A Little Advice...

No, not advice from me. I have no advice on babies or infants and such like that. I do have advice on how to survive years without kids. It's very good advice. You should ask sometime. But only if you need it.

I'm digressing.

I need advice, or rather a list on what you need for a baby. Not clothes. Clothes I know. Clothes we have. What I want to know is, what do you need the first, let's say, 72 hours after you bring a newborn home? And don't say "diapers". I have it on good authority that babies don't poop until they're about 6 months old. Right? Right? right? Not right? :(

Zack and I have spent the past, oh, 4 or 5 years or so getting ready for baby. We have a nursery, we have a crib and we are now the proud owners of a car seat and stroller. They've even been tested! (Thanks Emma and Beth!) We have clothes. We have many many clothes. (Clothes have been good therapy for us.) We have a dresser full of said clothes. I call it my "Hope Chest".

Here's a nice shot of my hope chest:

Here's the crib full of stuffed animals. You can never have too many, right? (How will the kids play "Smother" when they get older if you don't have a ton of stuffed animals?)

Here's our sweet new stroller. Beth-tested, ZaCarrie approved. It's in the spot where the rocker will go someday.

And here's the car seat and bookshelf. We even have some cool childrens books about adoption!

So what I'm saying is we've got lots of things. And we feel as prepared as you can be when you might have a baby next month or you might have a baby in two years. But we're not prepared for the day to day stuff. Sure babies need clothes, but what kind of clothes? What about bath stuff? Food, diapers, blankets, diaper bag, etc. What do you really need? I think I'm starting to panic just a little because as of this weekend, we could have a baby at any time. Literally, ANY TIME. (But nobody's really expecting that...)

So I'm asking all you experts out there, what do you NEED when you first bring that baby home?

Is it True?!?!?

It's True!
That's right, we are signed up and RSVP'd for our adoption classes! They are just a week away! Woohoo!
I never thought I'd be so excited for 20 hours of class in a two day period. 9-9 on Friday and 9-5 on Saturday. There will be caseworkers and birthparents and all sorts of people there ready to help us be the best adoptive parents we can be. I'm most excited to hear birthparents tell their stories and talk about how they feel. I've read a couple of birthmother blogs and I always come away from them thinking about something I'd never considered before. I want to better understand the emotions and feelings of a birthparent so that I can be appropriately empathetic rather than ignorantly offensive.
Next Wednesday we have another visit with our caseworker as well. We'll be going over our final documentation and making sure everything is in order to go online as soon as we finish the class. Again I say, Woohoo!

Actively Inactive

We have a confession. And by a confession I mean we have 3 confessions. We haven't been quite as inactive as you may have thought. We just wanted to find out which of you were true followers of the blog by not writing for 3 or 4 weeks. So if you are reading this, Congratulations! You passed! (yes, even those of you who have notifications e-mailed to you).
As a reward, you get the confessions AND the information! Not to mention more exclamation points than I've ever used in such a small amount of writing!!!!!

Confession #1: Michigan
In November (exactly one month after feeling prompted to adopt) we received an e-mail about a sick little baby boy in Michigan who needed a family willing to adopt him. Carrie and I haven't put any restrictions on our adoption (e.g. looking for a healthy baby boy with big ears and brown hair with at least two cowlicks...no tiny ears accepted may consider single cowlick children) because we want a chance to be led by the spirit for any possible adoption. Even if it is a hard one like a baby boy who might only have a year to live.
We didn't have much time to decide, but thanks to instant messaging and prayer we decided to do what was necessary to get a profile sent to the birthparents. I took the rest of the day off and as I was driving home I did a little soul searching. Was I really ready to adopt? Was I really willing to adopt a sick little boy? The answer to both came back as a resounding yes (though, really, who is ever READY?). I got home, started a fire, and began writing a birthparent letter and putting together a picture collage (which later morphed into the title block for our blog!). We sent it off and never heard anything back, but I was especially grateful for the whole rubber-meets-the-road thought process that has helped me ever since to truly know that we can do this no matter how daunting it seems at times.

Confession #2: Provo
We got another e-mail in December about another special needs baby boy. Carrie and I both spent the rest of the day learning about the details of his condition and what would be required of us to care for him. We wrote another birthparent letter, but when we finished it, neither of us felt right about sending it. The birthparent had a list of "requirements" and let me tell you, we were dead ringers for every single point, but it just didn't feel right.

