It has been some time since I posted due to having jury duty. It has been years since I was summoned so I was very excited. I know it is weird but I like doing it, the whole process is interesting to me. I have also been busy trying to set up some fundraising opportunities for us. I will talk about those in a different post. Today I thought I would explain the birth mother letters that we will be making. When I mention them in casual conversations with people I always get a very confused look, so I am going to do my best. This letter is set up like a small brochure and printed in color on paper kind of like card stock. The front page will have a picture of us and a greeting thanking the Expecting mother (EM) for taking the time to get to know us a little and expressing our understanding of the difficult decision ahead of her. We will also have contact information for us;new email address, a toll free number, and our agencies info as well. The next few pages will have sections about our interests, our family, the type of community we live in, what we plan on trying to teach our child and how they will fit into our lives. We both also had to do a section about the other in our own words. This section talked about our character and what kinds of things each would do with our child like teaching them to play sports or reading  to them every night. Along with the text there will be a lot of pictures of us doing things we like and playing with our friends children. So I guess the short way to explain this is it is a brochure that is used to market us a the best parents for there child.

Work was definitely an understatement. We had paper work to fill out , finger printing to get done, medical check ups,  and complete a home study all before we could start our birth mother letters. You may be asking what a birth mother letter is, I will explain that at a later time. I guess I will start with the home study first. We were so blessed that we found a wonderful person in our area that was able to start this process ASAP. We scheduled to meet right after the start of the new year. At our first meeting she told us that we could move  as quickly or slowly as we wanted. We thought the faster the better so that meant we really had to get organized . The home study process was not bad at all. We had a meeting scheduled about every 10 to 12 days. We were scheduled to have 4 separate meetings to complete the home study. Many people have asked " what all is involved in a home study?", well they check the house, we both had to do an autobiography, medical check ups, and FBI/ state clearances/ finger prints. I know it sounds like a lot but my husband is very organized and stayed on top of it all.  I am happy to report that our home study was finished in about 8 weeks!!! This was just one more thing that we could mark off the long list of things we had to complete. As our "to do " list was getting smaller my anxiety started to increase some. I know it sounds weird but when we were busy I didn't have time to think so much about the waiting process.

Research and more research is what consumed my days off. What I found was there are a TON of options but it depended on what you were looking for. We ad already decided that a domestic adoption is what we wanted so that helped eliminate some options. The next thing we decided on was that we wanted a new born , so that knocked out more options. As a result this left us with a few options. After reading about each option we were stuck on 2 places. I spoke with a social worker with Lifeline and really liked her. The only issue we had was the possible 4 year waiting list. 4 years is a long time for us at the age of 37. Did I want to wait that long and just start my family at 41? The other place we found was The Independent Adoption Center with an office in Tucker Georgia. I remembered a friend from high school had gone down this road so we decided to contact him. They used the IAC in tucker and loved them. After a lot of conversation we decided that we would chose between these 2 options. We attended a free information seminar in the fall of 2014. At this seminar we learned abut their agency , the process of adopting, and the average wait times.  Let me tell you after all this information was thrown at me I couldn't think straight. We had to take several days to process all the information and we wanted to get the opinion of two very important people in our lives, my parents. Let me take a minute and say how thankful we are to have my parents and brother. The love, support, and encouragement they have given us is unbelievable and we can never thank them enough. I am so thankful to have their support because we have met others along the way that didn't have the same kind of support from their families. Even though my parents were very confused about this process and open adoption they were willing to learn and never stopped supporting us.
Ok, so now back to our decision. After much deliberation we chose IAC in Georgia for many reasons.  Our reasons were not only financial, but they only do newborn adoptions and also the wait time average was shorter. We contacted them and signed up for a 2 day education/ information seminar . Little did we know that the REAL work was about to begin.

After a short regrouping break again we started on our journey again. We decided that we really need to find out as much information as possible so we began asking around and talking to others that had adopted. Along the way we had a friend tell us about a young women that was pregnant and wanting to give up her baby. We were so excited and hoped that this could be our child. Could this really happen this fast and this easy? We began talking with her, met her , hanging out and going to dinner. She was very shy and hesitant at first as were we. I mean how to do talk to a complete stranger about giving up their child to be raised and loved by someone else. The longer and deeper involved we got with this young lady the more complicated her situation became. To make a very long story short she had other children taken away and DHR involvement and keeping this current baby wasn't even an option for her. The more conversations we had it became clear that she wasn't planing on terminating her parental rights and wanted someone to just "raise" her child and be able to come in and out of this child's life whenever. So after  4 months of involvement with her and excitement at maybe being parents , NOTHING! I was really beginning to realize that these stories of kids just falling in someone's lap were extremely few and far between.
We decided that we needed to look at all the options out there . Did we want to go through DHR and foster to adopt? What was the difference between using an agency or a consultant? Did we want to wait and see if we could find a young lady wanting to give up her child and do this all ourselves? What we learned was doing it alone is a lot of work and very hard. We went and spoke with our local DHR system and were not impressed at all. Plus the laws in Alabama much like others are put in place to try and reunite the biological families and don't really support the foster parents. In this state the biological parents or ANY family members has 22 months to get their act together or change their mind and come get their child back. Yes people I said 22 MONTHS!!! So what this means is that after completing a 10 week parenting program and having a child placed with us their family could come and take them back anytime within the next 2 years!  Are you kidding me, after we have raised, nurtured, feed and clothed this child. After we have been there in the middle of the night comforting, fixing scraped knees, taking care of them when they were sick, changing diapers getting no sleep, etc. No, no way was I going to do this. Yes it would be extremely less expensive but I knew that I could not emotionally do this. I would have been devastated if I had to give them back, so we said no to DHR. Since we said no we now had to figure out what agency we would be using. Time for a lot of research!!

