THE PROCESS – EXCITING TO EXCRUCIATING

We were beyond excited to get going on the adoption process, even though it would be daunting. After deciding on using the agency I mentioned in my last post, we got to work. You are warned that it will take a while to complete the process; paperwork, home study, and create a pictorial profile for parents to look through to get to know the adopting family. The majority of the process was completed in the summer of 2005 and we were placed into the pool of adoptive parents in the fall of 2005. During this time we decided we were going to adopt domestically, and that we had no restrictions on gender, race, or how many children. We were going to let God lead us to whomever he had chosen for us.

We began filling out the mountains of paperwork and running down all the information we needed for this process. We also began to create a pictorial profile that would share our lives through pictures and short descriptive paragraphs. Think of a ‘Bravard Scrapbook’ that shares who we are with complete strangers. This profile would be the first impression we leave on the potential birth parents of our adopted child. I thank God for my wife, Kristin, all the time. For her beauty, inside and out, but most of all for her ability to stay on top of paperwork and create a beautiful scrapbook that depicts the Bravards. All joking aside, she has been given a gift of organization and creativity that I appreciate very much.

The next step was to have two home studies, administered by a social worker that worked for our adoption agency. This person came to our home to observe us as a married couple and inspect our home. But, in reality, the majority of time was spent answering a gazillion questions. In the middle of the questioning, an agenda began to develop from the social worker. She was starting to become very stern on some issues that had nothing to do with us, but she began to project her agenda on to us. We were already nervous as heck, but then became even more nervous when this agenda started to be shared with us. We completed the home study process, but due to this social worker's odd behavior, I asked the agency to remove her from our case. We feared her erratic behavior was going to cause us to miss out on an adoption opportunity. Luckily, our request was honored. I don’t think she worked there very long.

After the home studies were completed, our family profile was made available to each of the agency's offices in Iowa. Birth parents who had completed an adoption plan would look through these profiles and select which family they would like to consider. It was time for us to wait for the call.