After all of our research we chose to go with Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin Community Services. After a lot of discussions Jason and I had decided that adopting a baby was not for us. We were past the need of wanting a baby. For me, I was not and still am not ready to have a baby within our care. After losing our babies I decided I needed to skip the baby stage. If I couldn’t have our own biological babies, I didn’t want to experience this stage with a strangers baby. Not sure if that makes sense or not, but it did for me. I was just ready to move past that horrible stage in our lives, and maybe I’m not dealing with that part of my grief the right way…oh well. So anyway, we chose to foster to adopt and we felt Children’s was the best option for us.
On April 25, 2017 we submitted our first Preliminary Application and we got approved to move forward. On July 27, 2017 Jason and I attended our first Adoption Orientation class and learned more about how this adoption process works and received a bunch of information to look over. We were left with the statement of “read this over and make the decision if this route is right for you.”
I’ll fully admit, all the information we received from our orientation was a lot to take in. A lot of the children in foster care have experienced way more than any child should ever have to experience. This process was not going to be easy by any means. If we were to decide to move forward we would be faced with many challenges along the way.
Jason and I decided this was still the route we wanted to take and we filled out the initial application on October 15, 2017 and then waited for a response. On October 25, 2017 our initial application got approved and we scheduled our first in house adoption interview for November 20th. The interview went very well and lasted over 1-1/2 hours. Also, our cats behaved. haha Now we just had to wait to see if the interviewer and her supervisor was going to approve us to keep moving forward.
We received a huge packet of applications and documents to fill out. Every single possible piece of information you can imagine was asked and submitted. We had to share about our childhood, our home life, past relationships, current relationship, current life, etc. After the huge packet of applications were filled out and resubmitted, we received a phone call that we were still approved and we should now schedule an interview with a caseworker. We had our first in home adoption interview on November 20, 2017.
Preparing for our adoption interview was stressful. Trying to make sure our home is absolutely perfect and we had all our ducks in a row. They tell us not to clean and just be natural, but let’s be realistic, who doesn’t clean when people are coming to your place?! Especially when they are coming to basically evaluate you.
Our assigned caseworker was super nice and warm. She asked us a bunch of questions, went over our paperwork that we submitted, and did a walk over of our home. We had to do fingerprinting and sign forms for a thorough background check to go through (which by the way we passed with flying colors). We’re safe guys; you can trust us with your kids. 😉
We must have done something right at our adoption interview, because on November 28th we received the call…we were approved and officially in the adoption program!! Now the fun was to begin.
After the acceptance into the adoption program we started scheduling a bunch of interviews with our caseworker. A few interviews were together as a couple and then we were split up. We were asked more detailed questions about our whole entire lives. No joke. We were asked about our parents before we were even born yet. We were asked about our siblings. Our birth and our lives since birth. We were asked about our childhood, school, friends, extra activities, jobs, health, goals, hobbies, etc. Basically zero privacy.
We had to attend a double-header or a 2 day adoption class where we learned more about the different children who are in the foster system. We learned about all the possible challenges that could be ahead for us and how to handle each challenge. We learned about how the foster system works, what steps were ahead for us and what to expect.
On May 3, 2018 we officially became licensed to foster and adopt.
Family Against All Odds 