Adventures with a Poodle & Baby

Adoption Play Group

Yesterday Karen had a good time with other moms at an adoption play group in Dexter. It's good for her to share her experiences with others going through the same thing. One of the group member's is a former coworker of mine who adopted about 2 weeks before we did. We've got a couple pictures of her daughter and Sam together.

Courtdate Milestone

Yesterday was the courtdate that we have been waiting for. It's the day that the birthmom signs off on all rights to Sam and allows us to take the next steps towards being the official parents. We enter a 6 month review period now and then go through Finalization at the end. If anything were to happen, Sam would not go back to the birthmom, the chapter is now closed on that option.

While it's a great day for us, it's a bittersweet day. We know that there is lot that the birthmom is going through at this time, even though we don't know her. They say that adoption triangle is built on loss - Loss on the adoptive parents part because they're usually unable to bear children, Loss on the birthmom's part because the child she conceived is gone, Loss on the child's part because the mom who gave birth to him is out of the picture.

For now, it's good that we and our family have a piece of mind knowing that Sam is here to stay. We've been having a great time making a video and seeing all the fun stuff that's happened over the last 8 weeks. Last night we went out to dinner to commemorate the event. We had nice experiences with waitresses and Sam was wearing his "Little Brother" shirt for the first time.

Samuel Update

Tomorrow Sam will be 4 weeks old. It's hard to believe, I had to check the calendar two or three times to make sure that's right.

The biggest news is that we have a court date. I might be wrong, but I think it's November 3rd. This court date is more for the birthmom to terminate her legal rights, so we won't be going to the court. What happens next is a 6 month review period for the agency to report to the state that we are good parents and then we have finalization. So most people look at that is a formality.

Our case worker came out to meet us this past week. She'll be following up with us in 3 months and then at the 6th month point. So that's all good.

Number One question we get: "How is Jacob doing with everything?" Jacob is doing great. He's a big 4 year old and getting more mature by the minute. His vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds. We got this really great game for the Wii, called "I Spy, Ultimate Challenge" and he just loves it. It's the perfect game for both him and us as a family. He plays another game "Pet Rescue" which he likes, but it's a little boring for dad to watch, plus it's single player. I Spy, on the other hand, is great fun for all. He's actually completed the entire game now and is starting over from the beginning.  - Anyway, what I was starting to say is he surprised me in one of the puzzles that's a space theme. He said - "Oh, it's a  constellation." He must have learned that from Grandma Nana (Karen's mom).

Whenever Jacob's not sure where the baby is, he usually says "Where's my baby?" He likes to hold him one in a while. He often likes to touch his face. One time he said he tastes like chocolate, another time like broccoli. He's usually good about helping to find a pacifier, or let the dog out while our hands are full. Overall I would say Jacob does his own thing about 90% of the time, and just keeps tabs on where Sam is. I'm sure he'll be eager for Sam to grow and play with him.

This morning I set Sam down on our "thinking chair" (like in Blues Clues) and Jacob jumped up on the chair with him. They were really cute together on the chair, so I snapped a quick photo. It's always neat to have pictures from childhood being in places that you know you can only fit when you're a certain age - like under chairs, etc. Or like the 6 preschool boys who sat on our patio swing together for Jacob's birthday party.

Sam has been to the doctor's twice now. Last week he was 8lbs 2oz. This week he barely gained any weight, but he grew in length. We called him the "crunchy baby" when we brought him home because he was always keeping his legs pulled up tight to his upper body, like a little ball. Now he's starting to stretch out, and even his face is not so scrunchy.

We've had lots of meals and visitors. It's been great for Karen not having to cook. My sister and her husband moved to town last weekend. So we've just been really busy. Sam has stayed home for almost everything, except his doctor visits. Tomorrow we're planning to take him out to church for the first time. So life moves on, and we're all just as happy as can be with little Baby Sam.

