Depression after failure - We need your help!

So With IAC going out of business it’s been a whirlwind of not only emotions but a WTF do we do now.

I can say we contacted our local news to bring to light the problems IAC had and while it wasn’t a perfect piece at least we had our voices heard.

http://komonews.com/news/local/i-just-want-to-be-a-mother-families-agonizing-after-adoption-agency-suddenly-closes

I had a hard weekend recently in light of the closure and then our Superbowl party where I met the 2 babies who should’ve been our babies BFFS as it were. If our placement hadn’t failed last August our boy would’ve been about 2 months older than our friend’s boys they had in November/December.  It was a gratifying day to hold the babies for 8 hours but at the same time it was devastating. I actually cried the whole way home in a snow storm meaning it took us 3 hours to get home.  Now I know it’s on me and my emotions, etc but seriously it’s been 4 years and I’m human.  The week leading up to this is what I think broke me.  I’ve not had issues when the others were born, except to be jubilant in their arrival. I love those kids as my own.  I watched their parents grow up and then have them so what’s not to love!

Today, I find we’re at cross-roads.  I’ve contacted, many lawyers and none have contacted us back.  There was a lawyer in our news piece that I left a message with and here we are 5 days later and no response to our message I left for her.  I had also contacted a lawyer in Seattle and he took my name and number but never called me back; even after our social worker emailed him so ya that doesn’t breed any confidence. These are AAAA Lawyers so how are we supposed to be confidant with them handling our potential situation.  The answer is we aren’t.  Thankfully the lawyer we had with our failed placement is available but I haven’t reached out yet. This is on my to do list.

We are lucky to have own website on top of other social media but so far the biggest issue we’ve had is no one shares our pages.  Everyone says oh hey grats! hope it happens soon but no one steps up and shares us. So please if you follow us or even just read our blog please for the love of all please share our journey because now without an agency we’re stuck on word of mouth/social media. 

Our personal website is http://www.dndadoption.org/

Of course we still have FB, Twitter, Pinterest, Adoptimist, and you tube.

Intake Stats, Google Analytics, and Me

Every month our agency posts stats on the intakes, matches and placements.  Most of the waiting couples look over them to get an idea if our letters went out and to where.  The system for reporting it is anonymous but it’s great to see how things change from month to month. August wasn’t the best month in terms of intakes and matches which can be a bummer to see especially when compared to our Google Analytics for the month of August. We then get our actual numbers from our counselor once they have them telling us how many times our letters went out.

I am a bit obsessed when it comes to the stats and visits to our page and our blog.  It’s more about the comfort found in being seen rather than not.  Since we are in the middle of our agency’s website for families we’re viewed less often as a general rule of thumb. It also tells me where the traffic is coming from to our site so it’s good to know if I’m getting direct traffic versus say Twitter, Facebook or this blog. It is a great tool to use in terms of how to focus your efforts on the most seen places.  Since Pinterest doesn’t really drive anyone to our sites it’s fair to say I don’t spend much time or energy on trying to keep our daily lives updated there. I also tend to have more personal stuff on our Instagram account rather than adoption related specific things so it doesn’t drive much traffic either but it’s so easy to use I regularly post. All the different pages that link to our profile are but just a few ways to get to know us better and I like knowing which are working for us.

We also have Google Ads with our agency and another website we’re on.  While I can’t track the other website directly they do have their own tracking on the site. The problem with the tracking for that site is after 30 days after the person viewed it they fall off so you can never reliably check on what state the view came from. Something changed in the system earlier this year because it didn’t used to do that but for the most part we can see where the views come from and how long someone looks at the page on average.

One of the ads they run for us

So why am I so into where people view us? I’m just a researcher by nature.  I love knowing what is going on or not as the case may be.  While waiting to adopt the not knowing can drive you bonkers because you never know when or where that call, text, or email will come in. I like that on any given day I can see how many bots viewed our blog or how many people clicked that Google Ad or viewed our agency page directly. It helps me feel better in the zero control situation that adoption is. I know others don’t ever look at their analytics because they don’t want to become driven to check it all the time but for me and my needs it works.