Well, it's been a long time coming, but I am so excited to announce that we are officially activated with Adoption Support Center! What does "activation" mean? It means that we are featured on their website and that when a birth mother chooses to work with ASC, if we match her needs and she matches ours, then the agency staff will show her our biography book. She'll have the opportunity to learn a little bit about us, our families, and our desire to be parents. She'll decide at that point if she would like to meet us in person and get to know us better, and maybe eventually place her child with us.
All in all, we had about 40 pages of paperwork to do, 5 background checks to pass (two of the checks we had to complete twice since it had been so long since we did them that the results expired), and about $12,000 to fork over. We had to have an additional $8,000 available in case we had an immediate placement.
We still have a ways go to on the fundraising side. Our final fees will total around $17,000 ($3,000 for birth mother living expenses, $4,000 for legal fees, and $10,000 for adoption agency fees). We have about half of that right now (the $8,000), and have a Dine & Donate with a local restaurant planned for next week. The plan for a big chunk of the rest of that is to apply for a few adoption grants. We are hopeful that we can bring in even just a couple thousand dollars in grant funding.
What does this mean in terms of timing and next steps? It means that, other than fundraising, we have done everything within our power to move this process along. Our fate completely rests in other people's hands now. While that's a nerve-wracking thought on one hand, it's nice to know that we are truly at just a waiting game stage of this process. Our agency's goal is 12 months from activation (where we are now) to placement (taking our baby home from the hospital). They average 9 months. So, we'll see. We'll wait. And while we wait, we'll hope!
