Monday, August 27, 2012

The Adoption Affect

Nic and I live in a small community and with that comes an invisible network of information flow that seems to travel far and wide.  Because of this network we run into allot of people we barely know who are aware of our daughters adoption.  We have been very open about our adoption and for the most part people are happy to meet her and ask few questions.  The odd time though we do run into people who are genuinely interested in our adoption journey.  Last week I ran into two of these people and both conversations were truly moving.

The first was a man who I see yearly for some advertising.  He always comes by the house and we have a short chat.  This visit he shared that he and his wife could not have children and did think about adoption but in the end decided to not pursue it.  They billet young boys trying out for the local hockey team and have for over 20 years.  He said he has found that has fulfilled their parenting cravings but hearing our adoption story moved him to tears.  I could literally see him reflecting on his own life and falling in love with Gabriella before my eyes.  Amazing!

My second encounter was with an adult adoptee who is a close friend of Nic's Aunt.  She had been following our adoption journey through Nic's Aunt and was overjoyed to meet Gaby and hear how things were developing.  She was originally in a closed adoption but ended up finding her birth mother and father and spending time with both of them.  She loved hearing about our openness journey and the relationship we have with Gaby's birth family.  She went on and on about how beautiful our daughter was and how lucky we were to have her.

It is this type of conversation that makes me happy Nic and I have been so open about Gaby's adoption.  Before we adopted I heard horror stories about rude people asking inappropriate questions and making adoptive parents and children feel uncomfortable or emotionally attacked.  At first these stories made me nervous and I wanted to try to keep as much as we could to ourselves.  We still do keep some things confidential that we feel are part of Gabriella's story that she can choose to talk about or not in the future if she wants.  But for the most part we are open and try to teach people about adoption whenever we get the chance.  I am happy that we made this choice because so many of these people's stories and comments have literally changed my life.  There are so many people who have been touched by infertility or adoption that I think are encouraged to open up about their experience when they hear ours.

Our baby is so precious to us and we can't even think what we would do without her.  Maybe it is the emotion people see when we talk about her and her birth family, or just the fact that she is so darn cute but I think that she has changed the way allot of people view adoption, especially open adoption.  The sharing of information continues to teach us about life and parenting no matter if it is negative or positive.  My heart grows with each positive encounter and I hope it never stops!



Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Never Ending Adoption Paper Work...

I can't believe that today is the first day of August! Where has the summer gone? 

Things have been extra busy around here with Miss. Gaby growing like a weed.  She has started to sit up, babbles like crazy, laughs and smiles all the time.  Lately she has been in love with the dogs and gets noticeably excited when they are around. She has also started to reach for us when we pick her up and will turn when you call her name.  She is becoming more of a little girl every day and less of a baby.  Nic and I are both loving watching her grow and change.

On July 17th we had our last home visit with our adoption practitioner.  She had to do three visits within the first 6 months Gaby is in our home.  These visits took no time at all and seemed to be more procedure than anything else.  I did have to call the doctor's office and get Gaby's full chart of all her appointments but that was the hardest part.  We did have fun showing Josie Gaby's room and all the new things she is learning. 

Now that our home visits are over Josie will put together a package to send to off to Cheryl our licensee.  This will include her general observations of Nic and I as parents, Gaby's well being and development as well as bits and pieces on our relationship with Gaby's birth family and Nic and I's relationship with each other. 

Once Cheryl receives this she submits it along with a ton of other paper work to the Ministry of Child and Youth Services for approval and a court date.  My understanding is that the judge will review all the paper work and make sure everything is in order and grant final approval for the adoption to become final.  This will take place in family court at the Picton court house.  I guess they only have family court once a month so we will not get in until the September or latest October day.

As far as we know everything should be ok at court.  The only part that could cause a problem is that Gaby's birth father has not signed off on the adoption.  Both A and L have provided affidavits as to what happened with that situation which the judge will review.  Cheryl thinks that everything should be fine and we trust that it will be.  Once the judge grants approval then all of the final paper work will go in and finally we will have a birth certificate for our daughter and be able to get a real passport (we can get a temporary one if we need to) .  The birth certificate will allow us to baptize her which we are hoping to do sooner rather than later.

Nic and I are both excited to have everything moving forward and nearing an end.  It seems like this process goes on forever and ever.  It will nice to have it all done.

In other happy we news we also had a very nice visit last week with Gaby's birth family.  We have been seeing them pretty much monthly but this was the longest visit and was very nice.  As Gaby grows it seems that A has more interest in playing with her which is really great to see.  She is such a happy baby I think she is hard for anyone to resist ;).  We may not see them until later September now unless we can talk them into coming here for a visit.  We still talk regularly though which has been nice.  They really have become a part of our extended family and Nic and I love having them.