Not so bad after all....

Kathy, our social worker, is not what we had imagined in our minds. She made us feel relaxed and at ease with this entire process. We have scheduled appointments over the next few weeks and will be all done by the first week in September. Then she will be writing an 18 page story of us and then fingers crossed approving us to be parents. We know that we will but it is still unsettling knowing that we are being looked at if we are good enough.

The one thing she did was question us on our criteria of child we had written on our application. Now for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, this is a form where it lists all and everything you can think of. race, gender, birth defects, etc that may come along with having a baby. We look at that form as if we are naturally having a child we couldn't change it. Race doesn't matter, Gender doesn't matter, but birth defects shouldn't matter. And really these are the things no one can control unless they have been substance abusing while pregnant. We said a definite no to some and others we were told to think about further. So we have been researching many birth defects, talking to my sister in law who is a physical therapist that gave us insight from her point of view.Questioning what really matters. Kathy said this is part of adoption, we get to choose if we can and want what our child has. Then she warned us no matter what, a healthy baby at birth can in 2 yrs have Autism. My thoughts in my head that is we accept a child with a birth defect people will look at the baby and say it's because of the birth mom, when in truth anyone could have a baby with cleft lip or club foot. I know that judgments will happen and I am not afraid of them, never have been, but to judge a mother who has unselfishly chosen not to parent and given us the chance too, breaks my heart.

I want a healthy baby, Jason wants a healthy baby, so does everyone, but sitting here picking and choosing what is manageable for us is very hard for me. I want to adopt so many babies, but cannot afford it. Knowing that there is a baby born with a birth defect and we are saying no to because our medical plan doesn't cover it's meds or care. I hate that the decisions we are making are about what we can afford but knowing that we need to step out of this bubble and look at the future knowing how much 1 baby costs in a lifetime we are making the right decisions for us.

What calms us is that the birth defects we are saying no to do not happen very often, so we are not closing the door to many. We just know what we can handle, emotionally and financially.

So there is what a social worker does, questions you to make sure you know what the heck we are doing. She made us really think about what really is important to us. And by questioning some of our answers made us think  harder about them, with that it made us change our outlook on some and others is reassured us that we answered correctly.

Lauren