preparations.
Our paperwork is now complete! We completed the child abuse training, CPR training, and finished all the books. Our papers are all signed, and our references are in! Our home study is scheduled for April 20. Once our home study is completed and approved, our family book will be shown to expectant mothers!! :)
Chad and I are making great progress in completing our checklists. We have almost all of our paperwork completed. We turned in our notarized background check permission forms, submitted Chad's social security card, and got the cats vaccinated. Even the kitties have an important role to play!
Our background checks are finished! We went to a special place called Identogo for fingerprinting, and they were so very kind and efficient. Our email confirmation states "based on a review of the background check results, the CBCU has determined that you are ELIGIBLE to be present at this operation in the role of Adoptive parent." Yahoo! SO glad we passed... not that I was worried or anything :) I've completed my child abuse training, too!!
Our friend, Ashley Ebert, took updated family photos for us to use for our family book. She also took some photos of our house.
Here's what we have left to do:
1. Sign and submit some final permission forms and statements saying we agree to their social media policies.
2. Chad needs to complete his book readings and child abuse training.
3. We both need to complete our CPR training.
4. Create our family book. This is such a big step as this book is shown to expectant mothers, and this is how they determine which family they want their baby to be placed with.
Since attending our pre-adoption conference on January 18, we’ve been very busy reading our books and working on all the other required paperwork.
Rachel has read all 5 books and submitted her book summaries. Chad has read 3 of the 5 books and completed the book summaries for what he’s read! One question I’ve been asked is if Chad can listen to audiobooks while on his work commute, but he works from home. However, Chad had to travel to Wisconsin for work last week and was able to listen to audiobooks during his travel time! Unfortunately, Dear Birthmother is such a dated book that it does not come in audiobook format so he will have to find time to read that one- old school style.
We’ve gotten most of the other paperwork turned in. However, it’s been a process. I wish I’d taken a photo of our house as we slowly tore it apart looking for Chad’s social security card to no avail!!! It looked like a honey badger invaded LOL I’m glad to say he was able to order a new one, and it is now here! We still need to have some forms notarized, get the cats re-vaccinated, and complete the required trainings. We’ll be attending a weekend-long training provided by New Life February 23-24!
Our pre-adoption conference went very well. We asked many questions, and the executive director of New Life answered each of them thoroughly.
Last year, they placed 20 babies! That is the highest number they’ve ever had.
Now that our pre-adoption conference is complete, we’ve “officially” agreed to move forward with New Life and are completing tons of paperwork. Sandi, the executive director, said the fastest timeline for paperwork being completed and approved was 8 weeks! I will say that Rachel is rather fast at getting things done, and we’re already well on our way to hopefully getting things done sooner than that. 😉
Once all documents are completed and approved, then our home study will be scheduled. We are currently the first of this second batch of waiting families so we aren’t “competing” with anyone else for the first home study timeslot.
After the home study is approved, our profile and family book will be shown to expectant mothers. We are not eligible to be chosen by a mother until this step is done.
All of that is to say, there’s a specific process but no specific timeline for when the baby could arrive. We are hopeful that a baby will be placed with us before the end of 2024.
