Adoption Forms, it Takes a Forest

Candace:

So, we just got a huge-mongous stack of paperwork.  But whatever, why am I even tempting to complain?  I used to be the female version of Rambo when it came to syringes and physically probing things.  I got this in the bag … or so I thought.  Come to find out, where infertility is hard on your body, adoption for me, was hard emotionally.  I knew there would be a screening process.  Rightfully so, ever watch the news?  But I had no idea the process would entail every nook, cranny and wished to be locked away aspect of your life now under a microscope and exposed.  I mean, no one at the fertility clinic needed to know some of my hay day of college secrets.  **To all of my girlfriends who have heard this line: ‘Who’se gonna hold my hair while I get sick real quick? Pretend you don’t know me for the next 2 months while we get through this process.  Treat it like Vegas, what happens in college stays in college.  Kapeesh?**

That being said and in true C & C style, Chris and I thought we would do a Top 10 list for all you folks to share our personal take on Adoption Paperwork.

Top 10 Reasons why Adoption Paperwork is a Hair Pulling Adventure:

1.  You will contribute to deforestation.  Now, don’t get us wrong here.  There is an online questionnaire you fill out first, and a ton of preliminary forms too.  Oh no, we are talking a stack of paperwork of mammoth proportions

2.  Your chance of paper cuts increases exponentially and this will be the day you cook with lemon juice … it’s Murphy’s Law … sorry

3.  Filling out these forms has lead to a dramatic increase in our chances of carpal tunnel syndrome, or in the very least severe hand cramps, OUCH!

4.  Probing questions … seriously one of the questions was: How sexually compatible are you and your spouse?  (Chris: I checked Candace’s answer.  Although she did not check the ‘He is an all-star in the sack’ option, mainly because there wasn’t one, she checked that we were very compatible.  Aww Yea Boy!!)

5.  We have to fill out these forms plus many more because some bad ‘adopting parent’ apples spoil it for the bunch by abusing the system or not being even fundamentally appropriate parents for their adopted children … effing A-holes

6.  It will not take 15 minutes to complete.  Actually, it will take more than 15 minutes to read the title of each form

7.   It’s like an adoption scavenger hunt around your town, municipalities, and administrative buildings

8. To complete the physical form and drug test, you will need to visit a doc-in-the-box 3 times, including about 4.5 hours of waiting in a SARs/infuenza-infested waiting room.  Oddly though, Chris suddenly liked my fu-fu smelling hand sanitizer

9.  Finger printing makes you feel guilty for no reason

10.  90-blank-% of the population does not have to go through this process to be parents

Chris:

We had a goal of completing the paperwork as fast as possible.  Why … this should be obvious enough.  This is a hurdle that we had to jump through to get closer to starting our family.  That being said, we completed our paperwork in about 9 business days.  Beat that!  We worked hard at it, every night after work and non-stop on the weekend in between.  Actually, we were told it was one of the fastest turnaround times, if not the fastest, for our agency.  You know what though, I kind of enjoyed it.  With the IVF, I felt like everything was out of my control.  Sure, things have been out of Candace’s hands, but a crap ton of the things that Candace had a handle on (her diet, her positivity, her feet soaking in fertility enhancing oil) I could not participate in.  With the adoption paperwork though, I took the lead and dove in.  We tackled form after form and as we completed each form,  personally felt that I earned another stripe of fatherhood.  We have a lot of hurdles left to jump and probably a few unexpected turns in the road.  But man, it felt GOOD, when we turned in all of our completed paperwork. It felt like DAMNIT world, we will have a third member of our family and we are racing towards it.  Candace was soo excited, she literally wrapped a bow around it to deliver to the agency, smiling ear to ear.