Adopted: our son is coming home! | Your Baby Booty
*Oh mamas, this story will melt your heart and give you the goosebumps! A special thanks to Heather for sharing her adoption journey with us.
***
Adopted: our son is coming home!
by Heather Franklin
My mother taught me at a very young age that adopted children were extra special because they had two Mothers that loved them. One that grew them in their belly & one in their heart. At the age of 5 I declared that I was going to marry Tom Selleck, Magnum PI, and adopt 63 children. I understood that there were children who needed mothers, that I wanted to be a mother & that adoption was the perfect solution.
In 2003 I met & married a man who shared my convictions on how to build our future family. We met married young. I was 18 & he was 21.? As young college students we began our family by adopting (many) cats & dogs ? rather than children.? In the spring of 2010 I was aching to start a family. We began taking classes through the local foster care agency with the intention to adopt an older child. Early in the process my husband was offered admission & a teaching position at Rutgers University & I was offered admission to a Doctorate program. Moving from Oregon meant that we could not adopt at that time through foster care because these children have ties that need to be maintained.? We decided to explore International adoption and came across the website Rainbowkids.org. This site provides a wealth of information & offers a waiting child registry.
One day while browsing the waiting child registry, I found Kofi. Kofi, or ?Calvin,? as he was referred to was a 3 year old little boy living in a children?s home in Ghana, West Africa.? As soon as we laid eyes on him we knew he was our son. I immediately contacted his agency, Faith International, & submitted our application.? Traditionally, families have to complete home studies prior to placement with a specific child but in our case we were given Kofi?s placement immediately. What this means is that he was removed from the waiting child registry & we began the long process of adoption.? The date we began the journey to adopt Kofi was June 23, 2010.
Over the course of the following two weeks, we packed up our home in Oregon, had pre-adoption physicals, fingerprinting & arranged for our home study to begin as soon as we arrived in New Jersey.? On July 13, the day before we left on our cross-country move, I found out that I was pregnant.? People?s first response to this is usually something like ?that?s what always happens ? as soon as you give up you get pregnant? but, we never intended on reproducing so this was quite a shock to our system.? So I drove cross-country with 3 dogs, 3 cats, a barf bag & a lot to think about. Abandoning our son Kofi was completely was as much out of the question as terminating the pregnancy- so I convinced myself (and my husband) that going from zero to two in the same year while pursuing a graduate degree was going to be the best adventure ever.
We arrived in New Jersey the end of July 2010 & began our home study the first week in August. This process took approximately three months. We took classes, had visits with a social worker, had four different sets of finger prints taken, submitted tax & financial documents, wrote wills, gathered letters of recommendation, provided birth certificates/marriage license/vital records/insurance documents, etc. After our home study was approved we began the process with homeland security to adopt a child.? We submitted our request to adopt an orphan, called an I-600, in November 2010. I gave birth to Booker on March 9, 2011 & when we returned home on March 11th we were informed that our I-600 had been approved.
Next, our dossier packet which provided every detail of our lives, was sent to the Ghanaian adoption court. Luckily, the Ghanaian courts moved quickly & we were given a June court date. Because Yellow Fever vaccinations cannot be given to infants or breast-feeding mothers & are required to travel in Ghana, Derek went to alone.
Derek told me that he loved him the second he saw him. Kofi is a bright & funny child who was ready to come home to his mommy, baby & fire dog (our dog is red). They were able to spend a week getting to know one another, at the children?s home, before their appearance before the adoption court.? Kofi was adopted June 21, 2011. From there, Derek & Kofi traveled to the U.S. Embassy which was 6 hours away. They spent the next two weeks trying to rush the process to bring Kofi home before Derek?s visa expired.? Here we had no luck. Kofi had to go back to the orphanage & Derek returned to New Jersey.? We have been in a sad state of limbo for months awaiting word from US immigration that we can bring Kofi home.? We are able to speak to Kofi on the phone but are unsure how much he understands (we hardly understand ourselves).
Last week, we received word that Kofi has been granted? a visa interview for October 24, 2011. Derek will leave for Ghana a few days prior, take Kofi to the interview, pick up the visa the following Friday & bring our son home on Saturday.
I cannot express my anticipation, joy & worry that all will go well. It has been a long journey.
??????????????????
More about our guest writer:
Heather Franklin is a 27 year old Oregon native living in New Jersey.? She is a math nerd with a Master of Public Health in Biostatistics & Epidemiology currently debating whether or not to complete her Doctorate from which she is now on leave.? New mother to 3-year-old Kofi & 6-month-old Booker and happily married to Derek, an amazing artist, cook, handyman, husband & father.? In addition to child rearing, Heather spends her time tending to 4 chickens, 4 cats, 1 dog & a large garden.
Source: http://yourbabybooty.com/blog/adopted-our-son-is-coming-home/
philadelphia weather chael sonnen chael sonnen new jersey map tornado okami okami
