Monday February 15th is Family Day in Alberta, and that just so happened to be the day when our Adoption order arrived in the mail! Our son is now legally "Owen Faron Burns", and our dream of adoption has now finally, officially, come to fruition. On family day no less!
You're probably thinking to yourself, "311 days?" or "his name wasn't Owen?" well you would be correct. We both went through another long wait to make it official, but honestly this wait was nothing compared to the one being on the adoption list, so we could handle it but it was still difficult.
After we took Owen home, a lot went on. Including several meetings with the Adoption Agency of course, meeting the Birthmother, getting new/updated criminal record checks (to really just make sure) done, another home study, more questions, more money spent, and a lot of information sent off to the courts to be processed and judged.
So Owen's name up until recently was legally "Baby Boy", and he had a different last name than ours, so let me assure you it wasn't the easiest visits to the doctor or for immunizations when he had to in a round-about way prove that he was ours, and that we weren't crazy people who had scooped a child off the street.
This past year has been a different kind of challenge for us. Obvious reasons is that we have been new parents, but also in a naive way we thought that our adoption story would in a way end when we took him home from the hospital last April. We've experienced a lot of different ups and downs since the placement took place, that for any of you on an adoption list would want to know about.
That's why we're continuing to blog about this process, because it's so important to raise awareness of open adoption, and support adoptive parents and birthmothers. Whether you are considering adoption as a viable option, trying to cope waiting on the list, or learning more about open adoption in general it's important to get that support and read other people's stories (we know we sure did).
But for now, we're definitely soaking up that the initial adoption placement is 100% complete, and we can take that weight we didn't realize we had, off our backs and continue to move forward with the most important little person in our world.
and so begins the Adventures of O
Jason & Lauren
