Well its been a few weeks since I've done an update so I figured tonight would be a great night for one! Last update I said that we would be closing our Go Fund Me page but I guess I didn't understand how it really worked. I thought once you did a withdrawal you had to close your page. Well that isn't the case at all! So we will keep that page open if you are interested. And to be honest we wouldn't of been able to get this far without the help from all of our amazing family and friends out there! Saying thank you isn't even enough!
When I last gave our update we were just submitting our application. Since then we have been accepted by our agency! We both were thrilled with this news. The next step was getting a sample contract that we were to go over and call our social worker if we had any questions about it. After reading an 11 page contract we had a few questions. Before I go into the questions or any further I think I need to clarify some information that I don't think I have really explained.
We will be doing an out of state adoption. Which means we will not be doing an adoption from the state of California. Why would we do that you might ask? When we finally made the decision to adopt we googled top rated agencies and had an open mind to not adopting in the current state we lived in. Yes that would be extremely convenient for us to do. But we really wanted to go with an agency that was invested in both the birth parents and adoptive parents. We also wanted to have a warm fuzzy feeling about our agency as well. We did contact an agency located in Fresno, CA (Fresno is about 45 mins from us) but we never heard back from them. So we took that as a big sign and did not further pursue that agency. At this time we are not allowed to say what state we will be adopting from due to our contract. But it is a southern state in the AMAZING SEC country! Sorry I had to throw that in there for Preston.
The next question we get asked quite often is how old will our child be? We are actually adopting an infant. And when I say infant we are talking he or she will be 1 or 2 days old. Why not an older child? We want this process to be as normal as it can be. We want those sleepless nights, the teething cranky baby, the cute little baby wrinkles, and the opportunity to raise our child from day 1.
Remember how I said we will be adopting our baby from another state? Well once our birth mother goes into labor we will get a phone call telling us to stand by. Then another phone call once our child is born. Lastly and most importantly the go ahead to come get our baby. Our baby's birth mother has 72 hrs to either sign away her rights and or change her mind. So for those 72 hrs after our child is born we will be on pins and needles because it does happen that once the baby is born the birth mother can change her mind. Once we are given the go ahead we will have to book our flight and get to the hospital as soon as we can. Then will pick up our baby at the hospital and live in a hotel for the next two weeks! We will cannot cross state lines for at the max two weeks until we are given a court order stating we can leave the state. I have been doing A LOT of research on traveling with a newborn on an air plane. We will have to bring a lot of light weight items with us so it can be as "normal" as possible in those first 2 weeks in the hotel room. A travel bassinet, just enough baby bottles, clothes for the 3 of us, something to bathe the baby with, and a whole lot more. I get anxious about it all sometimes and then I am thankful that I am a type A personality and I will over prepare for this.
On Monday I asked our social worker a small list of questions and after she answered them I told her we were ready to move on and we would like the official contract. On Tuesday we received our contract via email. All we had to do was get everything notarized and signed. On Wednesday we went to legal to have the contracted looked at and it notarized. I honestly thought it would be a quick and smooth thing to do. Boy was I wrong! For some reason the lady who did all the notarizing in the legal office did not like us at all. She gave Preston a super hard time about his drivers license and told him he was a liar about Ohio's law with active duty members not having to update their drivers license if they are not able to go back to the state to do so. Then she didn't want to notarize our contract because it had the wrong date on it. We were given the contract on the 9th and we went into the office on the 11th. I later found out that she had no clue what she was talking about. Apparently it doesn't matter what date was on the contract. So an hour and half later we were good to go. Preston went home right away and wrote a check to our agency and sent out contract along with it. The contract fee is $2,500. That seems like a lot of money but from here on out it just gets more and more expensive.
The next three steps will be getting activated into the waiting pool, starting to get our view book together, and our home study. I am not too sure about how much the view book will cost but I know its something we will be ordering from Shutterfly. The home study will be the longest process we have to do. And boy will it be tricky to fit it in. Preston leaves in two weeks for a 6 week boat det. When he returns he will be home for a month and then leaves again for another 6 weeks. So fingers crossed we can do this quickly. From what we have researched a home study in the state of California can cost any where from $1,000-$2,500. So in an effort to save as much money as possible we have dropped our cable package to the lowest you can go, got rid of our fun subscriptions to birtchbox, have agreed that we wont eat out on the weekends, and whatever is leftover in our account after each paycheck we put directly into our savings. My hope is that we will have a good chunk of our home study money saved by the time he gets home from the boat. As for the rest of the fees: $7,000 once we are matched with our birthmother and $7,000 once the baby is born and we have been given the rights to our child. Then after placement we will have to have a social worker come check on us to make sure everything is going well. I believe that is another $2,000 for that service. So needless to say once we are approved from home study we will be applying for as many grants as we can.