Baby Samuel

Yesterday morning Karen got a call from the adoption agency that there was a baby available for adoption. We made quick arrangements and got to the hospital at 3:30 to meet Ashley from the agency. She filled us in on the background of the situation and let us know it would be a closed adoption. We had been hoping for an open adoption, especially after reading what a difference it can make in the life of an adoptee as they grow up. But we're thrilled to work within the parameters we were offered. We brought flowers and a card for the birthmom and Ashley delivered them, since we will probably never meet her.

Anyway, then we went into the NICU (Neo-natal intensive care unit - ICU for babies) where we met him. He's doing great, he was born on Sunday morning, 6lbs 13oz. 19inches long. He's just having some trouble eating from the bottle, so he has a feeding tube. At each feeding they/we try with the bottle and do as much as he'll take, then the rest goes in the tube.

At the hospital they have a shift change at 7pm, so we have to leave at that time. We can come back at 8, but it works good to go home at that time. He has feedings at 10, 2, and 6 - so today we were at the hospital for all three day time feedings. Our nurse has been really nice and helpful. It's strange how much we forget about infants since Jacob was born.

As we were really caught off guard, we didn't have everything in place - like a nursery, carseat or name for a boy (we had one picked out for a girl). So last night we borrowed a car seat from Nate & Heidi, then headed home and spent an hour and a half processing name options and coming up with Samuel David Dillenbeck.We're really happy about it and think it suits him well.

We have only been waiting for 3 months, so that's really fast. We had been told to expect anywhere up to 6-12 months. We were also thinking we would be matched with an expecting mother and have time to process everything, but that wasn't the case so quick thinking was in order. I've had to drop everything at work, but really glad for the blackberry to keep up with the email traffic.

There are some things that are different about adoption that most people might not realize. Mostly that Samuel will be coming home with us, but the adoption will not be official until a court date in 3-5 weeks. So we won't be posting any online photos of him until that time, just to be safe. After that the adoption isn't completely finalized for 6 months to allow a period of observation on how we're doing with him. Based on the particulars of our situation, we don't foresee any problems and these will all be formalities.

We'll continue to post updates via twitter/facebook - and for longer stories we'll continue to use the blog as things progress. Thanks to all for your continued support during this process, it means a lot to us.

September Update

I've been meaning to give and adoption update for a long time. We found out about a month ago that our profile had been shown 4 times already, which we were thrilled to learn. That was the first news we've had, so we were glad to hear that there's potential out there and our stuff isn't just collecting dust on a shelf.

The other fun thing is that on Monday my co-worker came in and announced she was going on maternity leave. I had no idea she was waiting to adopt, but she had been for over a year. She got a "gift baby" - one that a mom didn't make an adoption plan before giving birth and they just got a call out of the blue to come to the hospital because there was a baby ready for them. So that was exciting for us to hear about.

Other big news around here: Jacob started Preschool again - he's trilled. Bristow got a bath.

Publishing the Book

Today we sent off our order for 4 copies of the photo book that we spent the last 4 days working on heavily, and the past 4 weeks thinking about. That should finally be the last thing we need to do for the adoption before the waiting period begins.

So.... speaking of the waiting period - we got word today that our Home Study was approved and they're moving forward with getting our web profile online and everything's getting in place. That means we are now finally beginning the waiting period. We also know that there are not many others at our agency who are waiting for a child of any race, the way we are. So the good news is we'll just enjoy being in a short line.

Things could really move quickly now.... In the meantime, enjoy one page from our book:

What's going on with Adoption

We've got all our info into the agency, now we're just waiting for our web profile to get posted on their end. Our last step is to prepare a photo-book for the agency to show birth-moms who come in to get matched. We hope to have that done this weekend. Besides that, we've got a reading list to keep us busy while we wait. We're reading book on trans-racial adoption and books on adoption through the eyes of adoptees which should give good insight on how to handle things right from the beginning.

As you may or may not know (or may or may not be interested) the agency asks what our "openess" is to a range of factors, such as race and medical conditions. We're pretty good with being open to almost everything. Our view is that our home is available for a child who needs a family and we don't want to stand in the way of letting God bring the right match together, whoever that may be. While certain situations may pose more or less of a challenge, we're certain that we won't be given more than we can handle.

