American Adoptions -- America's Adoption Agency
1.800.ADOPTION
My AccountContact Us
American Adoptions Message Board
Note to posters: The American Adoptions Forum is aimed at providing a fun, informative and supportive online community for waiting families, birth mothers, adoptees and others who are interested in chatting about adoption. Negative posts, including those aimed at any adoption agency or other posters, will not be tolerated and will be removed.
In an effort to reduce spam messages posted to the American Adoptions' message board, we now require that our members log in with a registered account to post messages. We thank you for helping make the American Adoptions' online message board community a better place for all!
BOARD: Topics of Interest for Adoptive Families » Other Topics for Adoptive Parents
TOPIC: Waiting couples wanting to chat with each other
| Messages are owned by the posters. American Adoptions are not responsible for their contents. | |||
| Posted By | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Kerri | Posted: Sep 20, 2005 01:59:10 PM Hey Girls, It is so good to hear about all that is going on with you all! Just stay busy and you will get that phone call when you least expect it! If any of you want to chat personally, our story is on the website with our email address . I check it everyday.... I am just not sure how often this chat room is updated! I don't know if I have mentioned this book...... it is by Karen Kingsbury~ Journey of Adoption Miracles. It is so great...... very inspiring and just makes your heart smile! I look forward to hearing from you all soon! Smiles, Kerri | ||
| Wendy | Posted: Sep 20, 2005 08:50:04 AM Just had a thought and wanted to share. Would any of you be interested in meeting in a different place, like a yahoo group etc? Would there be a reason that this would not be a good idea? I was just thinking how great it would be if we had a place that would be private that we could share photos, info etc. We could continue to keep in touch and support each other through the waiting and even after we receive our little miracles. I don't know anything about starting a group like this, but if anyone is interested I would be willing to try to get something started. If other people besides the ones that have posted in this catagory on the forum wanted to join they could send one of us a request to be approved to join. Any thoughts? God bless Wendy | ||
| Heather | Posted: Sep 16, 2005 11:15:04 PM I don't understand why the posting has slowed down so much. I hope they continue this. I miss hearing from all of you. | ||
| Wendy | Posted: Sep 13, 2005 06:52:19 PM Dawna, I was just thinking of you today and wondering how things are going with your match. Did you get to meet/speak with your birthmommy yet? Please let us know how you are doing. Love and prayers Wendy | ||
| Nicole | Posted: Sep 13, 2005 01:15:23 PM Hi everybody - hope you are all doing fine! Seems like everybody is very busy at the moment since there are no recent messages....Well, I have news: we are activated and thrilled about it!!! Our profile will be in the net in a few more days (Thomas and Nicole). Hope that none of you was affected by Katrina - it is truly terrible. We also had very bad floods here in Switzerland (not in all parts) and several people died, but things are more or less in control again. So now, we are keeping our fingers crossed for all of us for a match in the hopefully not too distant future :-) Take care Nicole | ||
| Dawna | Posted: Sep 03, 2005 03:17:44 PM Hello Ladies! Just touching base again ~ perhaps to offer some hope for you all. We have taken a much needed vacation to Europe, and while we were there we had a conference call with our sweet birthmom. The outcome, you ask? "It's a boy!" We are just thrilled to know it before hand ~ now our little guy will have some blue clothes to go along with all the yellow and green! I wanted to say something about all the paperwork you have all completed. We were in the mindframe that we had completed ALL the paperwork when we became active, too. Boy, were we in for a surprise!!!! We were really only about 1/3 of the way done with paperwork at that point. Just giving you a heads up that more will be required, and some in a relatively short amount of time, as time can be of the essence. Just be ready for anything! I, too, visit the chat quite often, even though we have a match. I did it daily before our match ~ hyperfocusing on the adoption and hoping for a connection. It is really encouraging to see other families with "Congrats" on their profiles, and I just know you all will have your hearts' desires soon as well. Keep encouraging each other! Wish you All the best! | ||
