In 30 days I'll either be a father or dead

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

OK, the problem is…

When most people dream of having a baby, they dream about a baby. They want a healthy baby - you don’t hear of people hoping to concieve a child with Down’s. They (usually) want a little baby.

You go through years of infertility. Eventually you have to shift your dream. You won’t have a dream pregnancy. Your baby won’t have Aunt Kate’s eyes. But some things for most people remain important. Baby. Healthy.

You give up a lot when you adopt. But you do gain at least one thing. You can turn down a child that doesn’t meet your idea of healthy. There is little risk in adoption of getting a child with birth defects if you don’t want that. Granted, some things turn up years later, that is a risk all parents take.

The domestic children that are easy to adopt are usually older. They often have been removed from abusive situations, have been shuffled through the system. They often come in sibling groups. And they often have health issues. We were told that 95% of the kids “in the system” had been physically, mentally, or sexually abused. Many were exposed to drugs and alcohol in-vitro. For a couple who stopped drinking wine and started pre-natal vitamins when they started trying to concieve, this isn’t what they had in mind.

I admire people who adopt these kids, but its a special calling…and not one for someone who was only dreaming of a healthy baby.

Those children are out there for anyone to adopt. If you are fertile or infertile. Those of us who are infertile are not responsible for them any more than those who are fertile are. If you think they are needy, and you have room for them, please contact your social services department. But we’ve decided that is “too much” for us to walk into willingly.

When you say “why didn’t you just adopt one of these kids - because they need homes” you aren’t acknowledging what we’ve “said” we’ve wanted - a relatively healthy baby. Kids are not interchangable parts - adopted kids are no more interchangable than bio kids. If anyone said to a bio parent “why did you have “your own,” there are so many needy children out there” they’d get slapped. Its the same for adoptive parents.

Healthy babies on the other hand, are not easy to adopt domestically - of any race. There are long waits, heartbreaking stories of “disruption.” Its a very expensive and uncertain process. International adoption adds two very important things - its realitively certain (sometimes countries close their programs mid adoption or something else happens) and its relatively predictible. Go to your adoption agency today with “how long for China” and you’ll get an answer that has a window - and the answer will be pretty close. For people who struggled with infertility “knowing” that its ten months to referral and another two before they have a child at home is very comforting. Its also predictable in expenses. Adoption is seldom cheap, but if your agency says $30k, its going to be darn close to $30k…with domestic adoptions it can be $30k and no child, followed by $30k and no child…
Since Tommy brought up the race point, I’ll add two cents. Our son is Korean Not wanting to adopt a child of a different race is not racist. Have a multiracial family IS different than having a “common” family. Our son is six and in addition to dealing with adoption issues, we deal (and more often) with racial issues “why do I look different.” So far we haven’t had to deal with racial slurs - but I expect to. Brainiac4 and I are white. We took this on willingly - but like a non-healthy child - its an additional challenge. We felt well prepared to handle being a multiracial family - but not everyone lives in a city with a lot of Korean adoptees, a lot of multiracial marriages, a lot of Asians - we do. We’ve since gotten lucky as we have friends who have also adopted, so our son isn’t the only kid running around our house who isn’t pink. Once again, the benefit to adoption is choice.

22

Congrats TommyTutone! I’m sure we’ll all be ready to ooh and ahh over your pictures as soon as you put them up :smiley:

Now for some nosey-ness if you don’t mind…You said “adoption of our daughter(s)” does that mean you aren’t adopting a specific child, or were you hoping to be allowed to adopt more than one and aren’t sure you’ll get both? The only international adoptee, that I know the details of their adoption, was adopted by her parents after they requested her particularly from the orphanage, but she was born in the Philippines so it’s probably different from how things work in Europe. I hope things work out for you as well as they have for her family. I haven’t seen her for two years, but then, one year post-adoption she’d made great strides with learning English and everything else.

One of the great things about people is that we don’t all find the same thing appealing. I completely understand couples with fertility issues wanting to adopt healthy babies. A lot of people love babies. I’m not terribly interested in ever having a baby myself (my genes were packaged with several landmines I’ve been lucky to avoid so far, but would potentially pass on) but I can picture myself adopting someday if I married a man who wanted children (I wouldn’t mind step-parenting either ftr.) But not a baby - I get along well with kids and teens, but infants are scarily helpless; I’m the one person who’ll never ask to hold your new baby. Orphaned siblings would be very appealing, especially if they were between 2 and 12 or so.

