Once my husband and I were involved in our adoption journey I came to feel that there were three distinct phases to the process. The first phase was getting prepared to become a member of the adoption agency. Tasks that were included in this phase were applying to the agency, filling out questionnaires, completing the Home Study, and completing our Family Profile. I described these steps in my previous post, Overview of the Agency Adoption Process – Domestic Adoption, Part 1. The second part of the phase was the waiting for a match with a birthmother, which I will describe in this post, and the third step was waiting anxiously for our birthmother’s due date. I couldn’t help but compare it to the three trimesters that a women goes through when giving birth. Of course with some very distinct differences, but I’ll leave that for another post. Also our process of adoption took a year while a women’s pregnancy last nine months.
I have listed below some of the aspects of the second phase of the adoption journey.
1. Wait
2. Do not quit your job. You should be advised by the agency to continue your daily lives as you normally do. However, instead of completing the report that is due at the end of the day to your boss, you can browse through family profiles to compare the size of other couples’ houses to yours.
3. Plan and go on your “last” vacation as a couple without children. Just make sure that it is not on a cruise leaving out of New York City to the Bahamas in March. If you choose this vacation be sure to take your sea sickness pills.
4. Wait
5. Be happy for your boss who has just announced that she found out unexpectedly that she is pregnant four weeks before her wedding at close to 40-years-old. You are in a place where you can be happy for her and that feels good.
6. Plan another long weekend get away because on your “last” vacation as a couple you were so sea sick and the weather was so awful that you barely left the room.
7. Realize that you have no more vacations left to plan and you shouldn’t use anymore of your vacation time any way because you want to save it.
8. Wait.
9. Get a call from your boss that she just gave birth to her baby girl. Congratulate her but admit to her that you are finally getting impatient after waiting 5 ½ months.
10. Go home that evening from work a little sad that it’s taking so long. Play your answering machine to find that you have a message from American Adoptions. “A birthmother has chosen you out of 200 family profiles. Please call us back right away.”