Final Homestudy

Thursday evening we met with our social worker for the final time. We had all of the documents we had been working to collect and handed them over to be included in the home study report. It has taken me a few days to get this post up because our conversation is a bit of a blur. I found it to be our most helpful meeting. I think this is because it overlapped with some of the books we’ve been reading most recently. We discussed having the referral reviewed by a specialist, bonding with our child, bringing our child home, sensory integration dysfunction, what special needs we’re willing to consider and many other things.

I want to comment specifically on the checklist that we did regarding the special needs we’d be willing to consider. While I understand the value of an activity that pushes you to think and define what you mean by “healthy”, this was an incredibly hard and uncomfortable task. And there has to be a better way than a checklist. I personally would rather have had space to respond in writing to each of the needs. It is such a strange feeling to check yes to this, no to that. Thanks to the blogging world, especially Lauri who has hosted some conversation on special needs, I have become more and more confident and comfortable with our limitations. We were also able to talk openly with our social worker about not only our limitations but also the awkwardness of the activity. She was very supportive and said that most people found it to be very difficult. I felt a need to qualify each of our answers. It is just incredibly hard to draw these lines knowing that ultimately “healthy” isn’t what is going to define our love for our child nor his/her need to be loved. But, I do think it is important for us as first time parents, as first time adoptive parents and in order for me to be able to stay home (financially) to be with our child, that we honestly look at our current limitations. We may not always have these same limitations, but ultimately this is where we are today.