Hooray! Homestudy!
Ok, you guys were right: I didn’t need to freak out but at least now my house is cleaner than it has been in months!
Our social worker was wonderful, really encouraging. We will be in the birth pool as soon as we get out autobiography in (she said ours only needed a couple of changes) and that will likely be at our next homestudy visit on July 7th. She also said that there are very few people in the program right now willing to take a child whose birth parents are both African American. (As an aside I’ll say that there’s a waiting list for the biracial — one African American parent, one non African American parent — program, which astounds me. I don’t really get how people could say they’ll take a black child but only if s/he is not “fully” black.) In other words, our wait may not be very long.
I said, jokingly, “Hey, a baby by the new year!”
And she said, “I can’t make promises but it’s certainly very possible.”
All of the adoptive parents in the African American program who finished the January training have placed by now. One of them placed a week after entering the pool.
Very exciting stuff, eh?
The hard part now is filling out our birth parent preference letter. This is how much history of drug/alcohol use or family mental illness that we’re willing to accept. I think that’s impossible to say in general but she said we can just put down “call first” and then before they give a birth mom our bio, they’d call us with her health history (and they can fax ultrasounds and things to our doctor) and we can say yes or no to sharing our info with her.
So that’s going to be the topic of discussion this weekend, I think.
Congrats on today and a comment on the biracial child issue.
As someone who has been considering adoption for some time I might be able to speculate on this. In principle a child of *any* race could be loved by us. I can imagine however thinking, [perhaps mistakenly] that a biracial child may have an easier time adjusting to a family of a different race than a child that is not biracial. Again, this might be a faulty assumption but I have a feeling folks’ preferences might have something to do with that.
Just my .02
Congratulations!! Isn’t it the best feeling of relief?
I do want to defend people who are willing to adopt biracial but not black children. Most that I’ve met say it’s not to exclude children who are “too black”, but to have some common ancestry with their child. I don’t really agree with that approach, but it’s not as disturbing a motivation as it seems on the surface.
How exciting! I was going to post about how you shouldn’t worry before visits but I was too late then again I scrubbed my house so hard that surgery could have been performed in it so I’m not one to talk!LOL
Sometimes I wonder if people realize that there is very little control over how black the child of biracial couples will look and although they may pick a mixed-couple the child could look fully black. Ky’s birth parents are both black but her younger sister’s birth dad is blue-eyed white yet her little sister looks just as “black” as Ky does. Anyway, I do have to admit that regardless of the reasons (don’t agree nor justify it but really do feel this way) couples should only adopt in a realm *they* are comfortable with because this life is not easy nor is it for everyone…you will have the eyes of the world on you at all times and unlike couples with children where others can think “humm…yeah…could be hers” we can’t take a break from our differences and it is “always” a visual distinction. I’m so happy for you and if she is a girl don’t despair *I* can kick-ass doing my baby’s hair!
Lots of hugs and good wishes…you are almost there.
Congrats!
See, freaking out can have it’s advantages. Clean homes are nice to come home to! :).