Confession #3: Ogden
Carrie called to tell the agency that we wouldn't be submitting any paperwork for the Provo baby and the agency director told her about a little girl in Ogden who was just a few days old and had been born to a mother who had done crack the entire pregnancy. Our hearts went out to this little girl who had already overcome incredible odds, including being stillborn. On Christmas Eve I left work early (in spite of being in the middle of some really cool experiments!) to pick Carrie up and drive to McKay Dee Hospital to visit with the little baby girl with the big question mark for a future. For about an hour and a half we visited with the baby, her social worker, her caseworker, her nurse, and her doctor. We even took turns holding the precious miracle baby. We left hopeful that our prayers would be answered and we'd be blessed with a real Christmas miracle. We prayed that day and night, and spent a long time talking about all sorts of related topics. The result of all that talking and praying was that Carrie and I grew even more united in our quest to adopt. Amidst the joys of Christmas morning was the sorrow of calling the caseworker to tell her that the precious baby girl who had smiled for us the day before must be someone else's miracle. I hope someday to know the end of this story, because at the time it seemed perfect for us. We are confident though that she was another family's little girl, and out there somewhere, is our own little miracle.

If any of you find him or her, please have the birthparents contact us :o)

Home Visit

I just realized that neither Carrie nor I took the opportunity to donate an update about our home visit to the blogosphere.

Our home visit was scheduled for the evening of December 1. I was worried about it just because I didn't really know what to expect. As it turns out, I should have been about as worried as my boss (who was also my boss at SHPI, but that's a story unrelated to adoption). When I explained to him that our caseworker would come over and look through the house to make sure it looked like a place that would be okay to raise kids in, he just started laughing. He has been to our house and has known Carrie and I for a few years now, so he knew that we keep things more or less in order and that all of our house decisions have revolved around having kids someday. Between laughs and through tears he'd manage to peep out something about hiding some dangerous item, or he'd mimic a caseworker in horror as she looked through our home.

So yeah, the tour went remarkably well and the caseworker had nothing but positive comments. I guess I, like Mark, shouldn't have been surprised. I'm sure that it helped that we found out Carrie was pregnant about a week after moving in to our house, but we have all of our cleaning supplies and such high and out of the way. We have a nursery with all the fixings including a fancy paint job. We're clean enough and orderly enough to have things look nice without being so OCD that we aren't capable of having a mess around. We also have two dogs, so we have to keep things away from their reach. Not to mention that we both love our house and we like to do projects and make our own decorations and such.

After the tour we sat down and looked through some of the documents we've submitted. Our diligent caseworker made sure that we understood the impact of some of our answers and made sure that we understood as well as we could what it meant to have a baby around.

Her: "They smile and are cute all the time and they never make messes or add any financial burden. Are you sure you're ready to accept a simply beautiful bundle of joy into your lives?"
Us: "Sure, that sounds easy enough"

But seriously, She did a very good job and I'm glad they ask the kinds of questions she did. It's always good to get someone else's viewpoint and insight. As long as you are never ignorant enough to think you know everything, you just might learn something useful.

Update for the Sake of Updating

Yep. Still waiting. Lucky for us no one is giving babies up for adoption around this time of year, so we aren't missing any opportunities as we wait. Besides, we hear people complain all the time about how horrible it would be to have a baby at Christmas-time. What an annoying gift that'd be...
Too cynical? eh.

Individual Interviews and Adoption Alternatives

We went to our individual interviews last week. They were exactly what Zack predicted: Kate just asked us the same questions from our questionnaire and we parroted back the same answers we'd written. I guess I can see why they'd want to interview you in person as well as having you write down answers to the questions, but for us it felt repetitive. But that's just us.

We also attended an adoption alternatives class that week. They hold meetings every few months and talk about, well, adoption alternatives. The one we attended was on foster care. We already knew how we felt about foster care and this didn't do anything to change it, but we did get some good information.

This Monday we will have our Home Visit. That's when Kate comes over and checks out our house to make sure it's a safe environment for a child. You know, no explosives lying around. Poisons and firearms placed at least arms distance from the reach of short arms. All pointy edges safely covered with cork and/or marshmallows. Stuff like that.
We're not supposed to have our house looking "perfect", as they say, because that looks "suspicious". So instead of cleaning our house in preparation we're going to trash it, just a little, to look like "regular people's houses". Regular people who aren't hiding aaaanything.

A Birthmother's Point of View

I find that whenever I have a spare moment to just peruse the computer, I start searching for more adoption blogs. It feels good to read other people's joys and struggles. Well, not so much the struggles. I only like reading the joys.

While I was reading about someone's joy I came across this post.

I really shouldn't read stuff like this late at night when Zack isn't around. But then again, maybe it's the best time to read it.

My hope is that our birthmother feels the same way about her child as this birthmother feels about hers.