Details on the Homestudy and the Process in General

We survived our home visit last week which means our homestudy is almost finished.

Just a refresher for those of you who are actually following the progress:  The home visit is an actual visit from our social worker to our home.  The home study is a loooooooog process of paperwork, fingerprints, financial and employment verification, medical forms and examinations, background checks, pictures, and I could go on and on and on.  Mostly, it's a lot of verifiable information that we are who we say we are.  Our social worker examines all of these documents, writes her review of our family and a recommendation, verifies that we completed required online courses and a workbook about international adoption, and probably a few other things that escape my mind at the moment.

The completed home study will become a part of a dossier with other items like our passport copies, certified and recently dated birth and marriage certificates, immigration and FBI information.  The dossier will then be authenticated by the US Government and sent to China where it will be translated and reviewed by their government.  We are hoping to have everything ready to send to China by July 1st.  Our goal for having our home study completed is May 1st.  Once our home study is complete and our dossier is close to being ready, Lifeline Children Services will begin sending us "referrals" (aka profiles on babes ages 0-3 who need a forever family).  Included in our home study is a medical conditions list that we carefully (thanks to Heidi) and prayerfully went through to determine which special needs we would be willing to consider.  Once we accept a referral we have 72 hours to have that paperwork reviewed by an international adoption pediatrician.  Thankfully that office is at MUSC - 15 minutes form here.  A pediatrician will review the file with us and explain everything there is to know about whatever special need is diagnosed in that child, what treatment is to be expected, and what complications could arise.  Following that step we then will determine carefully and prayerfully if she/he is to be ours and we are to be his/hers.

Things to think about throughout the Home Study process:

• Smoke detectors in the house (thanks Kenneth Grey)
• Prepare your imaginations for a barrage of "what if" questions about a child you have never met....
• Having clean closets, cupboards and drawers are not important at all BUT if your sweet hubby thinks they are then you get a lot of cleaning done with little complaint:) 
• Removing expectations on a child you have never met, who has lived in a manner you really cannot imagine - could not be more important in this process.  
• We are currently in the house shopping process and we anticipated our babe needing/wanting his/her own room.  WRONG.  She/he will be comfortable and used to sleeping and being around other people.  Sleeping in a space where she is along would very likely freak her out.  I'm certain she will sleep in our room for a while after we return and for as long as he/she needs. 

I could go on, but if you are considering adoption, the best preparation so far has been erasing all expectations we have about our babe - from our own heads and encouraging our family to do the same.  All we need her/him to be is what he/she already is.  All he/she needs us to be is people who love hi/her, support and make him/her feel secure. 

while we're on the topic, erasing expectations in general is usually a good idea.  Unless, of course, you are expecting God to be who He promises to be - the God who was, and is, and is to come.  We should expect nothing less.