Our Home Visits

In September we began our home visits. Our worker came to our home at 3 different times over three consecutive weeks to interview us. The visits went well but it was nerve wrecking. (Note: each agency is different, some may require fewer home visits, but the information below is specific to our agency)

Visit #1
Our worker asked us general questions. Mostly about our family background and clarifying anything that she had questions about on our application. She wanted to know how we came to the decision to adopt, etc. It lasted over 2 hours. Mostly because of my talkative husband ☺ He was indeed in his wheelhouse. This visit was a little painful because we ended up discussing my parents quite a bit and I was not ready for this discussion or the feelings that came afterward. I realized just how much of our lives were devoted to them. I would certainly do it all over again, but our worker was just in awe over the stories we told her about that time in our lives.

Visit #2
This visit I just knew I blew it! I did not feel well so I wasn’t exactly Mrs. Bright and Cheery. This was the visit where she had to speak to us individually. Although it wasn’t bad in hindsight. At the time it felt like we were suspects in a crime and they had to separate us to see if our stories checked out. Before our individual interviews we had to complete a questionnaire about ourselves, our upbringing and each other. Something like, how would you describe your spouse? How often do you argue? How do you handle conflict? These were all multiple choice, which made it easier, but it was still difficult, wondering if our answers would disqualify us. In our individual interviews she asked similar questions to those on the questionnaire but asked us more about each other and ourselves. Ted did his interview first. Big mistake. He talked for well over an hour. I think it was close to two. She laughed and laughed and laughed. Of course I was trying to keep myself busy and trying not to eavesdrop. I was unsuccessful at both. My interview lasted 30 or 40 minutes. I answered what was asked. That was it. I didn’t want to mess up so I didn’t elaborate unless I had to. Finally it was over and I could breathe.

Visit #3
At our last home visit we were excited to get through this and get it done. One of our first questions to her was how were things going. How were we looking? She assured us that if there were any problems we would know by now. With this visit she clarified more things from our application. It was pretty easy. She asked about our care plans (day care, school, etc.), about our finances for the adoption, and the type of people who would be around the baby. She also verified information provided by our references. It pays to be honest because if we weren’t, these people would know. They really should work for politicians ☺. Our worker told us of potential birthmothers that would be due in the coming months. The one question that got us really excited was, “have you started your registries?” We were like “huh?” No we hadn’t at that time. We weren’t thinking about that yet. There was so much to do during this process that fun stuff like registries sort of slipped our mind. Our meeting ended on a very friendly and hopeful note. She told us that she never laughed so much at her home visits as she had with ours. She assured us that this was a good thing. Whew!

So that was Sept. 28. We celebrated by going to Target to start one of our registries. Which we now need to revise because we had no idea what we were doing. The next day we went to Babies R Us and registered there too. But again we were clueless. We did not accomplish much, but we enjoyed each other and the excitement. More to come…