As for the provincial Home Study, there have been more delays. We've had 2 of our 3 required meetings in the last six weeks. It's painfully slow. However, our social worker insists she will have our home study complete by August. If I've learned anything from the International Home Study, it's not to get your hopes up. If you think anything in the adoption process is going to take 4 months, add a few months as a contingency and then add 3 more months for your sanity. So if our social worker says 2.5 months, we can guesstimate we'll have it completed by Christmas. If it's ready sooner, then hurrah! I'm not trying to be negative, it's just everything always takes more time then you think it will. It's kinda like building a house... it always takes longer and costs more money than you ever thought it would!
Our Dossier
Ever wonder what an adoption dossier looks like? Well there you have it. That's our actual dossier to the left and it's just about ready to be sent off to Florida. We're so close, it's sickening! Our International Home Study has been approved and notarized, which means we are ready to send it BACK to our provincial facilitator who will send it BACK to the Provincial Central Authority who will finally (FINALLY!) send it to Florida. I know we're probably still weeks (months?) away from our dossier being in the USA, since with every desk it lands on there's a delay, but at least I can see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Actually, we're still at the very beginning of the tunnel. Ugh. Depositing our dossier in-country is just the first part of the process. From our agency's perspective, we're not even on their waiting list yet! Almost 8 months in and we are only just beginning.
As for the provincial Home Study, there have been more delays. We've had 2 of our 3 required meetings in the last six weeks. It's painfully slow. However, our social worker insists she will have our home study complete by August. If I've learned anything from the International Home Study, it's not to get your hopes up. If you think anything in the adoption process is going to take 4 months, add a few months as a contingency and then add 3 more months for your sanity. So if our social worker says 2.5 months, we can guesstimate we'll have it completed by Christmas. If it's ready sooner, then hurrah! I'm not trying to be negative, it's just everything always takes more time then you think it will. It's kinda like building a house... it always takes longer and costs more money than you ever thought it would!
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Pierre's always been more patient than I am
Adoption is a long and tedious process. I was well aware of this even before we started this journey. But you're never truly aware how everything goes at a snail's pace until you are in it. We've been in Home Study Limbo for quite some time now. We started our home study the last week of January and finished our interviews on February 23rd. In my heart I thought it would all be done by mid-April. However, being a sensible person I gave myself an extra month before I would start to fret. When our social worker finished the draft in record time, I allowed myself a little hope that things might proceed faster than expected. I only have one thing to say about this: never have expectations. Expectations lead to disappointment, which leads to driving your husband crazy with the whining! :-P So here we are today, May 22 and I don't know when it will all get done. Once the Powers That Be approve the home study, it still has to come back to us to get notarized and then back to Saint John where our entire dossier will be put together and finally sent off to our adoption agency. Only once the adoption agency receives the dossier will we be officially on the international waiting list. It's when you're standing still that the waiting becomes the most difficult. I can't even begin to imagine how the children in care are feeling... waiting for their forever family, or waiting for the next foster home, or waiting for their birth parents to get it right. Everyone waits in adoptions. We were also supposed to start our Provincial home study today. However, it has been delayed due to scheduling issues. If it's anything like the international home study, we won't be done until December. Ugh. More waiting. I guess the only thing we can do is stop standing still. Stop waiting for our lives to start and start living. I guess that means I should get off the computer and go do something, huh? :-) - Danielle Over the last 7 weeks we’ve spent 27 hours of mandatory training called PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education). Anyone who hopes to adopt from the provincial foster care system must complete their PRIDE training. I’ll be the first to admit I did NOT want to do this training! When we were first approached to complete our PRIDE training, we were excited. We thought it meant we had moved up on the waiting list and we might actually become parents. So when we learned that there were no available children at this time and none in the foreseeable future, but we were encouraged to complete the training anyway, you could say I went begrudgingly. It felt like another roadblock in our path to parenthood. Today we completed our training and I will whole-heartedly admit – I was wrong. Contrary to popular belief, PRIDE is not a parenting course. It’s a course designed to help you parent a child who has lived through unspeakable trauma. I’ve never kid myself that adopting a child through the foster care system would be easy, or that all they really needed was love, but even I was naïve. I thought that I would always be a better option than their birth parents. Through PRIDE