Adoption Update – November 2018

Kicking off National Adoption Month with an update on our journey 💙

A little background… A precious 2-year old boy walked through our front door on December 19, 2017. He was followed by his foster mom at the time, who was carrying his precious 1-year old brother. It was love at first sight for this mommy and daddy who had prayed for and dreamt about them for years.

We’ve made it through all major court dates and requirements, and as of August, our legal status changed from “foster parent” to “prospective adoptive parent”. This means that our boys are legally freed for adoption and grants us greater rights to them. Our legal status is always weird to state, because to us, it’s just “mom” and “dad” and has been for 318 days.

Due to several concurrent factors, we are not able to finalize the adoption this calendar year. I’m disappointed to say the least. We had hoped to adopt them this month, National Adoption Month, or next month perhaps on the anniversary of them joining our family. How cool would that be?

But as I should know well by now, timing has very little to do with my plans and everything to do with God’s. Our sons’ adoption social worker has been working tirelessly to collect documents from their birth hospitals. These documents are required to kick off the paperwork for adoption. We also learned that our recent address change and addition of our third son requires an amendment to our adoption home study. Given all this, we don’t know now when we can expect to adopt our boys.

And that makes me a little sad.

I very much want an end date to look forward to.

My son had a bad stomach bug a couple weeks ago. He wouldn’t eat, and was barely drinking any fluids. With this being our first stint with a stomach bug, we were very worried that he was getting dehydrated. I took him to an urgent care location for the first time, and in the rush of it all, forgot his placement papers, which proves that I’m his prospective adoptive parent and have rights to his medical care. I was in mama panic mode, and didn’t care about paperwork. I just wanted my son to be checked.

I very much want to know when I can take my son to the doctor or hospital and trust that his medical card in my wallet is enough.

I am planning some upcoming trips out of town. Any time we have an overnight stay, we must report the duration, address, landline telephone number, and closest medical facility to the social worker.

I very much want to know when we can travel freely as a family.

We must have monthly home visits with our boys’ social worker.

I very much want to know when we can carry on normal life without being monitored.

To the county, we are their caregivers right now and from that perspective, all of the above and more is so important for our boys’ safety and wellbeing. But from our perspective, we are a family of five plus two fur babies who is ready to just live normally as such.

I know there is a purpose for this wait just as there was a purpose for the wait that resulted in our baby boys. It was hard to understand then why we had so many obstacles to overcome, so many delays to endure. But when I got the call at work about the kids, I knew the timing was just perfect.

And God’s timing for our adoption will be just perfect once again. It always is. ❤️

So, here’s to waiting, the core theme of our journey to parenthood. May I wait a little better this time around.

Thank you for your support and prayers. Please keep praying for my family and that our adoption proceeds without any further hiccups.

With love,

Ally Rod