How & When Our Journey Began

Our parenting journey began in December of 2008 over the Holidays. We began talking more seriously about growing our family and how we wanted to go about doing that. The options we discussed were; another round of artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation, surrogate mother or adoption. It did not take us long to come to the conclusion that Adoption would be the best option for us to grow our forever family.

Over the break we began our research by first calling Joyce & Ruben (Norys' God Parents) who adopted a beautiful little boy, Brandon. They gave us wonderful advice and sent us some reading material to get us started.

Next Norys did what she always does when learning something new, she "Googled it!" One of the most informative resources found was Open Path. We signed-up for this 6 week informational/support group which allowed us to better equip ourselves with the knowledge to make informed decisions regarding our adoption choices. We refer to it as our Adoption 101 class. In that class we met some wonderful people, which we hope will become lifelong friends. These are people we were able to share our inner most thoughts and feelings openly with and visa versa.

For us, this was an incredible class as each week we learned more and more about adoption and our options. The two choices we are most interested in are Foster Adopt and Open Adoption. On one hand there are children forced into Foster care and are in dire need of a permanent home. On the other hand there are birth parents looking for a loving family to parent their child. If we choose Open Adoption we would not only be gaining a child but would be gaining an extended family. In both cases we would be the lucky parents to a beautiful child/children.

All of the classes were very informative and Lisa (Class Facilitator) was great at making sure each week we went home talking about what we learned from our information packed classes. Some classes were heart wrenching and made us feel for the birth parents and their difficult and selfless choice to place the child they love for adoption. In other classes our heart went out to the children forced into Foster Care making our decision challenging as both options have something positive to offer us.

With all of the research including our Adoption 101 class we were led to Adoptive Families Magazine. We found it is filled with lots of information including the annual guide, which helped us to develop our adoption plan and determine next steps. Bobby is utilizing the budget planner to ensure we make not only good emotional decisions but also good financial decisions.

So where are we in our journey today? Well, our final Adoption 101 class takes place this Friday. We have learned so much from this class and feel we are armed with the appropriate information to choose the right agency for us to work with no matter which option we choose.

We have been to three different agencies thus far and have plans to visit a 4th:

* Independent Adoption Center (IAC)
* Black Adoption & Research
* Kinship Center- so far we are leaning towards this agency
* Family Builders - We visit this one on April 3rd


Come see us again as we will continue to give updates along our journey into parenthood. :-)