We had our home study! On Saturday the social worker arrived, via Kanpur airport, around one in the afternoon. We picked him up and headed back to our house to start the weekend. The first day we went over a few hours of training stuff. Just general adoption info, attachment/bonding issues, sexual abuse issues, ect. Then we had the walk through of our house. I was so nervous about this part.(Just ask Ryan, I was kinda very hard to live with the few days before our homestudy :0) My mom and I had been in a cleaning, organizing frenzy. I have no idea what I would have done with out her here, she is amazing.
We live in a poor area of our city and it took us a long time to find a place to live. It is small and simple, but works well for us. We love the location, our neighbors, and our balcony, but I wasn't sure how a social worker from America would view it all. It turns out all my worrying was for NOTHING! He did his walk through and drew our basic floor plan and said everything looked great. That's it, no improvements needed, nothing. It was a little anti-climatic to be honest, but these days anti-climatic is welcome.
The next day we had three different interviews. A long one with both of us which covered every topic imaginable, including; why adopt, how we met, our strengths and weaknesses, our idea of motherhood/fatherhood, discipline, finances, ect. Then we each had a short separate interview with our social worker. It all went well and everything is good to go ahead in the process....
Then there was a major let down that we were not expecting:
Saturday night we took the social worker to Pizza Hut, because, well Pizza Hut is good. The four of us were just chatting(Me, Ryan, my Mom, and SW) about when we would return to America for a visit. We were telling him our plan is to go to the States next Christmas 2013. My Mom made a comment about us bringing our baby to America then. A few minutes after that Ryan made another comment to that effect. Then our social worker said, "That would be awesome if yall were able to do that but realistically with the country you are adopting from, it is currently a THREE YEAR WAIT." Wait, WHAT??? We were under the impression that it would be a year or year and a half...maybe 2, but THREE!! My heart fell to the pit of my stomach and my throat started doing that burning thing that happens when you feel like you are going to cry. I could feel Ryan looking at me and I avoided his gaze, I knew if I looked at him I might lose it right there in Pizza Hut. So, I took a few breaths and tried to pull my self together. Three years, three years, three years...it kept playing in my head, it still does.
So that is where we are, it looks like it will be three years before we get to bring our baby home. I hate that thought with everything in me. BUT, we will press on and keep walking towards Baby Hartsfield and pray that God helps us to have patience and pray that God watches over and pours his love on Baby Hartsfield as we wait.
Most of you are probably asking WHY? That is a good question and a hard one to understand. There is a lot that goes into it. Different countries do adoptions differently and if the country you are adopting from is a Hague or non-Hague country makes a difference(but that is all blah blah). So, the easy explanation is that the country we are adopting from is a Hague country and they have a lot of rules and regulations and so before a child is able to be adopted from their country an investigation has to be done on that child. They want to make sure the child is adoptable, hasn't been stolen or traffiked, ect. So, these are all good things that the govt wants to do, but they just take a really long time. And, we are wanting to adopt a younger child so that makes the process longer. There are many families wanting to adopt younger children so this puts us in a line waiting to adopt. Anyways, that is a short version...it is still pretty impossible to understand why three years.
Please pray for us as we process all of this. We are more excited than ever to build our family through adoption and feel confident with our agency and the country we have chosen that our child will come from. However, in our plans for our family we were imagining in three years to have a baby and be working on more...so pray God would give us wisdom in growing our family and pray he would help us to trust Him in all things. He is the only one who knows how long it will be and we trust his timing, as much as we hate waiting!
One way that God has really shown Himself as a good and faithful to me is in the fact that the timing of the home study and the timing of my Mom's visit were the same time. Her love and support have been so encouraging to Ryan and me through all of this. Not to mention, she is a cleaning machine! Those of you that know my Mom, know that she might not like to cook, but boy can she clean. She helped us(okay so maybe WE helped HER) get our house ready and beautiful. She is also a great shoulder to cry on. So thankful that God gave her to us and that she could be here right now. Such perfect timing!
This is going to be a MUCH longer process that we thought, we are mourning that it will be so long, BUT at the same time we are rejoicing because we are one step closer to baby Hartsfield!!!
