So, mama and I are thinking about adopting.
Who here has adopted? Was the process a pain in the ass, or relatively easy? We are very excited about adopting. We have a little girl, who we adore, and we want to add to our little family.
Any advice?
I believe Dangerosa has adopted.
I was adopted, but don’t let that frighten you. 
Our family of six children was built through private adoption (2), permanent foster care (2), and the old fashioned way (2). Our children have been an incredible blessing and we feel fortunate to be a part of their lives!
Adoption for us entailed locating an adoption agency, interviewing them to make sure we agreed with their practices and evaluating our motivation and financial situation to make sure we could meet the childrens needs.
Next we went through the home study process, which I’ve heard others report as the most invasive, nerve wrecking, torturous process known to modern man. Luckily we had great social workers and the white gloves were never put on to determine if I dusted the top of the doorframes.
Then came matching us up with prospective birth mothers and having them choose between us and a kabillion other couples hoping to adopt. That happened relatively quickly and within a couple of months our son came home. A year and a day later, our daughter came home via the same agency.
On the flip side of this is two of our permanent foster daughters gave birth and made adoption plans for their children. Ironically, these two pregnant foster sisters made adoption plans within the same extended family and now their daughters are first cousins Their adoptions are very open and one of the little girls spends the weekend with us 7-8 times per year.
Adoption is beautimous and I’ll be happy to answer any question you might have. My address is adoptamomATcox.net. Congrats!!
My husband mouthbreather, and his older sister, were adopted and we’ve already agreed that since there’s a history of “trouble” on my mom’s side of the family that we would adopt if need be.
I’ve heard a lot of horror stories (it’s a lot harder on marriages than most ppl think), but our opinion is if there’s a kid out there that needs a loving home and a couple willing to adopt him/her there’s really no issue.
I’d be fine with adopting from overseas, but I’d rather try to make a difference in my own country than go to elsewhere.
The point is, we’re looking forward to having kids no matter how we get them.
Anyway, back to the OP, adopting from another country is easier in some aspects than in others.
It’s easier to find an infant, but there’s tons of paperwork involved and it may take a couple of years before you’re approved.
My cousin adopted a baby girl years ago. It was a private (I think) adoption in the late 80’s and IIRC it cost her about 40 grand (no sweat for her since she’s rich). The bio mom was a college student who got into a jam. As far as contact I believe she’s seen pictures of her, but that’s about it.
One thing I found out just a few months ago was that, while they were setting up to adopt, my cousin and her husband were told that things would “look better” if they were both of the same denomination. She was Baptist, her husband was Church of Christ. Her husband ended up switching.
I don’t know if they went through a Christian organization or not. A regular government adoption may not take religion into account. Just wanted to throw this out there as food for thought, though.
Two time winner checking in - both the junior Shodans are adopted. Both from South Korea.
There was a lot to the process, both times, and I kept waiting for it to get easier to wait. Never did. We did all our paperwork at once, as soon as we received it.
It took about eighteen months from application to arrival for my son, and about two years for my daughter.
Is there anything specific you want to know about? This was about fifteen years ago.
The only advice is to be ready to answer the same questions over and over, especially if your kid is going to be a different race from you.
“Are they adopted?” Yes.
“How old were they when they came to you?” My son was about five months old, and my daughter about three.
“Do you know anything about their birth parents?” No.
(Actually, that is a lie, but it is more polite than “Yes, and it is none of your farging business”.)
“Are they ‘real’ brother and sister?” They are now.
And so on.
Regards,
Shodan
Sorry to be a downer, but…the first part of this isn’t a ‘happy story’.
Some friends of mine have now adopted twice. The first two kids (brothers) didn’t work out. They had told the folks at social services that they didn’t have the experience or psychological strength to deal with kids who had been physically or sexually abused but they would be happy to take any other kids that needed a home, no matter how old.
