It's official! We're a "Waiting Family!"

Hi everyone!
Just thought I'd drop an update on where we're at. We are officially considered a "Waiting Family" on Adoption Associates of Iowa's website (our home study agency)!! Our profile is now public! Here is the website (click on Scott & Andrea):

https://adoptionsiowa.com/waiting-families/

This means that birth moms all over the country can view our profile and contact our home study agency if they are interested in talking to us and considering us for adopting their child. The home study agency doesn't do any kind of advertising to find birth parents, like adoption agencies do (so it's much less expensive to adopt through their agency)--it's all word of mouth. Oftentimes, attorneys will refer birth moms to the agency, or birth moms who have worked with them for prior adoptions will contact them for another adoption.

It's customary for birth parents to consider multiple families at once, and we can choose whether or not the situation is a good fit for us, so this process could take a while. Chrys, our home study agency social worker, said to be prepared to wait 1-2 years (2 years is the national average) for a successful placement. We could be chosen as adoptive parents anytime between now and 2 years from now! It's exciting!!

We are also still planning to hire Dawn, a Christian Adoption Consultant, but we need to do some more fundraising. We still need about $1500 more. We have been analyzing our finances and have come up with some plans to help contribute to the high costs as well, but we're not quite ready yet. It's a process. As I've mentioned in other posts, the benefit of hiring an adoption consultant is that she can put us in touch with multiple adoption agencies all over the country and we can apply for situations that are the best fit for our family. This approach results in child placement within an average of 6 months. The consultant would also be looking out for our best interest and helping us watch for any red flags that may result in an unsuccessful adoption and cost us thousands of dollars (and lots of heartache). She can also help us find and apply for grants that will help us with the high adoption costs and ideas on fundraising. Her guidance and our peace of mind is well worth her fee. Again, here is some background about Dawn's vast experience with adoptions:
https://www.christianadoptionconsultants.com/portfolio/dawn-jason-wright/