Adoption

One aspect of our journey that I haven't mentioned previously is that we are currently looking at adopting a nine year old, should she become available. In the interests of privacy, I'll keep the details minimal for the time being, but S has been in the foster system for a number of years. Her mom will regain custody in August but will essentially be on probation for the time being with close monitoring by the case worker.

Derek and I started thinking about adopting S last December. We've spent a lot of time with her and see her potential (every kid has a lot of potential, in our opinion) and have decided that should things not work out with her mom - this is mom's last chance - we would like to adopt her. To do this, we need to be approved to adopt by the Province of Alberta. This process consists of an initial application, criminal records checks, references, training, interviews and a written report. So far, we have submitted the application, completed our records checks, and our reference paperwork has gone out for completion. We have also lined up our training, which will take place over an evening session, three Saturday sessions, and a Sunday session in August and September, after which our interviews with the case worker start. The original timeline given to us to go through the approval process was six months, and it seems we might finish slightly faster.

We have indicated that should this adoption fall through (which is, obviously, the best case scenario for S, who should be with her mom, if mom can parent successfully) that we may be interested in adopting another child or children. We are unlikely to be able to adopt an infant, which I think we're ok with, and all kids in the public system have some sort of special circumstance, from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to emotional issues, though we can chose the issues we are willing to work with or not. We would be provided with a lot of support from the public system to help us succeed, which is important to us. This option, however, is still in the distance for us, though it's nice to get this process started now.

That said, we will still be doing our FET in November-ish. Lately I've been a bit depressed about the whole infertility thing, but at the same time, I feel as though I don't want to do any additional IVF's. I'm on the fence, as usual. I'm glad to have the adoption stuff to look forward to!