Another Adoption in the Books

After 769 days in foster care, he is officially ours!  Yesterday was the day I have been waiting for for over 2 years now. This beautiful little boy came to us on Dec 1, 2016 and has brought so much joy to our lives every since. There were several times over the past year that I wasn’t sure if this day would ever come.

A few months after we signed paperwork stating our intent to adopt, my husband and I decided to separate. Ok, I decided to separate, he had no choice. I talked to our adoption worker, who had done our 2 previous adoptions, and she assured me that the separation would not be a problem in the adoption. My husband and I both still wanted to adopt together so it should be business as usual. So we started the adoption journey and agreed to hold off on any divorce proceedings until the adoption was done. That was in March, 2018.  Fast forward to the end of September, I get a call from the adoption caseworker which should be to tell me that the file is being sent back to our attorney and ready to set it for a court date.  Instead, it was one of the most devastating phone calls to date.  Our file was at the last place for approval before court and they rejected it. Even typing that word "rejected" tears at my heart.  They said we could not adopt together if we were separated.  Our only options were to have my husband move back in and refile all the paperwork to reflect that change or one of us would have to adopt as a single person and then do a separate adoption after that where we both adopt together.  The latter of the two seemed like the only viable option but when I called my husband and told him the news, it was clear that deciding who would adopt first was going to be an issue.  He blamed me for the whole thing falling apart.  "You couldn't just wait for the adoption to be over to separate?"

After a month and several attempts to sit down and come to an agreement with regard to the adoption, I was had called the adoption worker and left a message to tell her to just start the paperwork in my name alone since we could not come to an agreement and my husband was not willing to sit down and talk about it anymore.  She called me back the next morning and said that she had gotten word from her supervisor that the adoption had been approved after all.  And just like that, two months later, we were in court adopting our little boy.

Now on to the next challenge, settling the divorce.