23

Good luck Tommy and Mrs. Tommy!

24

Thanks for answering. I’m certainly not going to tell anyone that children are interchanable, or to go out and adopt a child that is sick, or has behavioral or mental issues. In my family’s case though, social services was the place to go when looking for a healthy baby. So when I wondered why people make the choice to look outside the country, I was taking the issue of only wanted a healthy baby into consideration. I don’t think that anyone in this thread would say that adopted children are inter-changable, but we can’t help but let our own experiences affect the way that we approach this subject. When we were looking (in the early 90s) there were a lot of healthy babies listed in the blue books. The result of going to social services for my parents was the adoption a healthy five month old girl. Of course, a lot can change in a decade. This kind of experience may be very rare now.

As for the point about race. I agree. If someone isn’t 150% sure about parenting a child of a different race, then they shouldn’t do it.

I just felt that it was important to explain where I was coming from, and that it **wasn’t ** from the position of believing that people should take any child who comes their way. We simply had a positive experience with the foster care system, and now I’ve got a psuedo-kid (she’s more than a decade younger than me so our bond is more parental-siblingish if that makes sense) who is incredibly talented, kind, bright, stubborn and healthy.

I accept that people who chose another route made the right choice for their family. Just like any other subject, people often wonder why they arrived at that choice. Not because of expecting them to justify their decision to me, but just for informational purposes. I wouldn’t wander up to someone and ask, but if I’d made a thread on it and someone was willing to share their experiences, then great.

Okay, my part in this hijack is now over. Sorry for that TommyTutone.

25

Just a quick note: Sorry if it seems like I’m demeaning your own personal experiences by sharing my family’s adoption story, since I was not a parent. In our case, from infertility to adoption, the whole situation was a family affair. At this point, I don’t know the direct pain of trying to conceive a child but not being able to. I don’t pretend to know. Since my parents and I are very close, I did experience a lot of their pain with them though, and they would have written posts that mirrored mine if they’d been board members, since the subject has come up in our family before and we’d all had similar questions.

26

I know, and I always assume “no harm intended” but you asked why it was offensive, and that is why. It implies children (our children) are interchangable. It implies we bear “responsibility” for children others don’t want. It implies we shouldn’t have a choice because fate dealt us a “bum hand.”

In our state, the sort of adoption you are describing was rare 10 years ago, and it didn’t last much later than the adoption of your sister in most states. Now, open adoption with the birth mother choosing her child’s parents is the norm - and the way to adopt an infant through social services without birthparent involvement is through the foster care system (at least here). The foster care system can be a good option, but wasn’t a good option for us, as we can’t meet the needs the foster system wants for infants (we both work, and they want someone who can pick a baby up on no notice and drop what they are doing to care for it). Few birthmoms just turn babies over to the state any longer - most are actively involved in an adoption plan. If it still did work that way, there wouldn’t be a huge international demand.

I’ve heard stories from people who have adopted domestically quickly and without issue. They decide to do it, get their homestudy done, their photos in the book and are matched with a birthmother in a matter of weeks. But that isn’t common - no guarentees, and, for the reasons Brainiac4 described above, we didn’t think it likely to happen to us.

I also have an aquaintance whose photo and dear birthmother letter were in a book five years before they decided to stop trying.

BTW, for a funny insightful look at domestic infant adoption, read “The Kid: What Happened When My Boyfriend and I Decided to Get Pregnant” by Dan Savage (with the disclaimer, this book is not for the homophobic). It may be the best book on what parents who adopt domestically (and adoptive parents in general) go through.

27

Ukraine is different from other countries in that we have no idea what our children will look like until we get over there. They will introduce us to one and if we make the connection, we go ahead with the court procedings. If not, however, we respectfully decline (we don’t need to include a reason, but it helps), and then look at another child, potentially in a different city.

Because of their laws, at least one of us is required to stay there while the courts go through with their processes. Most countries allow parents to make two shorter trips, one to match with a child, then one, usually a month later to bring the child home.

