Our Adoption Story

We had always talked about adoption as an option of growing our family, and after two rough pregnancies it was our natural choice.  We started the process first with just searches on the differences between domestic and international adoption.  We decided on domestic adoption and began calling around to different types of agencies: religious agencies, small local non-profit agencies and large mulit-state agencies.  We ended up choosing American Adoptions, but there are lots of amazing agencies out there to help in the adoption journey.

We went to an informational seminar in August of 2013.  The info session was lead by an adoption specialist and there was a couple at the front of the room at a "panelist" table who had recently adopted a baby boy.  They shared their story and answered questions which was amazing to hear directly from them how the process went.  

They explained how they found the agency, what they had to do to complete their profile and become active and what their interactions were with the birth parents before and after their son was born.

After we left the seminar we both knew we were ready to start on our journey for baby number 3.  Our first step was filling out the application with our basic information, then requesting a home study by a local social worker.  Our social worker was amazing and we now truly view her as a friend.  There was nothing intimidating about the home study, just basic questions about our intentions, our childhood, our parenting styles and a quick look around our home to ensure it was safe.  I did joke with Matt about how they might take our first 2 kids if we failed, but in reality it wasn't stressful or invasive at all.

Our next step was creating our adoption profile for birth mothers to learn a little more about us.  We submitted photos and a video profile as well.  Here is how it turned out -

The process of creating our profile while still being parents to our first two kiddos took us a bit of time, so we finished everything by November of 2013.  After we submitted everything we got an enthusiastic call from the agency that we were ACTIVE for our profile to be shown to birth mothers on our way to work and no joke at 4pm we got a call that we had been chosen. I was called first and they asked if they could conference in Matt because they wanted to discuss a possible match.  Of course I said to call him, and we all talked through why the birth mom was interested in us, her medical history and what we would need to do to take the next steps toward adopting our baby girl.

We did not have much contact with the agency or birth mom after that first "match" day, so we floundered a bit on whether we should get her room ready and make travel plans.  Eventually we did connect and were informed that we could be in the state she was born for 7-16 days until the judge decided everything was settled between the birth state and Missouri. 

We lucked out and only had to wait two days after Julia was discharged from the hospital to return home!   From what we hear this is super lucky and we count our blessings that we got to unite our family as soon as we did.  The pictures of us meeting our moms, Annabelle and Patrick at the airport say the rest :)