An Adoption Together

Many of you know this already, but in case you don't....Brad and I are seeking to be parents by adopting a child. We've both known we wanted to be parents at some point in our relationship, so in January of this year we started the long process....and we couldn't be more excited.

This is my first attempt to let everyone know where we are in the journey for creating a family. It's been a 5 month process in preparing for acceptance by our agency as a couple ready to adopt. First, loads and loads of paperwork needed to be filled out. Next, we needed to complete several processes, including: criminal background checks, home fire inspection, health inspection, driving records, etc.

Once our paperwork was completed, we were assigned a social worker in order to conduct a home study. After 3 meetings, our social worker completed our home study and submitted it to our adoption agency, Adoptions Together Inc. www.adoptionstogether.org in Silver Spring.

Finally, we have completed our "dear birth mother letter" and our photo album, and we now have our final meeting with the agency director next Friday to them "jump into the waiting pool." It's been quite a process....and very invasive as your life becomes an open book. However, it's a small price to pay for our end result....a child. Speaking of.....

We will be adopting a baby from the greater tri-state area. He/she (we cannot choose) will most likely be a newborn, but could be as old as 6 months. Can you believe it? Going into this in January, this isn't where we thought this path would lead. We assumed we would be adopting a toddler from an international country. We quickly learned that international adoptions are almost non-existant now for same-sex or single parents. With that option virtually closed, all our efforts are focused on this domestic adoption.

Once we are thrown into the pool, our wait could be anywhere from 3 months to 2 years......and anywhere in between. We are banking on at least a year's wait.....so we do have some prep time. During this time, we'll be doing our own marketing........looking for potential birth mothers who would select us to raise their child. Our first objective is to have a website up and running very soon. We are in the process of constructing it with the help of a good friend of Brad's. We'll gladly share it with everyone when it's up and running so you all can help in "the search."

Well, there you have it. This is the single most biggest thing we have ever done in our lives and we are just at the tip of the iceberg, but again, we couldn't be more excited to add a child into our family. We promise to keep everyone posted as often as we can when we have anything to share. We'll appreciate any prayers and well wishes for sure!

Sincerely,

The Brads