Waiting Pool Stats - September Edition

The past month has been an extremely busy one for the waiting pool.  In August, the waiting pool had the most families at one time that we've ever seen, a total of 89! 

State of the Waiting Pool for Adoptive Families

Total Number of Families: 89

Families Remaining in the Pool from May: 74

Families Leaving the Pool: 1 (-8.6%)
New Families: 7 (+11.1%)

Net Change Since May 1st:  +7, (+8.5%)

Net Change Since August 1st: +6 (+7.2%)

Couples: 86 (97%) (+1)
Single: 3 (3%) (-1)

Heterosexual: 54 (61%) (+4)

Gay: 23 (26%) (+3)

Lesbian: 9 (10%) (-1)

Single: 3 (3%) (--)

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Since entering the pool with Charley on July 12th, we've seen 4 screening emails, taken a sign language class, a newborn care class, decided on a family last name, and started thinking about first names for our future child. Overall, we've been busy! 

At the same time, the stats above show the waiting pool has been rather busy too.  With all of the new families entering and leaving the pool, we are now the 13th most recent family to join.  It's crazy to realize how many families have entered the pool in the past few weeks!  In a way, our profile is quickly becoming a seasoned veteran on the list.  After a month with only 1 family leaving the pool and 7 joining, it'll be interesting to see what happens between now and October 1st.

Sign Class Graduation (or, Why Brian is a Bastard)

You may remember a few weeks ago when Brian and I started going to a baby sign language class. Well as of this weekend, we are officially graduates of the Hop to Signaroo program!

I'm not sure if this counts as accredited...

Despite our initial reservations (when we showed up and were the only people there without an infant), it turned out to be a lot of fun and we learned a lot. I now know over a hundred signs for various foods, family members, animals, and other things that seem like they'll be really useful for a young toddler.

There was a brief snafu when we tried to come up with name signs for "Daddy Andy" and "Daddy Brian", though. Combining the sign for "Dad" with the letter "A" worked fine. But when we tried to do the same with "Dad" and "B", when inadvertently ended up with the sign for "bastard". Now, I'm not gonna go into whether I think that's an appropriate sign for Brian or not, but suffice it to say that we had to come up with something else!

Classmates

It was also really encouraging to see some of the kids in the class start picking up on signs after just a few weeks. Some of them were as old as 8 or 9 months, and they really seemed to get it quite quickly. One in particular had 4 signs down by the end of 4 weeks, and it seemed like the floodgates were flying open!

All in all, a good experience, and I really liked our teacher (Nancy Hanauer). Highly recommended to anyone in the Seattle area!

Newborn Care Class

Keeping up with our parental education, we attended a newborn care class on Sunday.  It was part of a broader class that dealt with 'Childbirth and Newborn Care,' but our adoption route meant that we could skip the first portion of the class dealing with childbirth.  Similar to our baby sign language class, we walked into another unfamiliar environment.

This time around, rather than walking into a room full of straight couples and all of their babies, we joined a class of straight couples that were all pregnant and had already spent a full day together with the instructor.  In some ways, being an adoptive gay couple really means that we're doing a terrible job at conforming to societal norms!

The class itself was a good experience.  We got some brief rundowns on subjects like postpartum depression (fathers get it too!), feeding, umbilical cord cleaning, car seats, and swaddling.  It was fun when all of the interactive materials came out.  There were little containers of diapers, onesies, and blankets, and then next to those was a giant tub of babies.  You know... just like real life.

Overall, it was a rather quick rundown on some important things, and we enjoyed being in a room with many future parents.  Like many first-time parents, we still don't feel 100% prepared for a baby, but we're becoming more and more comfortable and ready for when that time comes. 

Baby Name Research

A lot of you have already asked us if we've been thinking about baby names.  For a while, we've held off on first names because some first name-last name combos can sound a little weird.  Of course, now that we have our family last name decided, we're finally free to plow ahead and start thinking of some first name options!

Like many parents, we'll waffle on baby names for quite some time until we actually have to make a decision.  Part of that is tied up in how we won't know a lot about the baby until we are chosen by a birth family.  Another part is that we have enough problems choosing where to go to dinner some nights, so making a decision that will have a lifelong impact for our child is even tougher.

At this time, Andy and I are planning on doing some research into baby names to develop some short lists.  We'll each create our own lists for boys and girls and then have those on hand to use as a go-to list if we suddenly have a last minute placement.  Amazingly, the government will be helping us do this!  The US Social Security Administration has an excellent database for history and statistics on baby names.  They track the top 1,000 baby names for boys and girls of any year going back decades.  Just for fun, I've included a quick screen grab of their Top 10 of 2011: 

 

While we'll be using lists like these from the SSA website as a reference, feel free to post a comment with any suggestions you have.  I know our friend Eric has already started lobbying for us to name a boy....Eric.  Very stealthy of him.  

In honor of Eric's efforts, here are some fun facts:
1. Eric was the 103rd most popular name for boys in 2011
2. The name Eric has been decreasing in popularity since it peaked in the mid 1970's
3. Our friend Eric is getting old.
4. Name rankings won't play a huge factor for us, so after ribbing Eric I might still be nice and put his name on the list  :)

Adoption in the Media

Found an interesting article on the Huffington Post about how adoption is portrayed in the media:

"Here are just a few of the examples I was considering as a jumping-off point, and I did not make any of these up: A new reality show called I'm Having Their Baby, which films pregnant women as they agonize over the decision of whether to place their newborns for adoption; a headline in a New Jersey newspaper, "Did They Adopt Their Killer?" atop a story about a 26-year-old man accused of murdering the father and grandmother who had brought him up "as their own" for two decades; and an online poster of two infants, the laughing one assuring the crying one, "Dude! I'm joking, you're not adopted!"

Ah, welcome to the wonderful world of adoption, a place where women are baby-delivery devices for other parents, where men slay the people who raise them because they are not biologically related, and where the very idea of having entered a family in this way is so unnerving that it makes you weep."

Read the full article on HuffPo. I think parts of it may be a bit hyperbolic, but I'm interested to watch how my own feelings on this evolve especially once we have a placement.