We are experiencing a rather short matching process. All of the families that we have met that were in situations like ours waited about 4 months between the time that their homestudy was finished until they received kids in their home. Some people wait over a year for infants and the average matching time is probably between 6 months and a year. Even the 4 months that we were expecting seems like a really short period of time because of the stuff leading up to this (including finding the right agency) adds up to about a year and a half where things moved very slowly. It has been about 2 months since our homestudy was completed.
Last week, we were offered a disclosure meeting with the girls’ social worker for this Thursday. We will be able to ask any question about their history and see all of the documents that the county has on them. We actually have a leg up on most people going into this meeting. We know a lot about the girls and we got to meet them and their social worker, which is rarely the case.
The other dynamic is that fost-adopt parents typically go through a lot of scrutiny. We went through months and months of rigorous screening, which was challenging and even a little demoralizing. If one hasn’t gotten a lot of feedback from the kids’ social worker, one may be pretty nervous. I don’t think that we are all that nervous. Meeting the social worker and her reaching out to us really helped. As is typically the case, we were offered this meeting because the social worker has already decided it is a good match based on the extensive homestudy and contact with our social worker. This is really our opportunity to give the final thumbs up and make logistical decisions about how to move forward.
Of course, it was thrilling to be offered a disclosure meeting. Throughout the process of making the decision to move forward with the girls, I really began to see that I couldn’t imagine a better match for us. As I continue this story, I also just want to say very clearly: these girls couldn’t come soon enough for us. We are so ready to be parents and to have these lovely girls be in our family.
A “normal” transition time is 4-6 weeks. Typically there are at least 3 visits, starting with a short visit at their current foster home and ending with an overnight at our house. The original timeline that we had discussed with their social worker was a disclosure meeting in mid October and a “normal” transition period. We were looking at maybe having the girls by Thanksgiving.
So, here is the twist. We got a somewhat cryptic message saying only that something has come up that shows the girls may need a faster transition than expected. The message was cryptic for a couple of reasons. First of all, we literally have all of our communication like a game of telephone, with our social worker in the middle. These girls basically have a team of people on their case, including two social workers and their foster parent. Complicating this, our social worker only seems to have 1 or two work days in common with their social worker, so if they happen to be working on different things and can’t communicate directly, we can definitely see a week go by without a lot happening. Finally, I think by definition, county social workers are putting out fires and doing a little fire prevention along the way. We have experienced before, that their is hint that something may be about to happen, they get everyone ready in case it happens (don’t get me wrong, it is nice to have some warning if it is going to happen).
Before this info came our way, we were operating at a comfortable level of excitement and anticipation. After the message, I kinda freaked. I mean, if a normal transition is as short as 4 weeks, will they need a shorter transition than that. Or was she referring back to our conversation about having the girls for Thanksgiving?
It is not made any easier by the fact that I want everything to be perfect and I am not doing things the easy way. Instead of buying cheap and simple bunkbeds at Ikea, I got fixated on doing a really cool castle themed bed. This has involved renting a truck to pick them up, painting them in several colors and facing the daunting task of reassembling them. My friend B- said that I am acting like all of the women that she has seen that are 8 1/2 months pregnant, I have been really productive, but also operating at a level of stress and sleep deprivation that isn’t really sustainable. I am getting up in the middle of the night to add things to my list or remembering ideas that we had 6 months ago and have since forgotten. There just seems like so much to do and adding in a few visits to the girls, who live about 1.5 hours away, it just seemed impossible.
Luckily, so many people have offered to help over the last 6 months and so many people are excited about our kids that I have been really good about calling in favors. People have taken over a few major things have left my to do list over the last 24 hours and now it is more of a management project than actually having to do it all myself. It also been good to remind myself that we will not be expected to take the girls with us on Thursday after the disclosure meeting…we probably will have some breathing room.
