What Does Every Young Married Couple Like to Spend Their Nights in Bed Doing?
Paperwork, of course! (Had you worried for a second there.)
At least, that was our experience as we started down the road of adoption. While creating children might be a romantic process, adopting them definitely isn’t. It’s filled with paperwork, homework, and the thrill of visiting a beige government social services office to hand in said paperwork to a complete stranger. And rather than crossing our fingers for a positive pregnancy test, we were crossing them for a rubber-stamped form to show up in the mailbox. But hey—that’s adoption.
One of the things we decided early on was to try to have fun with it. After all, this is our first “pregnancy.” We’ve been taking pictures at every step along the way, snapping selfies with social services employees we’ve met once and will probably never see again, tracking the dates paperwork was dropped off and returned, and building a timeline we’ll one day look back on fondly—as the process that made us parents.
It’s admittedly hard to find joy in the very bureaucratic early stages of getting approved, but what else can you do? One of the first social workers we met was very blunt about how numbing it all can be. She told us, “Don’t think about it. Just get it done.” Not exactly bedroom talk, but she was absolutely right. Adopting isn’t a sexy process—it’s long, boring, and repetitive. We could talk all day about the frustrations of government red tape and policies that seem unnecessarily complicated, especially when you just want to open your home to a child. But venting about it won’t cut through the bureaucracy, and it certainly won’t speed anything up. So instead of dwelling on the frustrations, we just keep moving forward.
Still, we knew we had to find some joy in the journey. So instead of ultrasounds, we have government forms. Instead of a gender reveal, we have photos taken under harsh fluorescent lighting in beige offices. And in a cheeky way, it’s made the process a lot more enjoyable. There’s nothing particularly thrilling about driving to Regina for a downtown appointment with a stranger to discuss the 40-hour course we’ll need to complete to be approved for adoption. But when we remember that, just like morning sickness, it’s one short stop on the journey to parenthood—it all becomes worth it.