Yesterday I shared our big news. We are adopting! Thanks so much for all of your support and excitement. I had tears in my eyes reading all of your congratulations, and it means so much to us.
One of the things that has been very hard for me about our infertility diagnosis is the little "normal" exciting things you get to do when telling everyone you're pregnant. I felt sad about the idea that we would never have a fun "we're expecting!" announcement, with a sonogram picture or growing bump to show off. So, I was determined to dream up a creative, thoughtful way to tell our families that we were adopting. They knew that we were considering adoption, but they had no idea that we had officially decided to adopt from foster care, or that we had already begun the process. So we thought it would be great to surprise them at Christmas time when we'd be seeing them all in person.
I used some pictures taken by the amazing Gretchen Wakeman from our holiday mini session package to create an announcement on treat., a relative of tinyprints, where I made our Christmas cards (more to come soon on how much we loved both Gretchen and our Christmas cards).
Then, during both of our family Christmas gatherings, after presents were opened and wrapping paper decorated the floor, we gave each family member this card...
We made them all open it at the same time, and also gave them each a book for relatives and friends of adoptive families. It's a fantastic book, full of practical answers to common adoption questions and great ideas to support an adoptive family. We're enlisting our support team early, because I'm sure we'll need it more than we know. I would highly recommend this book to anyone considering adoption or with a family member or friend going through the process:
There were hugs, tears, and "congratulations" from everyone, and we couldn't have asked for a better reaction. We had successfully kept things quiet, knowing we wanted to tell them all in a special way, and it was totally worth avoiding the topic for a couple months.
We have already attended an orientation, and our next steps will be to choose an agency and start taking our mandatory classes to be licensed to adopt by the state. During that process we will complete LOTS of paperwork, get a home study done, and gather everything to meet the requirements. At this point we will not be licensed to be a foster home, but are only interested in being licensed to adopt children from the foster care system who are waiting and available for a permanent family.
On this blog, I hope to share lots more in the weeks and months ahead about how we came to our decision, the things we've learned already, and the things we will learn along the way. I'd love for you to follow along and subscribe by email to stay updated as we go through this process, and join us in the adventure.
This is happening!
