The Mulberry Bird

As part of my adoption preparation, I have to read books from the agency's list. One of these books was The Mulberry Bird. It is a book written to read to children. There are pictures, but I would not call it a picture book due to all of text. Being a teacher, I love books. I have crates of books in my house for my future children. Now I am sensitive to seeking out great picture books that showcase adoptive families.

My first read through had me in tears. This story is from the birth mother's view. She is a young bird without a mate. Her baby is knocked out of his nest during a storm. She is unable to make a nest on the ground and properly take care of him. She finds parenting overwhelming and realizes that she cannot take proper care of him.

She visits the wise owl who helps her choose another bird family to raise her baby. They go over the positive traits of each bird family. She chooses the shore birds and takes her baby to them. She gets to visit the baby from time to time. The baby bird thinks about what it means to be adopted.

My first impression was a good one. I thought the story was appropriate for an older child. The book cover says ages 5-10.  The language was sensitive. It gave reasons why the birth mother chose adoption, how she chose the best family, and how the baby understood the concept of being adopted.

I started to get too into the story of these birds bc most of the story is about the birth mother and I felt really sad for her loss. I went back to reread some key pages and  pick the book apart. I thought to myself why wouldn't the other birds help her? Why didn't the shore bird take in the birth mother too? Why didn't she take back the baby once he got older?

I decided that this book is about birds so we can't compare their behavior to humans. The moral of the story is that a birth mother loves her baby so much that she will chose adoption when she feels it is the best option. Adopted children have two families that work together to give them what that child needs. I think the book does a good job of showing that adoption can be a choice made out of love.

Moving on to Step 5

My DH must have sweet talked the social worker. She told him that she would mail the forms after Thanksgiving. They arrived the day before. OMG it was a huge packet. I guess you have to be careful what you wish for. I wanted to get moving on step 5 but I had no idea it would this much work.

I had to leave that packet on my table for a few days. I could not even open it up. I had a nice holiday with my DH's family. We told them about how we are working on getting approved to adopt. They were supportive.

A few days later I had a night were I could not sleep. I woke up at 4 am and decided that I would work on some forms. The checklist that was on top included about 30 items. There were  forms for basic information,  medical, fingerprints, things that we need copies of such as a marriage certificate, and agency items such as reading books, fire safety etc.

I took out all the forms and filled in  our names, addresses, DOB, etc for all of them. Even though it was kind of annoying and the teacher in me felt that it was not very organized that we had already filled out that info on the online form, I thought it would be easy for me to do at this moment and get the ball rolling.

I spent about an hour filling out basic info on these forms. Then I put them away. That was last week. There are a few forms that require more thought such as income etc that DH will have to deal with. They also wanted me to fill out my references again. UGH. Well at least I have that info on my online form. I am trying to be good and think about it as the 8 page online form was my prep/rough draft for these real forms.

We had to order a few books about adoption and then we have to go into the office to discuss them. I went to amazon to look them up and the tears started flowing. It was really hard for me. I picked out 4. Two were books to read to a child and 2 were for adults to read.

The books came in yesterday. When I opened the box and saw them. I started crying again. I am not sure why exactly. I feel sad for these children. I feel sad for the birth moms, I feel sad for me. I feel scared about feeling hope that this will happen. I have been disappointed many times.

I  read the first picture book quickly and then I moved on to a larger novel.  I read about half of it. It was really great and made me feel normal about what I am going through. This book was written for families of adoptive parents. So far it looks really great. I am thinking about sending a copy to my parents and maybe copy a few good pages for other family members.

I decided that I will do book reviews in the future and add a book list section to my blog.

It seems that this packet is my application for a home study. It will be a lot of work, but I think that this should hopefully be the bulk of the paperwork.