Every agency does things a little different, so this is just our experience with our agency.
When I commented on Facebook that Zane and I had spent a lame date night doing three hours of paperwork, I had a couple of comments about that seemed like a great date night. Let's just make it clear that the trying part when trying to have a baby is a lot more fun than paperwork, but of course as any couple knows that has tried for months on end with monthly failed pregnancy tests, the trying part can also get frustrating. The same can be said for paperwork. We filled out eight pages of answers to questions about our backgrounds, our likes and dislikes, our talents and achievements, our wants and dreams...all while trying to sound sincere but showing personality. Then we answered questions about our parents backgrounds, how they parented, our childhoods, and what we learned from our parents. Since Zane's childhood has some interesting parts to it, this got a little tricky. These followed with more questions about our marriage relationship, how we parent, info about our kids, and then our medical history specifically focusing on how we handle our infertility. After answering all those questions about ourselves, it was relief to get to easy questions about Zane's employment, our financial situation, description of our house, neighborhood, and a bunch of other questions that you usually keep private, but with adoptions, everything is an open book. You can imagine that it was a relief to be done with this document and we didn't want to look at it again for awhile!
And yet we were still not done. There is a bunch of smaller documents that were much easier to fill out and four reference letters to hand out with friends with cookies to help motivate them/say thank you for taking the time to answer a bunch of questions about us (they deserved the cookies!). We actually started this part in January and just turned it in so you can see it is like month after month of trying without success of a pregnancy. This part of the adoption though is less emotional since there is never hopes raised that there could be a baby coming. Instead you feel this thing constantly hanging over you knowing you can't bring another baby into your family until you finish answering all the questions!
Another part in preparation for our home study, is getting our fingerprints done. This really isn't a big deal except that it became a problem since the nearest place for us to get fingerprinted is 30 minutes away the opposite direction of Zane's work. I scheduled mine first, paid online and was in and out in five minutes and on my way home. When Zane scheduled his, something weird happened and his paperwork that he printed out didn't look like mine. He had an email confirming his appointment, but he never had the screen pop up asking if he wanted to pay online. He tried calling twice, but after being on hold for awhile, he gave up. When he went to his appointment, the lady didn't have any of his information that he had typed in. It wasn't a big deal though and she added it in. She then asked how Zane was going to pay since they didn't take credit card or cash. This was a surprise to Zane since he didn't have a check on him. After some discussion on what to do, Zane finally had to leave without getting fingerprinted. He couldn't go home and come back (wasting his entire morning) because you can't reschedule an appointment for the same day. Zane left very frustrated and went into work (driving an hour and a half to get there). In their defense, it says on the form that only check or money order were accepted. In Zane's defense, he didn't read the form since the morning of his appointment, he helped me get ready for preschool and I told him to just sign the paper. In my defense, I skimmed the form, but that part didn't pertain to me since I paid online and so I ignored it. Really it is the computer's fault since it never gave Zane the opportunity to pay online. The next week Zane was crazy busy with work and didn't have time to take two hours doing fingerprinting so he didn't reschedule until the next week. We had all the paper work done and ready to turn it except for this one part. I was pretty frustrated with the whole situation. Zane finally got in, was in and out in five minutes since he paid online, and then drove the long trek to work.
The first papers are turned in and our excitement is growing. Unfortunately though this is just another month of trying because we still have to be interviewed by our caseworker, physicals done, and more paper work to fill out. At least we have started and it didn't involve shots, ultrasounds, or blood being drawn like it would if Zane and I were really trying to get pregnant. So even with all the laborious paperwork and frustrations, I prefer this over the shots!