| Heather | Posted: Aug 26, 2005 09:08:10 PM Mauri, I love checking this chat board too! I look forward to reading new comments and just really enjoy trying to connect with others who are woking with the same adoption agency. It's great talking to others who have that in common and we can all support each other. I found the beginning of our wait tough. More tough than now. I think it was in part because I was freeing myself up from the idea of becoming pregnant and then thinking it could happen instantly, like you read in some cases. Lots of emotions! I will admit though, that now I am starting to think, "Okay, we've waited 10 months, we're in the 9 to 18 month ave. wait time....so it could...should...happen soon?" (I know better, but it happens at times...) Keep talking and hopefully we'll meet some more people through this. | ||
| Wendy | Posted: Aug 25, 2005 10:24:35 PM Tracy, I think it took us about eight weeks from the time our homestudy was finished until we were active. We were in the middle of building our home and moving, so that was a very relaxed approach. We had sent everything in much before that but AA had to get a few paperwork issues taken care of. A couple of our references had not dated their letters, so we had to get them sent back for dates. I think the other thing was that in our state criminal records are not released we had to get our homestudy agency to write a letter regarding that. Just cover all your bases with all the paperwork and it should move quickly. All the best to you!! Wendy | ||
| Wendy | Posted: Aug 25, 2005 10:20:05 PM Mauri, We are Elson and Wendy, so you can take a look : ) I think most of us go through what you are feeling at some time or the other. For me personally I had a much harder time with the wait initially. Especially when I was doing the paperwork - it was on my mind all the time. It was five months for us this week and I can honestly say that I don't think about it more than several times a day now and there are times I don't think about it at all. I am addicted to checking the web site though : ) I just like to see that things are moving. I will be thinking of you and hoping that you can enjoy this time with your friends, knowing your time will come - hopefully soon!!! Wendy | ||
| Heather | Posted: Aug 24, 2005 08:41:21 PM I wrote a note that has not been posted yet and was just wondering if things are still getting posted or if there is a problem? | ||
| Mauri | Posted: Aug 18, 2005 09:12:51 PM Wendy, thank you so much! That was sweet. What is your husband's name-I'll have to look at your profile, I am sure it is beautiful as well. It IS cool to see the finished project online. I haven't been doing so well lately girls, it's been almost a month now, and I prepared myself well I thought-to not think about it and throw myself back into work. But it is so hard not to think about it. I get really frustrated because I have 4 friends that are pregnant right now, and one that just had a baby. I feel sorry for myself and then I feel guilty for being upset that all my friends are having babies. I am happy for them of course, I guess it is just jealousy, they get to plan and have baby showers. They know when they get to bring their baby home. I need to get out of this rut of thinking about it all the time. It helped me to come back to this site and re-read everything we have all talked about. So please keep talking, and thanks for the support. Tracy, good luck to you! It depends on a lot of factors of course, but once our home study was done I started our profile, then I think it was about 6 weeks later we were active. I would go ahead and be working on everything else to have it all done so that it is all done when your home study is done. I wish I wouldn't have waited to do our profile. I was procrastinating because i knew it would be hard. Any other questions let us know. You all have a FABULOUS day! Mauri | ||
| Heather | Posted: Aug 17, 2005 07:44:35 PM Mauri, Welcome to the activated list! It was fun seeing your profile! Our latest news is that we have updated all of our clearances and are in the process of having our homestudy renewed. (I will admit that is a little bit of a bummer, just because I think we thought everything would happen a lot quicker....) I am learning a lot though and now I will just plan on everything probably needing to be renewed one more time before we get a baby and have everything finalized. Just a thought for anyone who may need to do this too - - - have your Dr. fill out the physical forms when you go for your yearly physical, so you don't have to pay the extra paperwork fee, if that would pertain to you.... I didn't think to do that with myself or my daughter, so we had to pay extra. | ||