As for the question of child(ren), we originally applied and were approved for two, but as my wife and I talked about it, we started leaning towards one because of concerns of financial security for the child (we do fairly well financially, but I do not want to compromise the well-being of our children by going crazy and adopting more than we can handle). Now over the past couple of days, we are thinking two again, but we will go with our ‘heart’ in this case as we meet the children. We would not want to break up a sibling pair and as such, the second child can be a little bit older (but ideally, no older than four years).

Lastly, regarding taking offense from the earlier question and/or the hijacks, I am not offended. We had originally considered doing domestic, but because my wife and I are a little bit older for adoptive parents (I’m 34, she’s 40), we knew it would be very difficult to be chosen for a baby in the states. Without making overly gross generalizations, in some (but not all) foreign countries, slightly older people are welcome as parents because of their wisdom (HA!) and financial and emotional stability. In addition, as I think was mentioned before, the wait domestically can be 2+ years, and again, because of our ages, we really did not want to wait that long if we could help it (the whole process for us is going to be about 15 months).

28

What agency are you working with, and have you been satisified with them so far?

29

Sorry to highjack more, but why does adoption take so long and cost so much? I can understand travel expense and time for paperwork to go through the system, but I just don’t understand why it should take a year or more and cost thousands of dollars to take in a kid who needs a home. Is it a bunch of legal charges or something?

30

There is a lot of variation,

Say you want to adopt your sister’s child and she want this. This can be done for maybe $1000 and in a few months - depending on what state you are in and how much social worker/attorney time is required and how fast you can set up a court date.

On the other hand, if you go through an agency and maybe have a private birthmother search, you can spend thousands just advertisting for a birthmother (read college papers sometime). In some states, adoptive parents are allowed to pay living expenses for the birthmother while she is pregnant. She usually delivers on their insurance, but sometimes there are medical costs. There is the social workers time and energy to do a home study (and keep it updated) so when Susie the college student chooses you to be her babies parents, the paperwork is all up to date. Often there are lawyers involved, they don’t tend to work cheap.

With international adoptions, fees often support other children that won’t be adopted. Fees support programs for birthmothers - prenatal care, education. A lot of these countries don’t have great social services programs - orphanages and birth mother care are often funded through adoption fees. Care of the child until they are placed is funded. And a lot of countries have graft. For time, you need to finish a homestudy (we took about 40 hours worth of a social workers time and resources, between being interviewed and having her type up our homestudy) - this usually takes a few months to complete, there are several visits, normally set up a few weeks apart. Before you get that far though, you’ve been screened - they want to make sure you’ve never been convicted of anything serious, they want you to provide medical records, etc. Of course, you pay for that, and it takes time. Once your homestudy is complete it hits often hits the quagmire of red tape that is some other countries adoption system. Eventually (generally, obviously, there are different ways to do this) you are matched with a child (or not) and told to come over. Some countries want two trips (Russia). Before you can bring the country out, the child needs a passport and an exit visa. Before you can bring them in, our government needs to provide an entrance visa. Not sure if you’ve ever dealt with Immigration, they aren’t the most responsive government agency. Oh, and they charge you for it. In our case, we had a delay known as “quota.” South Korea only lets a certain number of children “out” each year. Get a referral late in the year and they need to wait until next year to travel. The reasons behind this are complicated, but its a Korean rule.
There is also the “child supply” problem. Despite the worlds orphanages being filled with children, not all of them are eligible for adoption. You often have to get in line and wait your turn. If the country is very popular, there will be more parents than children. Other countries are “looking for parents” - those countries tend to have faster adoption cycles. Economic issues can also effect the availability of children. If the birthmom thinks she has a chance to raise the child, she often will. In bad economic times (we adopted during the Asian economic crash in the late 1990s), more children are available.

31

I got back here too late and you answered my questions with your last post.
Nothing horrible really, just what made you decide for out of the counrty and how did you decide ages? Have you decided boys or girls, or whatever “clicks”?
I have five children of my own, the oldest 15 and the youngest is 7 and two years ago I was looking into doing surogate parenting but I ended up having to have those parts removed.
I have always said (even before I had children) that I would have what I was able to have and I eventually wanted to foster.
I joke when I call them heathens (they love it), and when someone says they would one day like to have children and I tell them why wait, I have five they can choose from. (that depends of which has me pulling my hair out that day)

Post pictures of everything! The trip, the child(ren), everything!
I am very happy for you both.