So K came over on Saturday and we had a really great visit. She is definitely down to earth and friendly. She told us a lot about Fostering and that you had more of a chance to adopt if you were a foster parent because they usually have first dibs on the kids they foster. Anyway we were told we could accommodate up to 4 children, and that's good because I'v actually always wanted 4 children so how ironic is that! She did a walk through our home and of course we are under construction a little, but she was not too concerned and she seemed to be very positive so that is good. She was at our house for a little over 2 hours. She signed us up for our Pre-Service Training courses which start in March so we are on our way.
I told everyone at my Bunco group that we were having our home visit on Saturday and they were all excited for us. I actually found out that a few of my girls at Bunco go to church and are good friends with a girl who is a DCFS worker so they gave me her contact info so I can pick her brain a little bit. It will be good to have a Christian perspective on the whole foster adoption scenario.
So it should be all quite here on the home front until classes begin, but if anything changes I will post. Until then hope all of you are fairing well in your adventures.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Background
I thought I should share the background of this decision to Foster Adopt. As most stories start, this one started a long time ago, when my husband and I were in high school. Our families new each other pretty much our whole lives and we attended the same church and school since my husband was about 4 years old, that would make me 5 years old. We started dating my Junior year of high school (his sophomore year for those of you doing the math) and we of course had the going to college break-up and getting back together summers until I graduated and we broke up one final time before we new we were made for each other and got married on November 20, 1999.
Of course when you first get married you aren't even thinking about kids. You are thinking of all the fun places you get to go with this person and experience new things and just to be out of my parents home was such a rush - no more rules!!!!! Ha Ha! After a few years of that I was ready to have kids, but as my husband is a year younger he was not ready to become a father at 25, so we waited. We decided to wait until we had been married 5 years to start our family, that was only a couple years away so I agreed. Life went on and my close friends started having their children and I was sooo getting the bug and finally 5 years had come. I was sooo excited and just couldn't wait to take off that patch for the very last time and not have to replace it ever again, or at least until our family was finished.
Six months passed and no baby. The biggest mistake we've ever made is trying to get out of telling people we weren't trying to have a baby and a good way was to tell them after 5 years of marriage then we will try - well that 5 years came and everyone starts bombarding you with the ever dreaded question "so are you pregnant yet," because everyone knows after 5 years you are trying!!! My friends starting getting pregnant with their second babies and I was still struggling to come to the realization that something might be wrong with us. After a year of trying we wanted to know what was going on. We had already decided that we would not go above and beyond to have a baby, but we just wanted to find out if something was wrong with us.
To make this short and sweet we went to see the doctor in November of 2005 and had some tests done. We found out my husband was fine and they couldn't find anything on me, so they scheduled me for a laparascopy in January of 2006 to see if I had endometriosis. Sure enough I had moderate endometriosis so the doctor removed it and he had wanted us to do clomid and an IUI, but I told him we did not want to do anything invasive and would like to try naturally before we made any decisions. We got pregnant one month later and we were thrilled. We were in the process of moving into our new home right behind my parents so the news couldn't have come at a better time. We were planning and preparing and I went for a blood test and they told me my numbers didn't look good. This was the biggest roller coaster I had ever been on in my life. They sent me for 5 ultrasounds within 2 weeks and all the ultrasounds looked great. On my 4th ultrasound they saw a very strong heartbeat and they couldn't understand why the bloodwork wasn't matching what the ultrasound was showing. We were hoping and praying, but we pretty much new that this was not going to be a viable pregnancy. I ended up miscarrying at 9 weeks. I was sad, but I was glad to get off the roller coaster and was not looking forward to it anytime soon.
Well almost 2 years has passed since my laparascopy and I'm pretty sure the endometriosis has grown back. My doctor said the endo usually grows back within 6-9 months so any chances of getting pregnant were pretty much over after the first few months. So we got to thinking long and hard about what we wanted to do. The summer of 2007 we decided to try clomid by itself just to see what would happen at my doctors recommendation. He said why do another invasive surgery if you could try a cheap non-invasive option first and we totally agreed. In the meantime I started looking into adoption and becoming very interested because the realization of not having biological children was setting in. I have never been one to be tied to having biological children. As a matter of fact I can distinctly remember my husband saying "There are so many kids already in the world without parents, why don't we just adopt instead of having biological children," at the time I didn't know this would be my fate, but all the pieces are now starting to be put together and the idea of having biological children doesn't interest me half as much as adopting does. I think a lot of it has to do with the roller coaster we went through and the negative feelings we had with the whole procedure and the fact that I have endometriosis, but the idea of adopting really hits home for us. For me I think it is more important to be a mom then to be pregnant.
