Over the years we have had a number of clients; the happiness that shows on their faces once they have received the news that they are being matched with a child, is an experience like no other. We asked a client of ours to share her story. Due to privacy, there will be no names mentioned, but here in her own words is what she has to share with all of you.
"It was
a surprisingly warm day in early April 2017. That morning, my husband and I
were debating whether to catch a Washington Nationals game. Instead, we took a
phone call from our adoption agency that would change everything.
We
learned that a baby girl had been born the day before less than an hour from
our home and her birth mother was interested in meeting us. We had just a few
hours to decide whether we wanted to move forward with this case. The agency
told us as much as they could. So much was unknown including the baby’s race
and family medical history. However, we did know that she would most likely be
in the NICU for several weeks to care for a treatable medical condition.
Additionally, there would be some complications in terms of terminating paternal
rights.
That’s
when all our training paid off. The year leading up to our adoption was an
important time of learning and preparing for our new role as adoptive parents.
We had
originally started the adoption process about a year before and after we had ended fertility
treatments. When we realized that being biological parents would not
be possible for us, we talked about why we wanted to have kids and what our
life goals were. We decided that in the end our goal was to be parents.
Adoption was not our first choice, but that didn’t make it second best. In
fact, we learned that entering this amazing community of adoption was more
impactful that we could have imagined.
We did
our initial interviews with our adoption agency during the summer of 2016 and
quickly worked to complete our home study process. We zipped through the
paperwork in just two weeks. An in depth excel chart and nightly meetings at
the dinner table helped us to burn through it. We knew that so much of the
adoption process was out of our hands, so we wanted to be quick with what WAS
within our control. Meeting with the social worker and attending in person and
online training helped prepare us to be adoptive parents and make the
decisions that we would need to make regarding health challenges, family
medical history and drug exposure status. Our home study was completed in the Fall of
2016 and we began the waiting game.
Our
advice for other families is to stay hopeful. The question with adoption is not
a matter of if you will have a child but a matter of when. We were overjoyed
and overwhelmed when we became parents in April 2017. Our little girl is now 1
years old and we look back on our journey with such joy. There were certainly roller coaster moments but we always felt surrounded by experts from our
adoption agency and our lawyer Karen S. Law who held our hand and worked the steps
for us.
Our
adoption story is our favorite story to tell so we are sharing it in the hopes
that it helps another family on the journey to parenthood".