| Tracy | Posted: Aug 06, 2005 05:04:58 PM I was just wondering if anyone could tell me how long it took from the time the homestudy was complete to be activated into the program.? I also read that they would not except families into the program that exceeded the amount of birth mothers. Has anyone actually been turned down? | ||
| Wendy | Posted: Aug 03, 2005 08:38:08 PM Mauri, Just have to say that you all have a beautiful profile. Isn't it fun to FINALLY see it online!! I thought it was a lot of fun to see all our hard work come together. I feel the same way you do about there being a child that God has for us whether it happens soon or much, much later. It might be harder to say several months from now, but so far it has been a very comforting thing to hold on to. Even with the possibliltiy of going through a failed match I am hoping that I can rest in that. God bless you in your journey!! Wendy | ||
| Heather | Posted: Jul 31, 2005 05:06:15 PM Hi Ladies! It is so much fun to have a few people to check in with and see if we have any new people.....I love hearing about the ideas everyone has...Natalie, when we first started looking for agencies, we had a small box full of info. on all kinds of places. It came to a point when we just had to decide. I think there were 3 or 4 we would have been comfortable with. If you are comparing, ask agencies for a list of references - people who have adopted through the agency. I called several couples for a couple different agencies - I was worried about the scam thing too. Call Better Business Bureau, I did that too. etc. Mauri, congrats on becoming active. I know I enjoyed the peace of getting past all the paperwork, I felt like "there, we've done our part - now it is out of our control". I would love to hear other books people have found truly interesting and helpful. I purchased the book Steven Curtis Chapman wrote, but it is based on international adoption. I would love to get one for the baby that fits our situation more. I subscribe to Adoptive Families Magazine. Again, there's a lot on international adoption, but I have read some really good articles in there that apply too. Dawna, thanks for sharing about your ideas on birth announcements. I would love to hear more as people find them. What does everyone think they'll do about the time frame to send them. I guess it would be wise to wait until the time period is up for birthmothers to change their minds....the same maybe for babyshowers too, etc.???? That could be tough though, especially for first time parents or parents who do not have all the baby stuff. I know we will definetly wait til we have the baby at home before there are any parties, but I don't know for how long??? | ||
| Kerri | Posted: Jul 29, 2005 07:54:25 PM Hey Girls, Hope everyone is having a happy day! Just wanted to share what our announcement said....... we thought it was very very sweet and appropriate: Welcome tiny angel sent to bless here on earth... We felt a touch of Heaven from the moment of your birth. Hope you all have a great and fun weekend!! Kerri | ||
| Dawna | Posted: Jul 28, 2005 02:15:32 AM Hello all! I thought I would share a quote with you with regards to baby announcements. I found one this morning that says "Tiny Soul so Sweet and New, The World was Waiting Just for You." This fits us so well, as I have often said that each of us will parent the sweet souls that God means for us to parent. We, too, will likely make our own announcements...kind of a family project to introduce our little gift..."It is with deepest joy, gratitude and love for our birth mom, that we happily announce the arrival of [baby's name]." Have a great week, Ladies! Dawna | ||
| Kerri | Posted: Jul 27, 2005 05:29:26 PM Hey Girls, CONGRATULATIONS DAWANA!!! What an awesome experience that you are getting ready to embark on! The match period drove me crazy..... in a good kind of way. When we were matched on June 21st.......... it seemed like forever before July would be here. :) I can't believe that Madison is a year old!!! I cried and cried on her birthday....... happy tears of course. It just brought back so many sweet and precious memories. I remember telling David, this time last year we were seeing her for the first time.... etc. All I can say is treasure every moment.......... the waiting, the match period, the birth, coming home and getting no sleep :), etc. It just goes by WAY too fast! I am praying for you all and just want you to know that God will have the perfect baby for you in His time!!!! Smiles and hugs! Kerri | ||
