Saturday, April 18, 2015

Adoption process: part 2 - home study

So, we left it last time with the social worker calling us and scheduling our first round of interviews for the next day! We scoured the house, put on our best casual looking clothes (the cleanest ones), and anxiously awaited her arrival. She called us that morning to tell us she was running about 20 minutes late. When she arrived, we knew we had scored when she explained that she was late because she was submitting her homemade relish to the local fair for judging (she ended up getting best in show!!!). She's our people.

There are two aspects to this phase of things.  The home study and the home certification. The home study is about us as people -- making sure we're "fit" to be parents. The home certification is about our physical home -- making sure it's fit to house a child.  The home certification is necessary since we'll be bringing our baby home from the hospital before the adoption is finalized. Having this home certification allows us to basically be her foster parents until the adoption is finalized. Without it, we wouldn't be able to bring her home before finalization.

We were so nervous about this aspect of the adoption process because, really, we had no idea what to expect. The Adoption for Dummies book told us to not worry about the cleanliness of the house but to make sure that the house was fit for raising a child. 

  1. OK, we have 3 fireplaces and 2 wood stoves. This is really common in Maine, but are we going to have to put gates around all of them now, or can we wait until our child is semi-mobile? 
  2. If she tried, our child could probably fit her head through the banister upstairs as well as on the deck -- are we going to have to replace those?
  3. We have 3 dogs, and one of them doesn't get along with strangers -- will they tell us we have to get rid of her?
  4. We had a broken window at the time that the home study began (long story involving faulty panes) -- will we fail the home study because the customer service from our window company sucks and takes over a year to replace our windows?
  5. A few weeks before she came over for the first interview, bees swarmed into our walls -- will we fail because we have huge holes in the ceilings with exposed insulation and wiring?
  6. We don't own guns, but Anna's dad had a few in a locked closet in our basement -- is that a problem?

This is a very short list of some of the things we were worried about. We had no idea how much benefit of the doubt we'd get from our social worker, and we didn't want to hold up the whole process on some silly technicality.

When she arrived, we had Olive, our shy girl, on leash. We wanted to make sure the social worker met her right away so we could be up front about her behavior. Olive was a perfect little lady, and Baxter jumped on our social worker in the driveway. Luckily, she has a dog, so she's cool with it.

Oliver -- he's our 14-yr old farm manager. Mostly, he takes on a supervisory role.

Olive -- she's our sweet, shy girl. She doesn't trust most people, but once she trusts you, she's the sweetest, most gentle girl ever.

Baxter -- the newest addition to our family. He's crazy, energetic, and most definitely cannot be trusted unsupervised most of the time. He's going to be the best big brother ever.


We come inside, make some tea and get settled for the interview. Things seem to be going quite smoothly when suddenly it hits us. It's a mixture of rotten egg and low tide funk mixed together -- again, Baxter doing his best to win her over. He got moved outside for the remainder of the process...

Once we got started, we knew we had been worried for nothing. Our social worker is amazing. We will definitely be friends with her long after this process is over. The "interview" was really just talking with us about our lives, our childhood, our relationship, our hopes and dreams for our child, etc. It was totally relaxed and not stressful. 

We toured the house, and everything was up to par. She didn't even notice the holes in the ceiling -- we asked her about it later, though. :)  The only thing we had to do was move our medicines to the top shelf. Simple. We did learn, however, that if the room the baby is going to eventually sleep in doesn't have a window big enough for a firefighter to fit through fully suited up with a tank on his back -- you have to get a new window. In addition to all the adoption hoops, now you have to get new windows. Luckily, ours are all fine. Phew.

We did two more interviews after that first one (one each, individually), then our social worker talked to one of our references, and we're done! She wrote up a long report about us, and once that was approved, we were officially in the waiting phase. For us, we started the entire adoption process in mid-June, and we entered the waiting phase in mid-September. The home study aspect of it took about 6 weeks. 

The waiting phase and catching up to where we are now is what's on deck for next time. Stay tuned...


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