A referral.... finally!

A lot is going on in the House of the Guerreros. 

Bubba and I are both busy with school trying to finish our degrees for a Spring graduation. together.

I'll be starting and internship in January and Jerry continues his full time bachelor's program, full time work and an additional class at Pierce College. So I guess that means he's actually going to school time and a half. 

I've been busy with the PTA and volunteering at Rowan's school while continuing everything around the house and doing my job for a blogger. 

However, I just got "laid off" from my work. It's a bummer, but not a huge deal it was only a few hours a week. And to be honest, it's probably all for good reason, as my internship will keep me busy on top of my other class I will be taking. 

It's been 2 months since we last received any type of referral. And then on Thursday, the 4th, our caseworker came over to the house for a scheduled meeting and once she left I checked my phone and we had received a referral. 

This referral was for a 3 year old girl, obviously from foster care, and she would need respite care for the weekend (starting the next day, Friday, at noon) and then would transition into the family if the weekend went well. 

Bubba and I talked about it that evening and that night when we went to sleep, I tossed and turned all night thinking about it. 

What do we do? 

We could make this work!

What if it's not a good fit?

I want to! This will be great!

What if it's terrible and she cries the whole weekend?

AAHHHH!! 

So many thoughts that went through my mind that I didn't get much sleep. 

The next day we schedule a time to talk to the child coordinator and we had a conference call with her at 9:30 a.m.

I had compiled a long list of questions. I asked them, but there isn't a lot of information known and even some of the things known weren't certain. 

We decided that this would be a risk we were willing to take.

After we got off the conference call we had about 5 minutes to make this decision. But we put in our homestudy, along with 4 other families, and hoped for the best. 

During this time I am imagining everything we need to do to prepare for this girl's homecoming. 

 convert crib to toddler bed

wait... first clean out room that has become storage!

find someone to conduct crafts at school event for me

clean out dresser for her clothes

do we have the right sized blankets?!

lastly, we will have a blast doing the gingerbread house tonight!

Then, an hour later, we got the notification that someone else was chosen. 

The highs and lows that come with this process is so much more then I thought would ever be. There are so many things that you don't think about until you are in the moment and living it. 

We will continue to wait (well, we have no choice!),  but we know that we haven't been chosen yet because those children were not meant to be ours. Ours will come... in the mean time I don't have to clean out the room.

Moving on.

I've been avoiding my blog for the fact that it's hard to relive our last referral. We weren't chosen. We weren't even picked for the top 3 to have a meet and greet. 

That was very hard for me. for us. I did quite a bit of crying and was upset for days. I didn't want to come on here and explain that we weren't chosen. It hurts.

After not being chosen, for yet another referral, we starting analyzing everything from ourselves to our profile books to timing in our lives. I can't say that we have stopped doing that completely, as we are still talking about redoing our profile books. 

Going through this process can be completely excruciating and come with horrid devastation. Along with the excitement of a new and promising referral where we tell everyone we know because we feel like this is the one - THIS IS IT!! - also comes the horrible task of telling everyone that we weren't chosen and reliving the moment of when we were told - nope, sorry, it's not you. 

We have mostly moved on from that last referral and we look forward to future ones. While being overwhelmed with how busy September has been for me, it's also been a blessing to help recover from that emotional experience. 

I had a talk with our case worker the other day when she called to check up on us and see how we were doing and she always makes sure that we are still living our lives, making plans and moving forward while we wait for our child. As I tell her that we aren't letting the referrals hold us back, I began thinking that yes, actually I am!

It's so challenging when I think of a future scenario of, perhaps me getting a job, but then I think well what happens if I get a job and then 2 weeks later we get a baby! What happens if I love my job and then we have a baby and it goes against our entire plan. The plan that we have made for our family as a whole or the plan that we have laid out in our profile books given to birth parents. So yes, I'm holding back. The adoption is difficult to navigate and to figure out what to do in life while you wait for something that you want so badly. 

We continue to make plans, attend night and weekend college classes, purchase event tickets, schedule vacations and such knowing that we need to not hold our breath, that God has plan that he hasn't filled us in on, but we need to trust it. We have to keep moving forward and when the time comes it's going to be right. It's going to what we have waited for and we will figure out life at that moment in time.

Adoption is real. Adoption is challenging. Adoption is worth the wait.

Hoping for a possible match.

Last Tuesday, July 29th, I received an email at 3:30 p.m.