| Wendy | Posted: Jul 25, 2005 06:20:20 PM Hello - Hope this finds everyone doing great. Heather thanks for sharing how you are doing with the wait. I normally haven't been having an issue with it but I was the week I asked you that question. I finally figured out why. A friend of mine had sent me a picture of her newborn and he was truly one of the most beautiful babies I had ever seen. I propped it up in my kitchen thinking this was a good idea. I finally realized that everytime I saw the picture it was making me think about the adoption to much. I took it down and now I am back to me old self again. Natalie- This is our first adoption so I cannot answer the question about an adoption through another agency. What I can tell you though is that I was very skeptical and American Adoptions has gone way beyond anything I could have imagined in an agency. We live in a different state also and it works fine you just have to get a local agency to do a homestudy for you (although I think AA has contacts in other states besides KS, ours just wasn't one of them). Our homestudy agency was very nice, but nothing compared to the service we have received with AA. Hopefully some of the other girls that have more agency experience will also respond to your question. Mauri- Congratulations on becoming active. It is such an exciting place to be. We have been active four months now and it has been really nice to be done with all the paperwork for now. Wishing you a fast adoption!!! Wendy | ||
| Mauri (aka MK) | Posted: Jul 24, 2005 11:37:37 PM Hi girls! Hope everyone is doing well. Dawna congratulations on your match! I hope everything goes well for you and I will pray for a successful process! that is so exciting. I can't wait till that phone call. Of course I keep telling myself that God has a plan, if it doesn't happen quickly it is okay, there is a baby out there somewhere that will need us someday and we will be there with open arms. We have no control over things now, it is all in God's hands. We celebrated this weekend our last step of becoming active! What a relief, we received the activation agreement Thursday, I immediately printed it out, read it, we signed it, had it notarized and wrote that big fat check to AA and mailed it the same day! We should be active this week. Someone mentioned how they have a list of projects to do to keep busy--I think that is fabulous. I am throwing myself back into work to keep me busy, and have started reading more. I bought some books on adoption today-and actually one for our future child called "Why I Chose You". It is so great-I cried while I read it, and smiled a lot. I must say I have noticed a lot of new families on the website and a lot of turnover and recent adoptions-which really excites me! I pray that we all can wait patiently for our matches. Just keep thinking positive thoughts!! Take care all, keep writing with any updates. Mauri | ||
| Dawna | Posted: Jul 24, 2005 04:26:30 PM Thanks for the words of encouragement! Our sweet little mom is due in November, so we get to "expect" for a few months and lift her in prayer daily. That will give me ample time to nag Jan about picking a name! Ha! We will have phone and email contact and hopefully will be able to meet before the big day. It will be nice to hug her and let her know how much she is cared for and appreciated. We are just thrilled! I have to say, too, that Laurie and Alli are just fantastic ladies to work with....very helpful and encouraging. And, welcome aboard Nicole! Like you, we are an "international family" in that our little one will live in the States and in Scandanavia....the best of both worlds. Don't let the paperwork scare you off...it is typically American legal process by the reams, and will be very worth the effort. Heather, it WILL happen....just keep looking up. I will keep checking in, as I find all your support and encouragement very uplifting. Have a great week! Dawna | ||
| Natalie | Posted: Jul 22, 2005 12:17:18 PM Hello, I am shopping around for adoption agencies. Has anyone in this group ever used another agency besides American Adoptions? How do they compare with the other agency you used? One more question, sorry, how does it work if you live in a state other than KS? For example, I live in IN. Would I ever see someone from American Adoptions or would it all be via the mail and phone? I guess I am just worried about getting scammed. Thanks for answering my questions. I appreciate it. | ||
| Heather | Posted: Jul 19, 2005 07:11:17 PM Nicole, welcome to our chat! Keep us posted on when you become active! We'd love to get to know you better. | ||
| Nicole | Posted: Jul 19, 2005 10:53:33 AM Hello Ladies, Me and my husband are not activated yet...but we are confident that we will be within the next couple of months - we live in Switzerland and are getting our homestudy done over here and it sure takes time, especially now when everybody seems to be on vacation! But we know that we have a (long or short) wonderful journey ahead of us and we can't wait for IT to happen! I am also one of the anxious ones surfing the AA homepage daily, it's like an addiction :-) I am glad that I found your group! Have a great day and I'll keep in touch - Nicole | ||
