I'm often asked how and why we decided to adopt. I figured I'd share my response to someone who asked here. The entire story and timeline is available at www.babyhefner.com but this is a good overview.
I’m not sure of your history with regards to fertility, etc. or what is making you consider adoption, so I will just talk as if you are faced with the choice between adopting and pursuing fertility methods or procreating naturally. This will be a lot of information, just FYI. :)
As background – my husband and I didn’t want children for a long
time, mostly for financial reasons (we are financially comfortable but
always chose to spend that money on frequent vacations, food, real
estate, etc) but at some point decided we were interested in parenting
(ah, how we grow up.) We’ve been together for 9 years. I have polycystic
ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and I take a medicine for the PCOS that is
horrible for development of babies and for breastfeeding. In addition, I
have scoliosis that is managed pain-wise pretty well through working
out and yoga, so I didn’t really want to lose that. I never really had
to think about that though because Brian (my husband) and I both were
talking one day and decided to look into adoption. We are both only
children of relatively small families so the ‘genetic’ tie is just not
that important to us. So, into adoption we looked.
The adoption world is CRAZY. People go into adoption thinking
they’re saving a baby.. the reality is, there are a lot more couples
who want to adopt than there are healthy babies for adoption. If you are
willing to/interested in foster-to-adopt, know that in this area (DC,
VA, MD) you’re mostly looking at older children OR babies with issues OR
sibling sets. If you want a healthy newborn you’re looking at the
“expensive” route. With that, you will need the following:A home study
(here’s a link to my blog where I outlined what we needed for ours): https://arlingtonbaby.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/hoops/ – this costs about $1500-$2000.
The “marketing” to find a baby – you can do this yourself if you
want to put yourself out there. You can tell everyone you know,
Facebook, etc. that you’re trying to adopt – you’ll need to be home
study approved by then in case someone knows someone who knows someone..
you can also have your home study provider help you or find a local
lawyer (you’ll likely need a lawyer eventually anyway). Some people send
letters to OB/GYN offices but that’s sort of a questionable practice.
You’re an RN at Children’s, right? So you may have more access than
other people. We chose to go through a facilitator who has you make a
profile and they basically market to crisis pregnancy centers, churches,
schools, on facebook, etc. We paid them $18,200. They market you for
two years but there are no guarantees- because they can’t guarantee
someone will want to pick you to raise their child. And we had some
things against us – I’m not very religious (many pregnant women choosing
adoption are Christian) and we don’t have a long story about failed
fertility issues.
There is also adoptimist.com and parentprofiles.com
– basically like match.com for adoption.Then there’s the legal part –
the legal stuff for us was able to all be handled with the lawyer here
in Louisiana and cost us $11,500 including tracking down baby daddy,
filing legal fees, eventual finalization costs, ICPC clearance (the
thing that makes your state talk to the state where the adoption is
taking place – basically lots of bureaucratic paper pushing required in
all states for out-of-state adoption.. this isn’t an issue in same-state
adoptions BUT same-state agencies take longer to place you.)
Average placement time is like 1-5 years.. our facilitator average
is 11 months so it was worth the “Risk” to us. We signed with them in
August and they matched us with a birthmom May 30. Our facilitator is www.angeladoptioninc.com but there are more and I’d be happy to give you references and reviews of the others we talked to.
There are full-service adoption agencies (in northern virginia the
big ones are Bethany – which is like the national Wal-Mart of adoptions –
and Barker which is mostly international adoptions and VA adoptions)
but they’re expensive, often shady and not very supportive of birthmoms
(they don’t charge you until they place you so they will do anything to
find you a match including lie) but the nice thing is they do the legal,
home study, and marketing for you. We wanted to pick our own social
worker, lawyer, etc. so we used Angel.
International adoption is another consideration but there are
mostly the same issues there – plus shady considerations like legal
aspects, multi-year waits, government issues in third world countries,
and baby trafficking/no background on the mom/etc in some countries.
which you can’t really prove. A friend of mine is actually about to pick
up her baby girl from Korea and she’s almost two years old – she’s been
anxiously waiting for a couple of years! If you want a totally closed
adoption (no insight or communication with the birthmom down the road,
not even through a lawyer) international is a better option. In the US
most adoptions are open now as studies have shown it’s better in the
long run for the child not to always wonder their heritage, takes the
‘mystery’ out of it. But this is all related to domestic adoption –
obviously it’s different when you’re talking out of the country.
Openness is a big consideration – a lot of people who have been
through the ringer with fertility issues are hesitant and threatened to
have relationships with the birthmom. We’re fine with it – our birth
mother is amazing and we have a family-like relationship with her. Some
other people deal with drugs and risks to the children, which we don’t.
We talk via text and in person and facebook etc. but we also have a
facebook page we created just for her for us to share photos with her
and any family she adds to the group. She knows our names, texts me, and
considers us a friend and we’ve spent the past month with her – that
isn’t always the case. Other options are to send letters/photos once a
quarter or once a year through a lawyer – that’s still open, you’ll
still have medical records, and they still get to know the baby is OK
without having to be inundated with it. For us, the facebook page allows
C and her family to control how often they want to visit the page, etc –
our situation is a little unique though.
Mark@fordmiller.com
is the email address of an adoption attorney who sometimes posts
scenarios to his facebook page and a listserv. Send him an email with
just a message to be put on his listserv – do it now, it’s interesting
to get the scenarios even if you aren’t home study approved just to have
an idea of the types of women who give their children for adoption and
what you could be dealing with.
Here are our costs, in total, for comparison breakdown.
Angel Adoption: $18,200
Social worker (www.fridayschild.org – only useful if you’re in Virginia) – $1500 I think for the home study.
Home study “other” costs — like parenting classes, doctor’s visits,
preparing home emergency supplies, costs of CPS background check and
FBI fingerprint tests – probably $250-$500 total
Birthmom costs: $65 for a belly support band before pregnancy;
counseling before and after placement.Legal: $11,500 including lawyer,
processing of ICPC, an optional agency relationship in Louisiana for our
situation that allowed us to sign quicker, will allow us to finalize
quicker, and prevents us from having to come back to LA for
finalization.
Travel costs to the state of the adoption (airfare or car) there
and back. We drove and it’s a 17 hour trip so we also crashed in a
motel in Tennessee for a night.Hotel for 6 weeks (this is rare. Usually
you’re looking at 2 weeks if you travel down after baby is born and then
just wait for ICPC clearance.), food, etc.
So we’re somewhere around $35,000.
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