- [Nicole] Alright hun, so just,
you know, look at the camera.
- Okay, did you push the button?
- Yeah. - Okay.
- [Nicole] I pushed the button.
- Hi, my name is Kristan and--
- [Nicole] You have to wait until I sit down next to you.
- Oh. - Okay?
- Okay.
- [Nicole] You're doing great.
- Thanks.
- We're just admiring your family's matching hats.
- My name is Kristan and I'm--
- Baby crazy.
Good morning.
- He spit up on her. - Oh!
Well I'm not pushing one out.
- I'm not pushing one out either.
- No, gross.
- [Nicole] Hi.
I definitely don't feel 100% ready for this.
- [Kristan] Nicole, no one feels ready to be a parent.
- Let's back up a second
and tell you where we're coming from.
- [Nicole] Kristan was living in New Jersey on a dairy farm.
- [Kristan] And Nicole was living in Mexico, on a goat farm.
- [Nicole] And then one day we were both visiting
our old stomping ground.
- [Kristan] And our paths finally crossed,
even though we had lived within a mile of each other
in New York City for 12 years.
- [Nicole] We knew it was love.
- [Kristan] We moved to Oakland,
which is full of queer folks and artists
and people from all walks of life.
- [Nicole] Pretty soon we started to think about kids.
- [Kristan] One kid.
- [Nicole] We weighed our options.
- [Kristan] And thought about doing it the old fashion way.
- [Nicole] We thought about private adoption.
- [Kristan] And international adoption.
- [Nicole] And then we started talking about how there
are almost half a million youth in foster care nation wide.
And nearly a quarter of them are waiting for adoption.
And so we decided we wanted to adopt from foster care.
- [Kristan] The thing is, there's a lot of mixed
information out there.
- [Nicole] Entering the child welfare system can feel
a little bit like walking into the world's biggest DMV.
- [Kristan] You know, the lines are crazy,
and then when your number is finally called--
- [Nicole] It turns out the clerk
is leaving for their lunch break.
- [Kristan] And you filled out all the wrong forms anyway.
- [Nicole] Exactly.
The goal of the system is to send kids back home.
This is considered the best case scenario.
And they call it reunification.
- [Kristan] But sometimes this isn't possible,
and a certain number of kids go to foster in adoptive homes.
- [Nicole] We know that choosing this path requires patience
and we know we might even get our hearts broken.
But here we go.
- Will you pull this to the,
it won't go any further?
There's a long checklist of things we have to do
before we move on to the home study.
The home study is basically when the social worker
comes over to check out our house,
and make sure we're suitable for adopting a child.
We have so much to do.
Baby proofing, well no, cleaning, no, baby proofing,
I don't even know what to do first.
- [Nicole] We're open to adopting a kid
up to the age of four.
- When we've figured out the age,
we'll come back and get more things.
It's supposed to go here but.
I don't understand how parents do this.
There we go.
- [Nicole] Rocky, test it out.
- [Kristan] Honey, when was the last time
you watered the plant?
It's like it was here all along.
- [Nicole] So this is it,
this is our apartment.
- So we're looking for things
that might be unsafe for a baby.
- [Nicole] Or a three or a four year old.
- [Makeda] How do you even open it?
- [Skyler] I think you just press that button,
and you just pull.
- [Nicole] Oh, bad news.
Okay so basically we need to move the knives.
- Yeah!
Can we go in the living room now?
- [Nicole] We haven't been able to figure out
how to childproof this yet.
Yeah, that's vodka, is that a problem?
- Mm, nah. - Yeah.
- And be careful of this here,
maybe you can move it somewhere, maybe--
- We can't move this though it's tied to the wall.
Like we can't do anything about it.
- [Makeda] Oh look there's a window!
- [Kristan] Uh-oh.
- So is that a problem?
- [Skyler] Yeah, you're going to have to cover that,
'cause it could crawl out and fall.
- [Kristan] These pull out--
- [Nicole] Oh, oh my god I never even thought about that.
That's so bad.
- That can be very dangerous.
What about the candles?
Candles can be dangerous.
- [Nicole] What's so bad about candles?
- [Makeda] You can fire on!
- [Skyler] It's going to light it,
and you touch them and it's on fire, you could--
- [Makeda] Die!
- I mean, I don't know, you guys are being
a little tougher than I thought.
- So, how do you all think that we did?
10 is like perfect 10, you're ready to have a baby.
- [Nicole] We got candle problems, we got knife problems.
Lot of sharp edges--
- Let's do a nine.
- [Nicole] That's very generous of you.
- [Kristan] A nine?
Oh thanks!
- A 10!
- Nine and a eight, kind of.
- [Nicole] And a nine and an eight, okay.
- Mine's 10! - It's getting lower,
I think we should quit while we're ahead.
It's really old, it's from the 1700s.
- [Skyler] Somebody said the hundreds were not even real.
- Whoa!
- [Nicole] The 1700s are very real.
- [Kristan] The home study is, right around the corner.
- [Nicole] I know.
- What do you think she's gonna ask?
- I mean I think she's gonna ask a lot of invasive,
and uncomfortable questions.
- I think she's gonna ask, you know, who drinks the most?
- [Nicole] Yeah? Drugs.
Who does drugs?
- She's gonna ask who watches porn.
- She will definitely ask that, I Googled it.
- What?
- Yeah, it's a home study thing, they ask about porn.
- She's gonna be judging us,
even though she says that she's not.
- She's definitely gonna be judging us.
- I definitely think she's also gonna ask like,
who the dad is in the relationship.
- I think that's kind of obvious.
- What is your worst fear?
- You know, I feel like nobody knows if they can handle
raising a child with PTSD.
And the odds are we will have a child with PTSD.
I've never experienced that,
so who am I to help some kid through it?
And what if they never bond with us?
What if we fail at that?
And what if they tear us apart?
Just what if?
What if it gets that bad?
- [Kristan] I don't have those fears.
- Really?
- I don't.
I don't know, it's just not my fear.
My biggest fear, actually, is like my family's
health history of having so much cancer in my family,
of like dying and like leaving before you.
And our child and like, leaving you and our child.
That's my biggest fear.
- Oh man, it's a little scary, but we'll be fine.
We got this.
- We got this!
- Yeah.
- Yeah!