Shooting for mid-June approval. . .

We had the second of our joint interviews with the SW today and all went smoothly. So far, the interview process has been fairly painless. The conversations with the SW have been low-key - just getting to know about us as individuals and as a couple. SW is pretty good at identifying areas she thinks might be difficult for us (adjusting to sleep deprivation, etc.) and gave us some advice for books and resources on a few topics.

We also scheduled our last interview!!! We are really starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with this process. Allowing time for the SW to write our homestudy, then another meeting to go over it with us, we should be officially waiting sometime in June. I was really worried that hubby's impromptu trip to Scotland tomorrow was going to hold up the presses, but it all seems to be working out.

Which is great, because I have a TON of stuff I want to get done around the house. I've already gotten one quote for painting the rest of the interior and have another scheduled next week. We also need to get some concrete work done in the front yard (landscape edging and a new pathway from the driveway to our backyard), so I have contractors coming out to bid that stuff, too.

After the house projects are done, I think I might start working on preparing for a baby. That sounds so weird and distant, but I probably need to start thinking about having at least some stuff ready in case we get "the call." We've also decided to cloth diaper - instead of using disposables. I'm not sure how well it will go, but I want to give this a legitimate effort. I'm hoping to build up a nice little collection of diapers and supplies while I have some time to kill. Luckily, lots of gals on The Nest have given me some great advice and websites to check out for ideas.

I've been really encouraged by all the happy endings for my sisters on the Web - The Nesties saw a number of placements in the last couple of weeks. Hopefully, it's just a matter of time for us, too.

Homestudy Visit Numero Uno

We had our first visit last Monday afternoon and it went really well. Our SW was very sweet and commented on how nice the house looked - and that she hoped I hadn't spent hours cleaning for the visit (of course I did).

She did a walk-through of the house, including each bedroom and the basement. She was mostly looking for overt hazards and making sure we knew what to baby-proof in the future. She checked carefully for fire extinguishers and smoke alarms (which we also tested for her to see if they worked) and exit locations. Luckily, Colorado uses a standard form for the home safety inspection that we had ahead of time - so we knew what to prepare for.

The second part of the visit was the first joint interview of 3 that we need to do (we also do 2 individual interviews). The questions were pretty much what a lot of us here have heard about in the past: describe your infertility, what interventions did you try, how have you grieved your infertility, etc. Usually I can talk about our IF without getting too emotional, but I did break down when I had to list out the dates of the MC. I kept 2 small date books (over 2 years) with all my cycle info and had to pull them out to give her the dates. For some reason, this was really hard and I started crying - but SW was very understanding and kind about it.

She also asked us about each other; what are our strengths and weaknesses were, how we met, and other relationship-type stuff. Overall, it was pretty straightforward and it didn't seem like the goal was to grill us - just get to know us.

Luckily, we were able to schedule our next round of interviews, so it looks like we'll have the homestudy in hand by the end of May. Which means we might be ready to accept a placement by June! We're still waiting to hear back on some fingerprinting (this takes soooo long!) and our neighbor reference (a whole other story).

Interestingly, the individual interviews are scheduled back-to-back and we can't talk to each other in between. I can't wait to see what those questions are like!