This email said something along the lines of:

Hey, we haven't heard from you or Jerry about a referral that we sent you last week.

The deadline is 5 p.m. today. Are you interested?

I, of course, started to panic and wonder where this email was that I suppose to have gotten last week. I email back immediately and let them know that we have only just received this information and we haven't looked it over yet, but that we will immediately. 

I opened up all the documents and scanned them quickly.

Sometimes we can just scan them and we will know right away that it isn't a good fit for us.

After scanning and read some of the critical parts of a referral I am thinking that this is a good fit for us. 

I called Bubba at work-- he had received the referral, but only just today, not last week. 

He hadn't realized or read that far to know that they had to know by 5 p.m. that day!

Not having much time to read over the information being as he was working, he said he trusted me.

At this point we are both starting to get excited because it seems really great!

After getting off the phone I went back and read through all the documents thoroughly. 

I knew that we could not turn this down. 

We fit every single one of their desires for an adoptive family. 

And they fit all of ours! 

We knew that we had to say yes! 

I responded quickly with a YES! YES! Please submit our profile book. 

Bubba came home from work and we talked about it and we got really excited! 

The birthparents were going to pick up the profile books from the agency the next day, Wednesday. 

By Thursday evening, Bubba had come home from work and was sitting on the couch and says:

When are we going to hear something -- it's been FOREVER!

After explaining to him that it's only been one day since they had picked up the books, I knew how he felt. It's so hard to wait for something that is so excitingly life-changing! For something that we both want so bad and it's in the hands of someone else. 

After emailing our caseworker to find out if we would be given a phone call or an email, because Bubba was checking his email every 5 seconds, if we were chosen for a match meeting, we found out that there is no exact protocol, but that we would most likely get a phone call if we were chosen. 

It's now Wednesday, August 6th, and it's been a very long week. It's been very hard waiting and wondering if we will be chosen for this precious baby. 

As I first panicked when I saw that we only had an hour and a half to respond to the referral, I'm not glad that we didn't receive that email the week before. It would have felt like torture waiting TWO weeks for an answer. We hope that today is the day. We hope and pray that our phone rings today. That this is the beginning of our lives as a family of four. 

I thought it was The One.

There was another YES last month. In the middle of April. 

I thought it was THE ONE. 

I was so excited. 

It was just halfway through the first page that I knew that this was it. This one is meant for us and we are meant for them. 

After reading through all of the paperwork it was like there was nothing to talk about. It was an immediate YES! After checking with Bubba, because it was sooo obviously for us that I felt like we hardly had anything to discuss, i responded with a big YES!! We are in!! 

That was Friday afternoon. 

And then it was Easter weekend. Which I was so thankful for because it kept me busy from thinking about it constantly. Instead I just thought about it often. 

The deadline for submissions were Monday at 11 a.m. and I had hoped that we would hear back by Tuesday but figured that we would know if we were chosen for the top choices for an interview by Wednesday. Especially because her due date was only 2 weeks away. 

Tuesday came and went. 

Wednesday came. And we got THE EMAIL. The dreaded email that says someone else was chosen and that we weren't. 

Normally I would say something like "bummer," but this was a blow. a big blow. 

I had intentions of telling no one about this referral. Last time I told someone that we had said yes to a referral I had to go back and tell everyone that we weren't chosen. and that sucked. and made it that much harder. 

But I was so very excited and confident that we would at least be chosen for an interview or meeting with this couple that I couldn't contain my excitement and ended up telling a few people.Oops!

That also meant that I had to inform them that we weren't chosen. That sucked. Again. 

I'm learning through this process that it's a much bigger roller coaster than I thought it would be. It's more than what a person can imagine. When you visualize yourself going to a hospital and imaging a baby's face and you taking that baby home to love and then it doesn't happen. That's a blow that I could only imagine and the sadness is worse than I thought. 

I can't imagine having to physically go through a situation like that. Thankfully all of our situations have been hypothetical -- to a point. Real people. Real situations. But not physically chosen yet to then be denied at the hospital. Thankfully and hopefully that won't be us. 

After having a conversation with our caseworker, I feel a bit better about it. I "recovered" quicker with this one because we have only ever been told no. So I don't know what it feels like to get a yes. 

But like I said "All we need is one YES" just one. 

So I sit here and I don't think about it as much as I used to. The wait is still hard. It's still hard to see the crib set up in the old guest room that is now a nursery, but I'm getting used to it. 