We live in a poor area of our city and it took us a long time to find a place to live. It is small and simple, but works well for us. We love the location, our neighbors, and our balcony, but I wasn't sure how a social worker from America would view it all. It turns out all my worrying was for NOTHING! He did his walk through and drew our basic floor plan and said everything looked great. That's it, no improvements needed, nothing. It was a little anti-climatic to be honest, but these days anti-climatic is welcome.
The next day we had three different interviews. A long one with both of us which covered every topic imaginable, including; why adopt, how we met, our strengths and weaknesses, our idea of motherhood/fatherhood, discipline, finances, ect. Then we each had a short separate interview with our social worker. It all went well and everything is good to go ahead in the process....
Then there was a major let down that we were not expecting:
Saturday night we took the social worker to Pizza Hut, because, well Pizza Hut is good. The four of us were just chatting(Me, Ryan, my Mom, and SW) about when we would return to America for a visit. We were telling him our plan is to go to the States next Christmas 2013. My Mom made a comment about us bringing our baby to America then. A few minutes after that Ryan made another comment to that effect. Then our social worker said, "That would be awesome if yall were able to do that but realistically with the country you are adopting from, it is currently a THREE YEAR WAIT." Wait, WHAT??? We were under the impression that it would be a year or year and a half...maybe 2, but THREE!! My heart fell to the pit of my stomach and my throat started doing that burning thing that happens when you feel like you are going to cry. I could feel Ryan looking at me and I avoided his gaze, I knew if I looked at him I might lose it right there in Pizza Hut. So, I took a few breaths and tried to pull my self together. Three years, three years, three years...it kept playing in my head, it still does.
So that is where we are, it looks like it will be three years before we get to bring our baby home. I hate that thought with everything in me. BUT, we will press on and keep walking towards Baby Hartsfield and pray that God helps us to have patience and pray that God watches over and pours his love on Baby Hartsfield as we wait.
Most of you are probably asking WHY? That is a good question and a hard one to understand. There is a lot that goes into it. Different countries do adoptions differently and if the country you are adopting from is a Hague or non-Hague country makes a difference(but that is all blah blah). So, the easy explanation is that the country we are adopting from is a Hague country and they have a lot of rules and regulations and so before a child is able to be adopted from their country an investigation has to be done on that child. They want to make sure the child is adoptable, hasn't been stolen or traffiked, ect. So, these are all good things that the govt wants to do, but they just take a really long time. And, we are wanting to adopt a younger child so that makes the process longer. There are many families wanting to adopt younger children so this puts us in a line waiting to adopt. Anyways, that is a short version...it is still pretty impossible to understand why three years.
Please pray for us as we process all of this. We are more excited than ever to build our family through adoption and feel confident with our agency and the country we have chosen that our child will come from. However, in our plans for our family we were imagining in three years to have a baby and be working on more...so pray God would give us wisdom in growing our family and pray he would help us to trust Him in all things. He is the only one who knows how long it will be and we trust his timing, as much as we hate waiting!
One way that God has really shown Himself as a good and faithful to me is in the fact that the timing of the home study and the timing of my Mom's visit were the same time. Her love and support have been so encouraging to Ryan and me through all of this. Not to mention, she is a cleaning machine! Those of you that know my Mom, know that she might not like to cook, but boy can she clean. She helped us(okay so maybe WE helped HER) get our house ready and beautiful. She is also a great shoulder to cry on. So thankful that God gave her to us and that she could be here right now. Such perfect timing!
This is going to be a MUCH longer process that we thought, we are mourning that it will be so long, BUT at the same time we are rejoicing because we are one step closer to baby Hartsfield!!!
Love you so much friend. Hurting for you and with you at the thought that it might be that long but praying that you can rest in the knowledge that God's plan is perfect in exactly how it will play out and in it's timing. God knows your sweet baby already-he has or will sometime soon form him or her in their mother's womb (fearfully and wonderfully made!) I'm so so proud of y'all for doing the home study! It's such an exhausting process. Thankful your mom is there also! Excited that you are a little bit closer to Baby H. Love you, praying for you!
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