Let's see where I left off... Oh yeah I remember now. After taking some time to ourselves and praying about what Gods plan was for us we felt pulled to adoption. After talking about it and to our family we decided that we were ready, oh boy we had no idea what this journey was going to be like.
Like most people who chose adoption and no nothing about it we became very overwhelmed very quickly. Where does one start looking for information? Who can you talk to about the process? What is all involved with adoption? What are the laws in our state? There were so many things running through our minds.  Lucky for us our friends and family have been a huge support system for us. We started looking for an agency online. After what we thought was a lot of research we began talking with a company whose home was located in California. I know what your thinking, why in the heck did we chose them right? Well we want to adopt an infant and believe it or not because of the length of adoption unless you find an agency that does infants only the child you receive could be a year old before you get them. So to make a very long story short they wanted money upfront and I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach about them, so back to square 1 again.

So our journey to start our new family began with a number of doctors appointments for myself. It was one of the most emotionally draining things I have ever done! I made my first appointment and went for a regular check up and we talked about having a baby at 35 then. We decided to start a round of Clomid. Clomid is a medication that helps increase estrogen levels and produce more fertile eggs. So I took the medication for a week and then we had try and conceive for a week. Then the waiting game began to see if my cycle would start or not. Well here's the problem, my cycle was already unpredictable, so who knows right. Well as you all can guess no luck that month , so on to next month. We did this crazy roller coaster of emotions/ excitement for 4MONTHS!!!!! Each time ending in the same result, a big fat NOTHING!!! We were devastated to say the least. At this point things came to a stop. I just couldn't take the roller coaster of emotions anymore. I was so angry with myself and even with God at this point. I began to doubt my ability to be a mother  and that maybe this was God's way of telling me I am not good enough to care for another human. I felt like I was letting everyone in my life down, my husband, who wanted so desperately to have a family, my parents, who wanted the joy of grand children, even our friends. I began asking why? I can remember when I was younger and asking my childhood oncologist if I was going to ever get married and have children, he said yes! So why was God punishing me now and not allowing me to have a child of my own? Why do drug addicted females get to reproduce over and over? Why do women how can't care for a child get to have as many as they want? Why are young teen girls allowed to have children when they are children still themselves? IT IS NOT FAIR!!!!! These were the things going through my mind all the time. It seemed like every where we went their was someone with a new baby, pregnant and ready to deliver or announcing that they were going to have a baby. REALLY??? When would it be my turn or would it ever be my turn for that kind of happiness , joy, and excitement. It seemed like I couldn't get away from it. It was seeping into ever area of my life especially at my job. At least 3 different people at that time became pregnant! Then just when I was angry enough I began to feel like a heel. It wasn't these other people's fault I was having problems getting pregnant, was was I so mad at them? That's when I realized I wasn't mad at them I was jealous of them. I wanted that feeling of excitement and wanted to hear all the congratulations they were getting. I was really happy for everyone deep down inside of me but I was hurting at the same time. It is a horrible feeling knowing in your heart that you would make a great parent and not being able to have that chance. I feel like people sometimes forget what a blessing children are and that they truly are a gift from God. I can promise you 1 thing, that is something I will never forget! Those that can have children will never understand what it's like to want something so badly and not be able to have it. I ask all that read or follow my blog to please say a prayer each night for those couples that are having fertility issues and that God will provide them with the strength to continue on their journey for their own family.

Hello we are Jennifer and Anthony wolf, and this blog is about the different aspects of our adoption journey. We are new to this and are learning as we go. The thought of adoption never crossed our minds when we got married 12 years ago. We like many other people dreamed of having a family of our own one day. We never set a time frame for when we would start our family but we weren't preventing it either. As the years went by and we became involved in work, school, and life in general we didn't give children much thought. It really wasn't until all of our friends started to have their first child and then soon their second that we really started to focus on our own little family. So begins our journey!