I’ve learned that things just aren’t so black and white. Even though a child has been neglected or abused by their birth parent, they still have a bond with them. They don’t know that life should be better, so they don’t see an adoptive or foster parent as their savior. We are simply a stranger that ripped them away from everything familiar in their world. I’m saddened that I never really thought about the trauma of adoption. They made as imagine different scenarios to better understand what these children are feeling: Imagine you are at home watching your favourite television show. You’re all comfy in your PJs when there’s a knock on the door. On the other side, there’s an officer and a social worker. The social worker gives you a paper bag, tells you to put your belongings in it and to come with her. All the while the officer is holding back the person you live with who is screaming “don’t take them away from me” at the top of their lungs. How would you feel? Then the social worker puts you in her car and drives away. She tells you, you are going to a new home and that the people there are excited to meet you and you will be safe. Do you feel safe? When you arrive at this “new home” the couple is smiling and welcoming you. They show you “your room”. Do you feel at home? Why would they make us imagine such an awful scenario? Because this is how a child feels when they are apprehended. They don’t feel like someone has saved them. Whatever horribleness they lived through in their home, it was still their home. Their parents where all they knew. Their parents might have done bad things to them, but they aren’t going to be excited about leaving. They aren’t going to trust these strangers they have been placed with. It was very powerful and heart wrenching. They also made us watch videos like the Eleventh Commandment and Hope Floats; a child's perspective on Foster Care. You can see both these videos below. Through the training they made us understand why a child who is 10 might act like a two year old or why foster care and adoption is about losses. And most importantly, why our losses in infertility don’t even begin to compare to the children’s losses… that this shouldn’t be about us, but about the child. We always knew children in foster care had been neglected or abused, but we tend to forget the trauma of being removed from their home. The developmental delays they might experience because of the neglect, their complete mistrust of adults because their basic needs from infancy were not met. Something as simple as being held as a newborn, just wasn’t part of their life. It wasn’t easy to hear and most sessions left me emotionally and physically drained. Now that it’s over, I can say I’m happy to have been through it. I feel better prepared to welcome a child from the foster care system into my life. It has also made me understand the importance of open adoptions and how the child’s birthparents will always be a part of them… even if they aren’t physically in their everyday lives. The training has also broadened our views on what constitutes a family. While we thought we were pretty flexible with our requirements for a child (up to the age of 10 and up to 3 siblings), PRIDE has made us revaluate our choices. Could we accept a teenager? So many children are at risk of aging-out of the system without ever having a forever family (at 19 they can no longer be in foster care. If they haven’t been adopted… where do they go?). More than half the children in foster care are teenagers. How exactly did we come up with the age of 10 as our cut-off? Can we expand it to 12, 13 or even 14? Is a family of older children not still a family? We had always preferred adopting from the foster care system. And, truth be told, if the provincial system could tell us we could have a child within the next 18 months, we would probably abandon our fundraising efforts for an American infant and focus on foster care adoption. The only reason we are working towards an infant adoption is because it felt like our only feasible option to have a family while we’re still in our thirties. It’s not that we don’t want to adopt a newborn from the US, it’s that we know that if we don’t adopt that infant we will one day be matched with, someone else will. The same can’t be said for teenagers in the system. So why haven’t focused more on foster care adoption? The problem is, the provincial system can’t tell us we will be match within a certain time frame. The mandate of the Department of Social Development is reunification between a child and his/her birth parents. Now I understand the importance of this. Only when reunification is not possible… and the child has lived through numerous losses is the child available for adoption. Unfortunately, by the time they are available they are often older than most adoptive parents wish to accept. So now we stand on a precipice… do we change our requirements? Do we open our hearts to a wider group in the hopes of having, not the family WE always dreamed of, but the family this child always dreamed of? We meet with our social worker tomorrow and we'll see what happens. Life is an adventure, right? - Danielle Below are a few of the videos that made us open our eyes to the foster care system: Did you know, I used to be somewhat of a Marketing Maven? Before becoming a nurse I worked in marketing, public relations and communications for almost a decade. With all this experience you’d think I would be able to sell pretty much anything. Well, as it turns out, my experience promoting events, touting the virtues of insurance coverage and updating people on the latest grocery offerings, didn’t prepare me to sell myself as a great parent. Huh? Who knew? As part of our