Before the first homestudy meeting

In sixteen short days, we meet with the social worker for our first homestudy meeting. I am both excited and nervous, and a tinge resentful.

To those of you who haven't adopted, where we are right now, means we are working through MOUNTAINS of paperwork, blood tests, 25 page theses on our thoughts on life and childrearing, and recruiting references.

Honestly? I understand that you can't just give a child to anyone, but seriously, is this amount of scrutiny necessary? For example, is a child seriously better off in an orphanage than with parents who don't attend church and bought purebred pets rather than go to an animal shelter? Because we've had several social workers refuse to consider us for a homestudy on these grounds. Do medical conditions like high cholesterol and renegade blood sugar render someone unable to be a parent? Give me a few weeks and I'll tell you what our current social worker thinks.

While I've heard so many positive things about the one we've hired, I've run into so much negativity, so many petty people who can't keep their own personal biases separate from their professional lives, that it's really freaking me out. It's like if we don't measure up to some other person's judgements, we fail and it's back to the fertility clinic. To some degree, it's like this guy gets to play God and tell us whether or not we have the right to be parents. And you know what, yeah, he doesn't know us from Adam, but if you ask anyone who actually knows us, my husband and I would be kick-ass parents. And it really gets under my skin to have someone suggest otherwise. I know we'd have a lot to learn, both about parenting and about the parenting of adopted kids. But can't that be said of everyone who becomes a parent for the first time? It's like the "adoptive parents are lesser parents", or the "if God wanted you to be parents, He'd give you a baby" bias, seep into even the adoption professionals.