So we wait with eager anticipation. We've gotten books from local libraries and ordered some that weren't available. We've got a big trip to upstate NY planned in a couple weeks with the family, so hopefully there'll be some reading time in the car and while not working for the week.

Adoption Video

Our home studies are now complete, yea! Now we are finalizing the materials that the agency uses to give to birth-moms to help match us. Our case worker is preparing a profile based on our earlier written information and our recent verbal download of all our thoughts on a variety of subjects.

While she is doing that, our job is to get our profile stuff done. On their website we provide a "Dear Birth-mom" letter along with 2 pictures and our video. We also prepared copies of a photobook for the agency that has the same letter, lots of pictures, and our statement of faith.

We made our video with a website called animoto, which generates transitions based on the music that we selected. We wanted to keep it short and brief because we think birth-moms may be looking at a lot of profiles and we want to avoid boredom. It's also hard to know what someone else will see as a connection point, so we tried to include a taste of everything about who we are and what we do.

For those interested, we'll post a link to our profile when it's ready so you can also read the letter that fills in some of the gaps that the video leaves out or implies without being overt about every detail.

Without further ado, here's the video. The agency said to turn off comments on for the video on YouTube, so you can just comment here on the blog.

Home Study almost complete

Tomorrow will be our 3rd and final home study visit with our case worker. These second two visits are at her house in Dexter, which is a town I don't think either of us has been to before but it's close to Ann Arbor where I work.

Once we finish up the questions from that, she'll be making a profile for us that will be used to help match us up with birth moms. Karen and I need to put together a photo book that will be shown to birth moms as well. Once those two things are complete we should be good to go in the system and just waiting to get paired up.

Last week we decided to get some more pictures taken of us to us in our book. We wanted to get some that show us just having fun and not so studio-like. Karen found a "groupon" for Beth Eggert which worked out really well. We bought a package that gave us 4 digital prints that we can use however we need to. The pictures were taken at a park so we captured us playing around and having fun. It was hard to get Jacob to participate, but if you take enough you're bound to get something. Here are the four we chose to get.

 

Starting the Home Study

Last Monday night our adoption case worker came to our house to begin the Home Study process. This is were they ask us a million questions so they can get to know all about us. This information is used to writeup a profile on us that helps them match us with a birth mom.

So it's a little intimidating going into it, not knowing what we'll be asked. But it went pretty well. Most of the questions were ones we had answered already in some form in a previous written questionnaire. Our case worker asks the same questions to get an overall better answer when hearing us in person.

Jacob behaved himself nicely during the visit and even brought her a cookie without anyone asking. Bristow didn't get too crazy either, which was nice.

Our next one will be this Wednesday afternoon. There should be one more after this one and they will both be at the case worker's house - which is nice because then we don't have to stress about cleaning.

In the meantime, we're getting our pictures together for a photo book that we need to do. They give these books, like portfolios, to birth moms for them to select a couple that they feel comfortable with. As part of that we thought it would be good to get some more pictures and we used a "groupon" to get a good deal with a photographer. - Picture available latter.

Adoption Update

Well not much to report, but just to confirm that we are moving full speed ahead. We've done most of our paper work, medical tests, references. Now we're looking forward to our home study and then moving on to the actual process of getting matched with a birth mom.

Looking into Adoption

For the past few weeks we've been getting more firm in our mindset that adoption looks like part of future. We've gone to an information seminar about all types of adoption - embryo, infant, international, foster. There was a panel of couples who had adopted in those various ways that we got to hear from, so that was nice.

Some of you may know that we've been living with close friends who have also adopted for the past 5 years and it's become a very comfortable part of our life. We've even just celebrated with another new adoption two weeks ago with friends who have been waiting a long time.

Karen and I did attend an adoption informational meeting before Jacob was born. We decided after that experience that we would make adoption part of our life at some point and now it looks like the time has come. 

Be assured there will be more news and details as this whole thing progresses over the course of the process, however long that will be. It could be a couple months or a couple years, but since we're interested in a domestic adoption we feel it could be on the shorter end.