I'm hoping, that just as I get used to that room being empty, that we will be taken by surprise and then BAM! we will have our new child! 

For now, I'll daydream about it while still moving forward!

Waiting.

Our lives right now are BUSY. 

We have so many things going on and it's really crazy between birthdays, Easter, graduation, school, tball, spring break, and so much more. 

Waiting is hard. When comes to waiting for your baby, it's harder. Although we have said yes to another referral and again we weren't picked, it's okay! Because it just means that baby wasn't for us. And we will continue to wait until our baby comes to us. 

Even though I'm totally stressed out and feel like I'm going crazy sometimes from everything that I need to do and am doing, I'm thankful for this busy time in our lives. January, February and March are USUALLY relatively slower months for us and it makes the waiting that much harder. But now, as I walk past the baby room a million times a day, I only stop and think about what is missing, half the time, instead of the usual 3/4 time. 

I will take this season in my life and enjoy it. And enjoy my daughter that I already have, who is full of love, laughter, dance, music and a big heart. 

Our first "yes" referral.

that's right. 

we finally had a referral that we said YES to. 

it was the day after christmas and we were on our way down to medford to have our family christmas at my mom's house with all my siblings, spouses and my nieces and nephews. 

it's about a 7 hour drive (depending on how many potty breaks you have take! and surprisingly, they are mostly for bubba, not rowan ha!) and we decided to stop in salem after about 3 - 3.5 hours and get some lunch and to find a park or somewhere for rowan to let our some energy. 

well when we pulled off i-5 i saw wunderland and thought.. HEY! we should totally stop there. i mean bubba and i used to have some serious house of the dead game playing there, after all. so of course he was down. off to wunderland we go and surprise!! they totally still had house of the dead. the original one that we used to play in high school! so awesome. 

after some butt-kicking in air hockey, skee ball and house of the dead we left wunderland and started to head over to subway for some lunch. i then proceed to check my email, duh, like an addict. waiting and waiting for an email. to my delight there was a referral sitting in my inbox. i say: hey bubba any chance you've checked your email? {he has totally read a referral before and didn't even tell me that we had gotten it!}

he hadn't, so i begin reading it out loud until he pulls it up on his phone. at this point rowan is in her car seat, buckled up and ready to go and we just sit there and keep reading. in the past, bubba will just stop reading once he reaches a part in the referral that he knows won't work for him. but he just kept reading. for the first time ever. and we both read all the many, many pages until it finally ended. and bubba said: well, i feel like just turning this car around right now. 

so then i knew he was saying yes to this referral.

we had rowan put on her headphones and turn on a movie while we discussed the situation. i had some concerns and questions and talked about it and decided to call our agency with our questions. 

they answered all our questions the best they could with the information given to them. 

we got off the phone and decided to head to subway to get our lunch. 

there we sat and discussed and talked about it over our sandwiches. 

this girl had to be picked up today. 

and we were 3 hours from tacoma.

we made another call to the agency with some more questions that we had. 

and after discussing it again, we said YES, put our name in the hat! we want this sweet girl!

so there we sat. in subway. 3 hours from home. 

waiting with this feeling of excitement from just saying YES for the first time to a referral. with wonder and nervousness -- this little girl could really be ours -- TODAY!! 

and we talked about the scenarios and how we would have to cancel our christmas plans with our family. and how would that make rowan feel? and oh my gosh! we would need to go and buy a car seat! 

all the thoughts, adrenaline, and fear that was rushing through me. 

it was so. hard. to. wait.

this girl could be ours. 

even though a judge could have ordered her to a relatives two weeks later, we didn't care. we felt that this sweet girl could be ours forever and ever. 

so we waited some more. at this point we decided to just wait in salem until we knew either way. we didn't want to drive back to tacoma to be told no and then drive back down to medford the next day. 

we didn't want to continue our trip to medford if we got a call saying, yes! come and get her!

so we waited. 

thankfully, my sister lives in salem and so we just stopped at her house and hung out and rowan played with her cousins.

but i was checking my email every 15 minutes. 

we ended up waiting for 5 hours before we got an answer. 

and unfortunately, another family was chosen. 

that was hard. it was hard for me, but i think it was harder on bubba. he really felt like this was the one for us. and he thought for sure that we would be chosen. the feelings were a bit rough.

i was thankful that we had plans and things to distract us afterwards.

we had a great 4 days down at my mom's and we were busy the whole time, so it was wonderful. 

but we know that we were told no for a reason. that our child is out there waiting for us. and that we will find our perfect match for us. 

it's good to know what to expect. to be able to experience the rejection and to know what to expect if we are turned down again. 

at this time, we continue to wait, pray and hope. 

our day is coming. :) 

How adoption works.

