A reader e-mailed me and asked if I would share more about my personal story with our home study. I am working through a series about each of the interviews we had as part of the home study process.

In my last post, Home Study: Preparing for the Home Visit, I shared my complete overreaction to the social worker's scheduled home visit as our final interview in the home study process. I had spent hours steam-cleaning the carpet in our family room, and the social worker barely even glanced in the room.

When the social worker (C) arrived, we took her on a quick tour of the house. She wrote down the number of bedrooms and bathrooms we had. She recorded where we had fire alarms in the house. And then she sat down for dinner.

C had asked me to prepare dinner as part of the home visit. She thought that sitting and eating a meal together would make us relax and feel more at home while we had our interview. She was incorrect. Not only did I need to have a clean house, now I feared that my ability to adopt was riding on my ability to cook a good meal.

I do not remember how we decided what meal to fix, but I chose to make spaghetti with my friend's special recipe for a fabulous spaghetti sauce. Big mistake. While the food turned out well and tasted great, it was quite stressful to eat spaghetti without making a mess while trying to act natural as C asked us questions about our lives. Even C seemed to struggle with trying to eat spaghetti neatly while interviewing us. Today, it is comical, but I was a nervous wreck during the meal.

At this meeting, C told us that our home study would be approved, but it would take a few weeks for her to write it up. She also wanted to see the adoption profile I had put together. She was pleased with the profile, particular with the compact photo album I had chosen. She commented on how some of the frilly profiles were attractive but difficult to transport as she carried them all over the state.

The home visit wound up not being a big deal, but I had invested weeks worrying about it. After having been through a home visit and surviving, I stopped fearing them once the post-placement visits rolled around.

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Home Study category

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt