Here is a long overdue update on how the adoption is going. Sorry for the delay but we have been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks.
On Friday, February 24th we received a phone call from Jenny, a social worker with Adoptions of Wisconsin. She informed us that AOW had an unexpected opening in their pool of waiting families and the spot was ours if we wanted it! Of course we said yes and we are now officially ACTIVE! It was a wonderful surprise, especially when we didn’t expect to be put in the waiting pool until April or May. Now we just have to wait for the phone call that will change our lives.
The Tuesday after going active we got an inquiry from AOW. They were going to start working with a law firm in another state. It was our choice whether or not this law firm would have access to our profile. We were told that adoptions in this state can cost upwards of $40k (Compared to $24-28k in Wisconsin). This law firm had birthmothers waiting to be matched and no waiting adoptive families. After discussing the opportunity Joe and I decided not to have our information provided to the firm. There was just too much financial risk. If we had a failed adoption through the law firm there was a good chance we wouldn’t have enough money to try again. Although this was a difficult decision, it was the right one for us.
To keep ourselves occupied during the wait we have been preparing for the baby. For one, we recently purchased a few essential baby items (car seat, binkies, diaper bag, etc.). I have also been researching cloth diapering (which is a lot more complicated than you might think). I am so grateful to have friends with experience in cloth diapering (thanks Kristen and Erin). They have really helped me sort through all of the information.
We’ve also started working on the nursery. Below you can see a couple pictures of what the nursery looked like before we started fixing it up. At this point we have painted the walls and the new carpet is due to be installed in a couple of weeks. After the carpet is in I will be sure to post more pictures. Our next step will be to purchase furniture items such as a crib and dresser.
