First topic discussed was finances. Our counselor Jenny (whom I loved) broke it all out and gave us costs and timelines and all that fun stuff. Moving on...
This is how it works. We create our profile book. This is the book created in Shutterfly that has pictures of us and text explaining who we are, all about our families, our community and our values. This book goes to all the adoption agencies AIS works with all over the country. When birth moms come in to the adoption agencies, they look through the books and choose the adoptive parents they wish to "match" with. AIS sends us an email telling us a birth mom has asked to match with us. We then look at her profile and we decide if we want to match with her. Once we agree....it's a done deal. That being said....there's a 20% failure rate where someone changes their mind. Most of the time it's the birth mom. This happened to me and Dan. It also happened to our counselor Jenny. It sucks.
Next topic, exploring our "tolerances". They stressed that tolerance does not mean preference. It simply allows us the opportunity to assess our tolerance level in situations or circumstances that could arise before we become emotionally involved in the possibility of a match. They will notify us on a case-by-case basis with anything we '"red flag". The facts she gave us that were disheartening. 85% of birth moms smoke up to 1/2 pack of cigarettes a day. Some as much as 40-50% use pot/opiates/methadone during their pregnancy. They referred us to a website mothertobaby.org to get some facts on drug effects on babies. They also discussed mental illness and what we are willing to tackle as far as that goes. The good thing is we can say NO and that means they won't match us to ANY birth moms that admit to any of the things mentioned above. Then again, she could lie. But this could also mean we wait a lot longer. We can also say YES and they match us to a birth mom and we are allowed to look at her records and see that she smoked in the first trimester only, or she drank in the third trimester only, this and that, and then make a decision from there. Bottom line....No to a profile means NEVER and yes to a profile means "we will consider but could still say no". Is your head spinning? Mine is.
After all this, we were instructed to move forward with renewing our home study and keep raising money in the adoption fund. We have a lot of paperwork to do. We will have another appointment with the counselors in the next month or so. That's it for now!
