This is an ongoing FAQ so I'll add more to it.

Q. Who are you?

I'm Michelle Donahue Hillison, a Chapel Hill native who now lives in Cary. I'm married to Jeff, an accountant and we are parents to Hayley who we adopted from foster care. We've been married eight years and are both on the wrong side of 35 now.

Q. How long have you had Hayley?

We were selected to parent her in August, 2004 and she moved in that November at the age of six. Now she is eight and in the 3rd grade.

Q. Why are you doing this blog?

When we decided to adopt from foster care, we could find nothing realistic about the process of adopting and raising foster children. There was a ton of literature that made it seem awfully sad. So I vowed to write about our process, crossing my fingers I'd have something good to say about our journey.

Many of the blogs about adoption seem to focus on the journey to pick up a baby from another country or adopting an infant domestically. They are all so cheery and light. Some families have yet to face the issues that adoption can bring into their lives.

Q. Why are you doing this on WRAL's servers?

I used to work at WRAL on a joint WRAL/News & Observer website for about three years and I knew some people at WRAL still. I've always relied on this site for news and I love their approach to interactive. While the two babylogy blogs from WRAL TV personalities are lovely, I just wanted to put something else out there about adoption. I was lucky WRAL was alright with that.

Q. Why did you chose to adopt?

Technically - Unexplained and unclear infertility issues. I reached my breaking point after two years and bags of cash. You learn a lot about your marriage when your husband is jabbing needles into your rump with drugs that cost as much as your first car.

Mentally - I just got sick of it and I felt like my life was on hold. I needed to get out of the trying to get pregnant phase and move to the parenting phase.

Emotionally - I would look at photolistings online even before we were considering adoption. They broke my heart and I'd bawl just looking at them. My folks almost adopted from the same agency we did, many years before so it was something I was familiar with even if we had no adopted family members at the time.

Q. Why do you use real names most of the time?

A. I didn't to start but people were connecting me to my personal or work sites. I decided if this was going to be honest, I might as well just be more open.

Q. What does the name 'don't underestimate baked goods' mean?

I said that to a friend once on another blog and I cracked myself up with it (I'm easily amused). The point was there isn't always an answer to every problem and sometimes sitting down for a snack and slowing down is the best solution I have in my arsenal. And it goes without saying of the restorative powers of actually baking with your kid - it can work wonders. So the 'don't underestimate baked goods' line really just means that I don't have all the answers either.

Q. Why adopt from foster care?

Answering coming later b/c it is long.

Q. Does your child's first family read this blog?

Yes. I've discussed it with one person and while they didn't understand all of this, they now can see the point of doing it for me and for others. There are no guidebooks for this really so everything we do adds a page to someone's mental manual.

Q. Can anyone comment here?

We've turned on the option to only allow registered users to post due to someone who can't seem to handle themselves appropriately.Registering is painless and easy if you want to comment.

Q. How long did your adoption take?

That depends on when you consider the process over - do you mean from application to being picked to raise a child? Or do you mean all of it? Or from first meeting with agency to child moving in? Only way I can answer is to post a timeline.



Our adoption timeline
December 2003 We applied to agency
Early January 2004 first meeting with agency
January 2004 lucked into MAPP training starting in; same time I launched into the paperwork piles
March 2004 finished MAPP classes
April 2004 had final approval to adopt and were waiting for licenses as foster parents; started looked at profiles of kids around then
June 2004 looked at two kids but nothing serious and didn't work out.
Late June 2004 started getting antsy and looking at out of state kids in
Monday June 19th, 2004 at 4:25 PM got an email about a child
Monday June 19th, 2004 at 4:30 PM called, email and begged for our profile to be sent for that child,
August, 2004 found out we were in the final group to be considered.
August 13th, 2004 interviewed up in the county Hayley was from. Eight people at table but we wowed them. We knew then no one could be a better fit for her.
August 24th, 2004 a call on my cell phone changed my life and let us know we were going to be parents to Hayley!
September 26th, 2004 our first meeting with our daughter
September to October, 2004 series of visits there and here with her
November 3rd, 2004 Hayley moved in for good
February, 2005 her DSS started final adoption stuff for us.
May 27, 2005 final adoption decree