what’s next

The big question: "now that your home study has been approved, what's next?"

1. We wait for the home study report to be written, hopefully by Christmas.
2. We get an (800) number (now probably 866).
   
3. I finish our profile.
4. I send our profile to anyone who may come in contact with potential birth moms, including our adoption attorney, my aunt who works in the maternity ward of a hospital, the local abortion clinic (recommended by our attorney), a mid wife (also recommended by our attorney), and our social worker.
5. A birth mom some where, some day, will see our profile and fall in love with us and choose us to raise her baby. According to our adoption attorney, the birth mom may narrow it down to three couples she wants to meet. Depending on the circumstances of her pregnancy, some birth moms don't want anything to do with choosing the adoptive parents and may leave it up to their attorney or social worker. The birth mom will still be pregnant at this time and has made an adoption plan for her unborn baby. I say this because at this point we are still hoping for a newborn baby, we may change our focus as time goes on.
   
6. As I said, we may or may not meet the birth mom, it is up to her. We are willing to have an open adoption because we feel it's important for our child to know their own biological history. Our social worker can act as a go-between if our birth mom doesn't want direct contact with us, which is cool too. There are all different levels of contact between birth parents and adoptive parents.

After the profile is done, basically, we wait. Our adoption attorney said the better we are at marketing ourselves, the more people we tell we are hoping to adopt, the better our chances of finding a birth mom sooner rather than later.

We have asked our family and friends in the medical and education professions especially to keep their eyes and ears open, since they are the ones who could potentially come in contact with a birth mom making an adoption plan. I've also asked my friends with teenagers to keep their eyes and ears open for us too. You just never know where your child could be. We just hope the wait goes as quickly as the home study did!!!

Thanks again to all of you (family, friends AND strangers) for your support and well wishes during this time. We really appreciated.