What is Good for the Goose?...More from Him

I know by now that Missie has given a good description of some of the various options we had to chose from.

My mother always told me that things happen for a reason, they happen because they are meant to happen.  I never always agreed with that.  I always thought I had more control over my life in that if something happens, or doesn't happen; it is because I made it happen or failed to make it happen.  At this point, I wasn't so sure.

It was down the Foster System, an adoption agency, and a private lawyer; one of those options was going to lead us down the road to parenthood.  We were not fans of the foster system, and after the in-depth "Pro/Con" list Missie and I compiled, we were almost to the point of finding our answer with the flip of a coin.  Personally, I was more on the side of the lawyer.  I liked the thought of having a single point of contact we could deal with instead of calling an agency and getting whoever decided to pick up that day.

And then, the phone rang....

Another stranger would come into our lives, C.  (Now talk about things happening for a reason, this phone call could not have come at a better time.)  C heard about us from a friend of a friend that we went to the gym with.  She and her husband had been through exactly what we're going through, and had decided which option worked best for them.  Low and behold, her answer was neither of the options we thought were our only options. 

Missie talked to her for just over an hour and heard her story.  By the end of the conversation, Missie had several pages of notes, names and phone numbers and we would discover a course of action that would give us the best of both worlds; an adoption consultant.

An Adoption Consultant would give us the exposure to our profile that an adoption agency would with the added benefit of having a single point of contact that would by our "guy" during the whole process.  Another added bonus, all of the adoption consultants were also adoptive parents, so they knew exactly what we were going through.  The next day, we made the call to A Step Ahead Adoption services, and we were on board.

We had made up our mind, and despite the fact we were going to get free refreshments out of it, we cancelled our Saturday meeting with Jim's Adoption Agency* in Raleigh NC, and had our "guy". 

* Not the real name