Getting Ready: Meeting with Caseworker

We've all had physicals. Thankfully, Jas and I still do not have HIV...or syphillis...or TB. Phew, that was a close call.

We've filled out detailed info about our financial status. And made copies of tax returns.

We've been fingerprinted. Twice. Once for a state clearance. Once for a national (FBI) clearance. (Why the national doesn't cover the state stuff...I have no idea!)

Our caseworker is coming to our house tomorrow for our meeting. After that meeting she will then write up our homestudy.

This meeting is the deadline that I set for myself...to get started on our "Profile Book". I told myself that once we met with our caseworker and she got started on the homestudy...I would get started on that Profile book. I have to set deadlines like this for myself often, especially on tasks that I'm dreading.

Like this Profile Book.

The Profile book - for those not familiar with domestic adoptions (as I wasn't until very recently) - is the book that the adoption agency presents to birthmoms to aid them in selecting a family to parent their child. We will create our book and provide our agency with 20 copies, so that our agency's caseworkers all over the state can present our book to the birthmoms that they are working with.

How do you - in 20 pages - convey to someone that you would be great parents for their child?

How do you, in one page of that book (a.k.a. "The Dear Birthmom Letter"), express to a woman that is about to place her child for adoption how much you admire the excruciating and selfless choice she is making?

These may sound like rhetorical questions, but they really aren't...I really am dreading this and think it will be the most difficult project I've ever worked on.