Baby Hall's Story: Meeting Our Social Worker

This week, I've been sharing how we were pursuing adoption before we found out we were expecting. Even though the adoption is on pause, I want to share our experience with you.

This was written around November of last year: 

I was so excited when we received a call from our social worker to schedule our first meeting. Due to Lee's busy new work schedule and the fact that we don't want any delays on our end, I took off on a Monday morning for the meeting.

We got there and met our social worker and began by her asking us a few basic questions. Then, she started going through some paperwork, such as certain laws and procedures regarding adoption, that we had to sign.

For the last half of the meeting, she started telling us all the things we'd need to do to get to the point where we can adopt: background checks, child abuse checks, driving record checks, fingerprints, physicals, references, 30 hours of classes, home study, profile book, and on and on. I admit it was both overwhelming and surreal. I have been following adoption blogs and reading about adoption for several years now. I knew all of this, but this wasn't someone else's adoption-it's MINE.

We are trying to be as open as possible to the child(ren) we would consider. This is for 2 reason: It makes the process easier and quicker and we want to be open to the child(ren) God would have for our family. So, we are open to a sibling group of up to 2 children (only because that's the maximum number of children we have room for). We found out that in order to be approved for 2 children, we have to have a room set up complete with beds for 2 children. So, I'll be trying to figure out how to create an inexpensive, gender neutral room.

To be continued...