adoption application, we need to complete an adoption profile. This is basically a marketing piece aimed at selling Pierre and I as the best parents… well, ever. But how exactly do you sell yourself as an awesome parent? What would make a woman look at our book and say, “I am going to ask these people to raise my child.” The thought that someone, some 2,000 miles away, will base her decision on whether or not we are suitable parents based on what we write in this 15-page books was a little overwhelming. No wonder it took us about 6 weeks to complete this crazy project! So here it is… the most important marketing piece I have EVER worked on: Our Adoption Profile Feel free to send us your comments… especially if you find a typo! :-) And for those of you who sent us a message that didn’t make the twitter feed, we truly apologise! It was hard picking from all the wonderful messages we received. In the end, we chose the messages that gave us the most variety of relationships and words Earlier this week I had a meltdown of epic proportion that would impress any reality star. The tears where brought on by my attempt to write a letter to my union/employer. You see, as an adoptive parent, I am not entitled to take 17 weeks of paid maternity leave available to all other Canadian birth mothers. I am, however, entitled to the 35 weeks of parental leave, which is available to all new parents (mothers and fathers). Many new moms in Canada take a year leave from work when they have a child, which includes 2 weeks of medical leave, 17 weeks maternity leave and 35 weeks of parental leave. This is governed federally and adoptive families have been trying to fight this since 1995, so I don’t have much of a chance at that one. I know I won’t get a year leave like other moms, that’s not what my letter was about. The point I was arguing is that, as a registered nurse, my union has negotiated top-up to be paid during maternity leave. However, since I don’t qualify for maternity leave, I don’t qualify for top-up either. This is both enraging and so very frustrating. Honestly, it makes me feel like less of a mother. I’ve been trying to write this letter for a few weeks now and every time I attempt to do so I get so mad I practically give myself an anxiety attack! Ugh. Well, last Monday my letter writing campaign came to head and, as mentioned earlier, I had an epic meltdown. My poor husband couldn’t do much except stroke my hair and say “it’s ok, it’s ok” while I ugly cried against his chest. After I was able to catch my breath again, my always insightful husband asked if this was really just about the letter. I responded by enumerating all my frustrations with the adoption process: only being able to adopt francophone children (which are few and far between) from the provincial foster care system (even though we are clearly bilingual), not having adoption agencies in our province to facilitate private adoption, not being able to adopt from the foster care system in another province, feeling like international adoption is our only option for a family, the excruciating cost of international adoption, the constant roadblocks put up by paper pushers, the limited amount countries currently open to adoption, having to change countries, the ease at which everyone around us get pregnant, having to prove we could be good parents while biological parents don’t, the media for portraying adoption as an “easy solution”, feeling like a failure for not being able to get pregnant, unfair treatment in terms of parental leave, uncomfortable moments when people ask when we’ll have kids, people not knowing what to say to me when I talk about adoption, coming to terms with the fact we will never have the big family we had hoped for. AHHHHHHH! My husband took a deep breath and said, “Of course you’re going to be overwhelmed if you only look at the negative things!” And he was right. I need to start focusing on all the positives of adoption, if I expect to get through this. So we came up with the following: Top 5 Reasons Adoption Rocks! 5. No weight gain or stretch marks (although since I’m a stress eater, this one might not apply. lol) 4. No need for an epidural! 3. The amazing moment when we get our child, knowing all we went through to get there 2. Giving a child a chance at a life he/she might not have had 1. We are not a cookie-cutter couple so why should we have a cookie-cutter family. Adoption just seems to fit us The last one is my favourite and it’s what Pierre said to me after the meltdown was over. That simple thought made me smile from the inside out. We aren’t a cookie-cutter family. We met in our mid-thirties while most people meet in their twenties, we both chose our current career when we were more mature, we live in a little 60 year old house that has lots of personality but no two-car garage, we both pride ourselves on taking the road less traveled and have always done things our way as opposed to the way society expects us to do it. So yeah, we aren’t a cookie-cutter couple and we won’t have a cookie-cutter family but we are exactly where we are supposed to be. The only certainty in international adoption is that nothing is certain. Over the last 6 weeks, we’ve been dealing with our own version of uncertainty which has changed the course of our adoption journey. We found out in early January that rumours were flying around the blogosphere that the Congo Adoption program in Canada might be closing down. Our agencies assured us that these were only rumours. The rumours made me question my strength and ability to cope with the ongoing uncertainty of international adoption. Would I be able to deal with this kind of “scares” every few months? Should we have opted for the safer USA adoption? I