I've been asked a lot of questions about the process of adoption and how it all works; before, during and after. 

While, every agency and each person has their own experience, I like to tell it from our experience and how it works for us. 

We are "enrolled", for lack of a better word, in two programs at our agency. Our agency focuses on foster kids, but they also have a program for birthparents, called CHOICES. Which is when a birthmom decides to make an adoption plan. We have also chosen to take part in that. 

Basically, this is what happens:

we get an email with a referral. (based on our criteria)

in this email is all the information that the agency knows about this child. pages and pages of information, medical records and such. (sometimes these forms will be left pretty empty or can be missing important info if it wasn't provided by the birthparents)

at this point we read through all of the information and we decide if this is a child that we would accept.

we respond via email or a phone call with a yes or no. 

now at this point, if we say yes, it does not mean that we will get the child. it means that our name is put into a hat with all of the other people who received the same referral and also said yes. 

and then we wait. 

for a go ahead or a "sorry another family was chosen" email. 

Here's the run down on each program: 

Foster care: 

this is our agency's main focus.

additional training, guidelines and laws are required for this option. 

our home is a certified foster home with a license and everything.
these children can come in any age range.

when getting a referral for a child in foster care, it can be risky. more risky than being picked or placed with a child at birth from which a birthmom chose us. 

this is usually for legal reasons and/or the fact that the child is not legally free. 

foster children are in foster care for a reason. there may be more challenges and issues to work through physically and/or mentally. 

CHOICES program: 

this is where birthmoms come and make an adoption plan and get counseling and advice from the agency.
the majority of these children will not have been born or will be newborns.

there are different situations in which this process could work: 

a birthmom or parents will choose us by looking at our profile book.(they could pick many families and then have interviews with them) 

an agency worker could make the decision if the birthmom doesn't want to.

Now, unfortunately a lot of these referrals and this whole process can and/or will feel like a business transaction. 
i know.. it's horrible. but it's how it is done. and whether we like how it's done or not, it's got to be done. 

once we get a referral we get to choose if we say YES or NO to a referral.
this is for either program. 
once we see the file we decide if we want to put our name in the hat. 

some factors that may play a role in a decision: 
age
medical needs 
involvement of birthparents
history of child
location of child
and more.

right now we get to sit and wait for the right child for us. for the perfect match. 

but once we do get placed with our child, circumstances can vary depending on each situation. 

for example, if the child is coming from foster care we may have to do bi-weekly/weekly/monthly visits with the birthparents.
there will also most likely be court dates and possible appearances.
depending on the situation a judge could order a child to live with other family members or relatives.
it also takes a lot longer for a child to be legally ours, once they are in the foster care system. it can take up to 2 years once placed with us.

if a child comes from the CHOICES program then finalizing an adoption usually happens pretty fast, from a few weeks to a couple of months.


once a child is placed with us and we have finalized the adoption that child is all ours! :) 
legality wise - it will be like i pushed that baby out myself. 
and then we live happily ever after.... 

Some questions that have been asked:

can a parent take a child back? 
no. once the child is legally free the birthparents cannot take a child back. 

do we get to name the child? 
well if coming from foster care, that child will already have a name. 
if we want to change their name, we would have to wait until the adoption was finalized and the child is legally ours. and then file for a name change.
if coming from the CHOICES program, the birthmom may or may not have named the child, but the odds lean more towards us being able to choose the name.

how long until you get a baby? 
we don't know. we have mentally TRIED to prepare ourselves to wait. 
being as our age range is so young 0-2, we could wait longer. 
an average wait is about 9 months. 
but we could wait for 2 years. 
i sure hope not though. rowan is already saving stuff to give to her future brother or sister. {like her sticker she got from the dr. the other day. :) }

can you get a call/email and get the baby the same day? 
yes! we could!


whew.. i feel like i included quite a bit of information, yet i feel like i'm missing so much more! there is a lot of steps and information that is involved in this whole process. 
but hopefully this helps to explain how it all works and to answer some of these questions that i get asked all the time.