Our contract is supposed to get to our agency tomorrow (Friday) at some point. So let the craziness begin!
When I last gave our update we were just submitting our application. Since then we have been accepted by our agency! We both were thrilled with this news. The next step was getting a sample contract that we were to go over and call our social worker if we had any questions about it. After reading an 11 page contract we had a few questions. Before I go into the questions or any further I think I need to clarify some information that I don't think I have really explained.
We will be doing an out of state adoption. Which means we will not be doing an adoption from the state of California. Why would we do that you might ask? When we finally made the decision to adopt we googled top rated agencies and had an open mind to not adopting in the current state we lived in. Yes that would be extremely convenient for us to do. But we really wanted to go with an agency that was invested in both the birth parents and adoptive parents. We also wanted to have a warm fuzzy feeling about our agency as well. We did contact an agency located in Fresno, CA (Fresno is about 45 mins from us) but we never heard back from them. So we took that as a big sign and did not further pursue that agency. At this time we are not allowed to say what state we will be adopting from due to our contract. But it is a southern state in the AMAZING SEC country! Sorry I had to throw that in there for Preston.
The next question we get asked quite often is how old will our child be? We are actually adopting an infant. And when I say infant we are talking he or she will be 1 or 2 days old. Why not an older child? We want this process to be as normal as it can be. We want those sleepless nights, the teething cranky baby, the cute little baby wrinkles, and the opportunity to raise our child from day 1.
Remember how I said we will be adopting our baby from another state? Well once our birth mother goes into labor we will get a phone call telling us to stand by. Then another phone call once our child is born. Lastly and most importantly the go ahead to come get our baby. Our baby's birth mother has 72 hrs to either sign away her rights and or change her mind. So for those 72 hrs after our child is born we will be on pins and needles because it does happen that once the baby is born the birth mother can change her mind. Once we are given the go ahead we will have to book our flight and get to the hospital as soon as we can. Then will pick up our baby at the hospital and live in a hotel for the next two weeks! We will cannot cross state lines for at the max two weeks until we are given a court order stating we can leave the state. I have been doing A LOT of research on traveling with a newborn on an air plane. We will have to bring a lot of light weight items with us so it can be as "normal" as possible in those first 2 weeks in the hotel room. A travel bassinet, just enough baby bottles, clothes for the 3 of us, something to bathe the baby with, and a whole lot more. I get anxious about it all sometimes and then I am thankful that I am a type A personality and I will over prepare for this.
On Monday I asked our social worker a small list of questions and after she answered them I told her we were ready to move on and we would like the official contract. On Tuesday we received our contract via email. All we had to do was get everything notarized and signed. On Wednesday we went to legal to have the contracted looked at and it notarized. I honestly thought it would be a quick and smooth thing to do. Boy was I wrong! For some reason the lady who did all the notarizing in the legal office did not like us at all. She gave Preston a super hard time about his drivers license and told him he was a liar about Ohio's law with active duty members not having to update their drivers license if they are not able to go back to the state to do so. Then she didn't want to notarize our contract because it had the wrong date on it. We were given the contract on the 9th and we went into the office on the 11th. I later found out that she had no clue what she was talking about. Apparently it doesn't matter what date was on the contract. So an hour and half later we were good to go. Preston went home right away and wrote a check to our agency and sent out contract along with it. The contract fee is $2,500. That seems like a lot of money but from here on out it just gets more and more expensive.
The next three steps will be getting activated into the waiting pool, starting to get our view book together, and our home study. I am not too sure about how much the view book will cost but I know its something we will be ordering from Shutterfly. The home study will be the longest process we have to do. And boy will it be tricky to fit it in. Preston leaves in two weeks for a 6 week boat det. When he returns he will be home for a month and then leaves again for another 6 weeks. So fingers crossed we can do this quickly. From what we have researched a home study in the state of California can cost any where from $1,000-$2,500. So in an effort to save as much money as possible we have dropped our cable package to the lowest you can go, got rid of our fun subscriptions to birtchbox, have agreed that we wont eat out on the weekends, and whatever is leftover in our account after each paycheck we put directly into our savings. My hope is that we will have a good chunk of our home study money saved by the time he gets home from the boat. As for the rest of the fees: $7,000 once we are matched with our birthmother and $7,000 once the baby is born and we have been given the rights to our child. Then after placement we will have to have a social worker come check on us to make sure everything is going well. I believe that is another $2,000 for that service. So needless to say once we are approved from home study we will be applying for as many grants as we can.
Our contract is supposed to get to our agency tomorrow (Friday) at some point. So let the craziness begin!
-Kate
No comments:
Post a Comment