felt helpless as I didn’t know if I could answer my own questions. Then, in mid-January our Canadian agency gave us the news that would change everything. They were strongly advising us to abandon the Congo Program. The reason behind their suggestion was the possibility of a Canadian moratorium on Congolese adoptions. A moratorium is essentially a hold on adoptions while they evaluate the procedures to make sure everything is being done ethically. It happens often in international adoptions when a program grows faster than their in-country ressources. It’s a series of checks and balances that ensures the children being adopting are actually orphans and that nothing unethical is going on in the process. It’s positive that the children are being protecting from illegal activity, but can be devastating for a family waiting on the other side of the world as it can extend the process by months, even years. Essentially, we were told the adoption agency isn’t accepting any new families into the program. There’s a good chance all the families ahead of us in the process will be able to finalise their adoptions... eventually, but since we were at such an early stage of the process, our agency couldn’t be certain we would be able to proceed if a moratorium were to be placed. We had a big decision to make: ride out the uncertainty and hope we are able to eventually adopt without losing all our money or switch countries now while we’ve only invested less than 10% of our funds. Emotionally, the decision was very difficult... financially; we knew what we had to do. Now, if you are currently adopting from Congo, please don’t panic! I don’t want to start any rumours. To my knowledge, there is no moratorium at this time. Our decision was based on what was best for our family. So over the next few weeks we proceeded to make the switch. It meant finding a new adoption agency, terminating our contracts with our current agencies, changing the course of our home study and coming to terms with our decision. We decided to adopt a child from the USA. We wanted to adopt from the US foster system, but this isn’t an option for Canadians, so we will be adopting privately. This means a birthmother makes the difficult decision of choosing adoption for her unborn child and then, through an agency, chooses us to be the parents. The process is quite different than an African adoption, but not without risk. The biggest one being that the birthmother changes her mind. Now that we have made the decision we are once again hopeful. I guess we just have to believe that our red string will guide us where we need to go. We have now finished the interview portion of our home study and are waiting for our social worker to complete her report. Once the home study is complete and approved by the province we will be able to submit our dossier to the US. Once our dossier is in the country we will officially be on the waiting list! We’re hoping to officially be on the list by June. The country switch has put us a little behind on our timeline but we are still hoping to bring home our child by the end of 2014. Keep your fingers crossed! If you asked me questions about our adoption in the last months, please don’t feel I wasn’t fully honest with you. We simply felt we couldn’t talk about the change until everything was confirmed with our new agency. Sorry! Would you know how to answer that? I was asked this question last night at our second home study visit. I didn’t know exactly how to answer. I started by saying I always wanted children... to which she followed up with why? It really had me puzzled... I should be able to answer this, right? Turns out, many of my friends were stumped too. It’s so hard to describe a feeling or at least a biological need deeply embedded into our genetic code! No one answer seems enough. I ended up saying it was because I love children and want to be a part of a child’s journey... see them grow, learn, develop. I want to know that I helped them become the person they will become. I doubt there’s a right answer to the question, but it did get me thinking. Is it so I can spend the rest of my life worrying about my child’s well-being? Is it to spend decade as a sleep deprived zombie? Is it to change countless dirty diapers? Is it to have a sully teenager tell me she hates me? Is it for baby giggles and toddler silliness? Is it for the pride of seeing my child accomplish something? Hmmm... I wonder if I can google this. :-P Of course, it's not like I get a second chance at answering the question. I doubt I can email her and say: "Now that I've consulted my panel of experts, I'd like to change me answer!" So, dear readers, why did/do you want to become a parent? P.S. Pierre wants to know the “right answer” for his personal interview next week. lol I told him no cheating. :-) Last week we began our home study. It's a big step as I feel like we are actually doing something! We had our first of 4 meetings with our social worker. Before the meeting I was a little nervous since I wasn't sure what to expect. I scrubbed the house like a mad woman and even made sure little Miss Pacha had a haircut (she was starting to look like a raggedy homeless dog!) While cleaning I kept questioning myself... should I organize my closets? Is she going to inspect them? Should I hide my copy of 50 shades of Grey? We haven't done the groceries this week... is she going to judge our half-empty fridge? I wonder if it's ok if I wear a ponytail? Pierre, on the other hand was the picture of calmness, as always. He rolled his eyes when I asked if my ponytail was ok. "I don't think a ponytail will make you an unsuitable parent", he said matter-of-factly. I couldn't help but laugh... I WAS going a little overboard!
