Yesterday and today we spent 16 hours completely immersed in adoption. It was so great, but somewhat overwhelming. Thursday we learned about the entire IOA (Infant Open Adoption) process, about dealing with grief and loss (our own and our child's), moving on from infertility, and met with a panel of families that have been through adoption before. It was wonderful just sitting in a room full of people that could relate to pretty much everything that came out of your mouth. We just understood, no questions asked.
Today we had a speaker come in and talk to us about making our profile. It was quite interesting and so much fun to think about what ours will look like when we are done with it. We talked a lot about outreach and trying to find our birth mother on our own. This is an area that I am always thinking about. I would be thrilled if we were able to find a match through someone that we know. I hope that everyone reading this blog knows that YOU can be an advocate for us. YOU can help us spread the word about our adoption plans, the more people that know, the faster this could all come together!
The second half of the day was spent on inter-racial adoption. We talked about the differences between race, culture and ethnicity. How our child will be able to find cultural identity in our family and in our community. It really gave us a TON to think about. Brian and I talked non-stop about this topic all the way home. It really struck a cord with us!
The key points that I took away from these classes were that 1) WE are the gift for the child, the child is not a gift for us, 2) the birth mother (or parents) have the same exact fears as we do, and 3) that no matter what we choose to do, adoption is going to enrich our lives in ways we didn't even know it was possible.
We are going to be in contact with our social worker this next week to set up our meetings (2-3 of them) for our home study. Once that is done, she makes a recommendation about us and if we are approved... then we are officially ready to accept a match!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment