The In's and Out's of Our Home Study

Y'all, the last month has gotten away from me. In this time we have completed the next two steps of our home study and are just awaiting finalization and approval. It went quickly! Here's the highlights of what I've learned:

Home Study Class is NOT for the weak.

Our class in May was the first step of our home study. We spent an entire day with the owner of the agency and three other potential adoptive families. We got to hear from an adoptive family and a birth mother about their experiences leading up to the birth of their children and how they feel navigating an open adoption.

Outside of these special guest speakers, most of the day was spent sitting in some heavy topics regarding loss, grief, and trauma for different members of the adoption triad. These are important things to process and prepare for emotionally, but we were pretty exhausted at the end of the day. But, greater understanding leads to greater empathy, and we want to have our eyes wide open to the hard and messy things coming our way. We left with more reading to do on our own and some topics for future discussion between ourselves and the agency.

I have too many power outlets in my home.

We have purchased fire extinguishers, checked smoke detectors, installed childproof door knob covers, and checked our kitchen cabinets. What is laughable is the amount of open, unused electrical outlets I have in every room of my home.

The previous owners left a few outlet covers that were not only child-proof but were also Kait-proof. As I pried them from the wall with a butter knife, I audibly questioned my readiness for children for a moment. After going through the first 30-pack of covers and still not finishing with the downstairs, I realized I have great potential to own more items that require electricity in my home. Who knew?

Our social worker is less concerned with the state of our house and more concerned with the state of our hearts.

After the class and the books, I was bracing myself for a pretty intense home visit from the agency's social worker. To my surprise, it was pretty natural to spend a couple hours with Diane. Here's what our home visit was like...

Diane arrived and got right down to business. We set up at the dining room table and she took notes as we talked together about our families and upbringings, how we met, our marriage, why we want to adopt, why we will make good parents, etc. We had answered these questions in our profile, so nothing was a new topic and we had our answers pretty well prepared.

Anytime we did not know something, Diane took the time to stop and talk us through best practices and her own experience as an adoptive parent. It was less of an interview and more an opportunity to be better resourced and talk through our questions with individualized attention. Crazy helpful!

At the end, we did a brief walk-through of our house. But she didn't get down into the details of checking outlet covers and looking for baby gates or any of the things I expected happen at this stage. We were more prepared than we needed to be, which is great!

NOW WHAT?

Our home study should be prepared in the next week, and we should be sitting back down at ASC before the end of the month to approve it. After our home study is finalized, we are cleared to go "live" and be shown to expectant mothers. However, we will take a break before we go "live" to apply for some adoption grants and continue to save for the fees yet to come. We hope that the grant process will go quickly so we can continue to move forward and be ready whenever the time is right, but we will make sure to keep you in the loop!