Last weekend we attended our mandatory CORE Training at the Adoption Choices office in Golden. It was a two-day session designed to give new adopting families additional information about the adoption process and what to expect throughout the journey. I have to admit that I was skeptical that we needed two full days to cover the information as I felt like we already had a pretty good understanding through all of paperwork. I'm glad to say that I was very wrong; we both found the class to be incredibly valuable and informative.

There were two other couples in the class with us. One was an older couple that are in the process of adopting three of their grandchildren to get them out of a rough situation. The other couple were in their 40's and had just recently been married. They both really want to be parents and are going to be using adoption to grow their family. We hit it off well with them and will most likely be staying in touch throughout the process. After spending just a couple of days with them it was obvious that they are both going to make great parents.

The class truly was comprehensive and at least touched upon every step of the process. The topics covered included: paperwork, our adoption profile, home studies, matching, birth moms, open vs semi-open vs closed adoptions, time at the hospital during labor and delivery, leaving the hospital, legal stuff, and pretty much everything in between. If it sounds like a heap of info, then it sounds right and two days was just barely enough to cover it all. 

One unique aspect of the class was that they brought in both a birth mom that had given up a son to adoption as well as an adoptive mom and her adopted 2-year old son. The birth mom's story was both incredibly sad due to her past but also uplifting due to where she is now. It was definitely interesting hearing her thoughts and feelings both during the process and all of the years after the adoption. Same goes for the adoptive mom (whose son was stupid adorable and had many of the same mannerisms as Braydon!) She had an open adoption and is still in contact with the birth mother.

The class really helped us narrow down the type of adoption we're wanting, which would be considered either semi-open or closed. We have decided to be open to reviewing many different birth moms and will determine how open we want to be on a case-by-case basis.

Outside of the class we managed to get our fingerprinting done this week. Our immediate next steps are to finalize our paperwork and profile, and we have our first interview with the agency this Saturday.

Plenty more updates to come!

As always, a huge thanks to our amazing support group here. We have also received several donations this week! We cannot thank each of you enough and appreciate you all from the bottom of our hearts. 

- Corey