So here we are. After researching adoption and private, domestic, international adoption we realized it costs a lot of money to adopt and my husband would not here of it. He said he despised the thought of buying a child or going into debt before we even have a child so we had to look for other alternatives. I didn't know anything about Foster Adoption, but I remembered some people from our pasts who had done it. Not very close friends, just acquaintances, but I decided to do a little research. We found the Adoptuskids website and then I heard something on the radio that astonished me. There are over 125,000 children in the Foster system who have already had their parental rights terminated and are looking to be adopted. This really hit home for us and we were off and running. In October of 2007 I drove down to the DCFS office and they gave me a packet of information to fill out, we were all finished with our paperwork by the end of November and had some loose ends to tie up and I just turned in our final packet this Monday, December 3, 2007 and that evening I received a phone call from the lady who will be our social worker. We will give her the name of K to protect the privacy here. She and I hit it off great on the phone and we are thrilled to meet her. Our first home visit will be this Saturday. We believe the Lord will work everything out in his timing and that He has a plan for us and for our future children, wherever they may come from. So this is our story and so the journey begins!
Of course when you first get married you aren't even thinking about kids. You are thinking of all the fun places you get to go with this person and experience new things and just to be out of my parents home was such a rush - no more rules!!!!! Ha Ha! After a few years of that I was ready to have kids, but as my husband is a year younger he was not ready to become a father at 25, so we waited. We decided to wait until we had been married 5 years to start our family, that was only a couple years away so I agreed. Life went on and my close friends started having their children and I was sooo getting the bug and finally 5 years had come. I was sooo excited and just couldn't wait to take off that patch for the very last time and not have to replace it ever again, or at least until our family was finished.
Six months passed and no baby. The biggest mistake we've ever made is trying to get out of telling people we weren't trying to have a baby and a good way was to tell them after 5 years of marriage then we will try - well that 5 years came and everyone starts bombarding you with the ever dreaded question "so are you pregnant yet," because everyone knows after 5 years you are trying!!! My friends starting getting pregnant with their second babies and I was still struggling to come to the realization that something might be wrong with us. After a year of trying we wanted to know what was going on. We had already decided that we would not go above and beyond to have a baby, but we just wanted to find out if something was wrong with us.
To make this short and sweet we went to see the doctor in November of 2005 and had some tests done. We found out my husband was fine and they couldn't find anything on me, so they scheduled me for a laparascopy in January of 2006 to see if I had endometriosis. Sure enough I had moderate endometriosis so the doctor removed it and he had wanted us to do clomid and an IUI, but I told him we did not want to do anything invasive and would like to try naturally before we made any decisions. We got pregnant one month later and we were thrilled. We were in the process of moving into our new home right behind my parents so the news couldn't have come at a better time. We were planning and preparing and I went for a blood test and they told me my numbers didn't look good. This was the biggest roller coaster I had ever been on in my life. They sent me for 5 ultrasounds within 2 weeks and all the ultrasounds looked great. On my 4th ultrasound they saw a very strong heartbeat and they couldn't understand why the bloodwork wasn't matching what the ultrasound was showing. We were hoping and praying, but we pretty much new that this was not going to be a viable pregnancy. I ended up miscarrying at 9 weeks. I was sad, but I was glad to get off the roller coaster and was not looking forward to it anytime soon.
Well almost 2 years has passed since my laparascopy and I'm pretty sure the endometriosis has grown back. My doctor said the endo usually grows back within 6-9 months so any chances of getting pregnant were pretty much over after the first few months. So we got to thinking long and hard about what we wanted to do. The summer of 2007 we decided to try clomid by itself just to see what would happen at my doctors recommendation. He said why do another invasive surgery if you could try a cheap non-invasive option first and we totally agreed. In the meantime I started looking into adoption and becoming very interested because the realization of not having biological children was setting in. I have never been one to be tied to having biological children. As a matter of fact I can distinctly remember my husband saying "There are so many kids already in the world without parents, why don't we just adopt instead of having biological children," at the time I didn't know this would be my fate, but all the pieces are now starting to be put together and the idea of having biological children doesn't interest me half as much as adopting does. I think a lot of it has to do with the roller coaster we went through and the negative feelings we had with the whole procedure and the fact that I have endometriosis, but the idea of adopting really hits home for us. For me I think it is more important to be a mom then to be pregnant.
So here we are. After researching adoption and private, domestic, international adoption we realized it costs a lot of money to adopt and my husband would not here of it. He said he despised the thought of buying a child or going into debt before we even have a child so we had to look for other alternatives. I didn't know anything about Foster Adoption, but I remembered some people from our pasts who had done it. Not very close friends, just acquaintances, but I decided to do a little research. We found the Adoptuskids website and then I heard something on the radio that astonished me. There are over 125,000 children in the Foster system who have already had their parental rights terminated and are looking to be adopted. This really hit home for us and we were off and running. In October of 2007 I drove down to the DCFS office and they gave me a packet of information to fill out, we were all finished with our paperwork by the end of November and had some loose ends to tie up and I just turned in our final packet this Monday, December 3, 2007 and that evening I received a phone call from the lady who will be our social worker. We will give her the name of K to protect the privacy here. She and I hit it off great on the phone and we are thrilled to meet her. Our first home visit will be this Saturday. We believe the Lord will work everything out in his timing and that He has a plan for us and for our future children, wherever they may come from. So this is our story and so the journey begins!
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
FINALLY THE BEGINNING
We are just starting the process of Fostering to Adopt and I wanted to blog to share this journey and get any help I could with this new adventure we are on. I look forward to meeting and hearing about all other Foster Adoption Families and can't wait to share our story.
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