When she arrived, we found out we had actually already met. She had attended our adoption information session back in the spring. She was really nice and put us at ease immediately. We spent the next two and a half hours talking about ourselves. First we talked about the country we want to adopt from and why we chose it. Then we told the story of "us"... how we met, when we moved in together, when we got married, first fight, adjustments, etc. When she asked us when we had first discussed wanting children, Pierre laughed and said "the first date". LOL It's true! We then talked about our journey to adoption... trying to get pregnant that first year, infertility, IVF and finally adoption. We had actually talked about adoption even before we had started trying. We both knew we wanted kids and had agreed if we had any issues, we wouldn't hesitate to adopt. We've always been on the same page in that regard. She did stump us a few times. She asked how we would introduce religion to our child and it was something we had never discussed. We both knew each others views on religion, but since they differ slightly, we had never thought we would need to decide what to teach our child. I think all parents to be should have a home study. It makes you think about what you want for your child and really makes sure you're on the same page. All in all it was a wonderful meeting. Next week I have my individual interview. I'll let you know how it goes. - Danielle Goodbye to the challenging year that was 2012 and hello to the promise of 2013! With the new year upon us, we are excited to show you our brand new products: necklaces and key chains. YAY! I’ve been working on these a while and am happy to be able to share them with you. As always, you can purchase these from our Etsy Shop or, if you live locally, send us a message and we’ll skip the shipping! In other news, we have been assigned a social worker, which means our home study should start soon. I was told not to expect any movement until January 20th, so until then I’m not allowed to think about it. :-) We want to say how much we appreciate all of you for following our adoption journey and hope 2013 brings much fun, adventure and love to all of you. - Danielle Waiting for our little angel Christmas has come and gone for yet another year. We’re hoping by this time next year we will at least know who our child will be. As mentioned in the previous post, we submitted all our initial paperwork, but there have already been delays. A few forms needed to be updated, some were missing and we forgot to sign another form! Since it’s the holidays, we weren’t able to make the holiday deadline before offices closed for Christmas. However, everything has been sent and will be on someone's desk as soon as they reopen. At least now we can say that part is completely done (for reals this time) and hopefully we’ll be starting our home study soon. We had a beautiful Christmas with friends and family and enjoyed the time spent together. So far we’ve had a blast hanging out with our nieces (age 2 and 4) whom we only see a few times a year. I can’t help but marvel at everything my 2 year old niece does and says. Even though we requested a child between the ages of 0 to 2, I’ve always had a strong feeling our child would be two years old. So in that sense, I feel like our niece represents our future child. All I can say is, it’s going to be amazing! Meltdowns and all! :-D We also received the most beautiful gift from my Mom. It’s the adorable little dark-skinned angel featured in the picture on the left-hand side. It just meant so much to both of us! It’s already prominently displayed in our living room. I hope all my readers have had a wonderful Christmas and wish all of you an amazing 2013! - Danielle |
Follow our blog:ContributersDanielleI'm a pediatric nurse with a passion for photography and all things crafty.
THINGS I LOVE: Creating my own happiness (at 31, I left my career in marketing to become a nurse), my awesome husband and family, my hilariously cute dogs, sarcastic and dry wit, making lists and lots more! PierreI'm a departement manager for a commercial construction contractor
THINGS I LOVE: My wonderful wife; my two dogs; reading and learning about dog behaviour, dog psychology and dog language; finding great deals at auctions and flea markets. Archives
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