[Jazzi]

Hello everybody....

We need help..... DH and I are in the process of completing our homestudy and realizing that we should probably share the good news (sooner rather than later) that we are adopting with our close friends and family. We wanted a really unique way of making the announcement. We would love to hear how and when you told your friends and family.

Open to all types of suggestions!
Jazzi

[kretzklan]

Hi Jazzi -

I'm not sure what type of adoption you are pursuing...but in any case - you may want to wait.
As a now-adoptive mom and dad - we both wish we had waited to tell anyone until we were nearly complete. When you hit a snag and eveyone is asking "what's going on?" - it really stinks.
Just my two cents! Good luck with whatever you decide!

[pughugs]

My family and friends know that we want to adopt. We are going to start the process in two weeks and will probably tell our friends after our homestudy is complete that we are in the process of adopting. Hopefully we will have a smooth process. But, if we don't, then my family and friends can help us cope. They all know that we have been wanting to become parents for quite some time now.


Good luck!!!


I am a pug mom!

[StorkWatcher]

HEre's a cute idea for close family members (aunts/uncles/grandparents). Once your homestudy is complete and you're on the waiting list, wrap up photo frames. In the frame put something like:

Coming Soon! (Or sometime in the next 2 years.. or whenever)
Baby ---
They can be grandparent frames, or I love my Grandkids frames or something special.

What we did to announce to the more general public (extended family/friends who might not have been aware that we were starting the process) was form an email address book just called Adoption Updates. I sent the first email out to everyone telling them how our Adoption would work and what the typical process/timeline is. Then sent out monthly updates. It saved from people having to ask often (especially if it happened to be a hard day during the wait when I didn't want to talk about things) and answered some FAQs.

Or, maybe send out some pre-adoption announcements! I am sure others will have some great ideas - I'll be watching for more to be posted here.

As far as when things get really close, I would second being careful about whom you tell. We had a first match which failed. In that case, 10 of our "closest friends" were with us at a weekend horse show when we got the news, so we couldn't keep it to ourselves and started calling family. Although everyone was supportive over the next 3 weeks until and after the match failed, it was hard having to update so many people daily, especially as I'd told several co-workers, then had to spend agonizingly long days working with them while wondering what was happening with the adoption.

On the second match for our son, we called our parents only just to let them know because we had only 24 hrs notice. We strictly told them to tell no one except our siblings until we called them the next day on our way home from the hospital with him when it was official! This helped much more.

[Yash]

I tell my family and friends right from the get go as things go along. So all my friends ask periodically about how the paperchase is going for number 2. My family isn't so pro-adoption. They are loving and excited when the baby finally gets here, but before they don't really care to know the details.

When my son finally came home. I just told immediate family members and knew it would slowly leak out to everyone else, which it did. Then for my family and friends not living in LA, I sent out a mass email a few days after he came home.

My favorite memory was telling my two best friends. They had gone home over Christmas, my son came home on 12/30. So they come over so we can go to dinner and we're chatting about our Christmases. I excused myself, got the baby, and walked into the room with my back to them and said something like, "My best Christmas has to be my son." I turned around to show him off. They were shocked. They knew I was waiting, but this was unbelievable. To this day, we still talk about the shocker I gave them.

Yash

[Jazzi]

I agree Kretzklan about sharing too soon. We wondered about how to deal with the process if we did hit a snag! Perhaps we will need to limit the # of f/f that we inform initially, to avoid the overwhelming updates that we might receive.

Thanks for the reminder after all of our IVF attempts and the # of daily weekly updates that we recieved, you would think we would know better (LOL).