They adopted two adorable brothers, six and two. The third day they had them at the house, Dad was bathing them, playing games in the water (making party hats out of bubble bath bubbles was a particular favorite) when the older boy started performing oral sex on the younger boy. When Dad asked why he was doing that (trying not to be horrified) he said “my other daddy told us to do this, and you’re our daddy now so I do it for you”. They went in to talk to social services and were told that the kids were taken from their parents because they were being sexually abused. The kids bio parents then walked into the office and were told “here’s the couple that has your kids now…”
Dad was then told that he wasn’t allowed to ever be alone with the kids. He’s a stay at home dad, his wife works full-time. That obviously wasn’t possible. The next day SS came by and took the kids with no warning.
This does have a happy ending… Last week, they adopted a 5 day old girl. Things have been going fine, as far as I know.
The oldest daughter of a former coworker found herself pregnant at the age of 14. They adopted the baby to a couple from their church and get periodic updates, pictures on birthdays and Christmas cards with stories of the kids development.
I guess anything can happen.
My wife and I adopted a baby boy born in West Texas, last November. We met him a few hours after his birth, and took him home 3 days later.
Was it difficult? Not particularly. Expensive, yes- overall expenses were almost $25,000. Did it take a long time? Well, it took a few months to complete all paperwork, interviews and background checks, and to put together a profile (at many, perhaps most agencies, birth mothers will look at these profiles and select the potential adoptive parents she likes best). Once that process was complete, we waited about 9 months before were were selected. So, from a time perspective, it took us about the same time to get our adoptive child as it would have to do it the natural way!
I purposely quoted her whole post, because I wanted to augment or add to specifics. Sorry it is burning some room here.
My South Korean adoptee son arrive in December of 1990, after a 9-month wait. ( He was 6 months old ). My equally ( heh ) South Korean adoptee daughter arrive in April 1992, after a 4-month wait (she was 4 1/2 months old ) . Yep. 4 months. I’m the only guy with a preemie adoption story
I like your answers. People frequently ask me if they are brother and sister, and I typically give a starch, " not BIOLOGICALLY ! ", which shushes em up right quick.
It’s a balancing act, like all parenting. But, now there is this other layer. How much creedence to I give to something, and do I read into it the adoption angle? Many adopted families celebrate their kids’ Arrival Day. An extra special day they get to have once a yearr. We do this, and each year around that time, my AdoptDar is cranked up on high, for mourning. For comments about birth moms and dads. They tend to become more involved in their birth around this time, although not every year. And, sometimes it pops up at other times. They know every single thing we know. A few years ago, I xeroxed every document for each child, including their Pre-Flight Report, and their initial Placement File. It’s their life, and they should have full access.
I’d be lying if I said that most days I don’t think about it, because I do. I am aware of how beautiful they both are, and how I wouldn’t have made babies like this with MY DNA ! I know they get comments, in their lily-white Middle School in our lily-white town, with a smattering of kids of color, and a macro-smattering of Asians.
I watched my son learn to insert contact lenses two days ago, and sure enough- a small talk about the missing epicanthal fold ensued, because he had to maneuver with Asian Eyes. No biggie, he mastered it in typical Man-Cub fashion. It is integral without being overwhelming, or the central issue of their lives. Neither kid has ever been so angry that they’ve yelled out, " You’re not my real Dad !". I know this has happened to friends, and it may happen one day to me. I will realize that for whatever reason, he or she had to pull out The Big Guns at that moment. In my heart, I’m their Dad. And in my heart, they’re my kids. This isn’t meant as a shot to bio parents, but my life point of view is that reproduction is capricious and parenting is planned.
I’m their parent. ( Luckily )
Cartooniverse
Shodan, I didn’t realize you had Korean kids!
(I knew Cartooniverse did, we exchanged some emails way back).
My son is now five. South Korean. Six and a half months at arrival. We took 2 business days from finishing our homestudy to getting our referral, and four months between referral and arrival. (S.Korea’s economy really sucked in 1998, and they let out more babies that year. In addition, Eastern Europe and China were more popular choices for parents, so there was actually a baby glut with our agency). Our whole process took six months start to finish (is that preemie enough for you, Cartooniverse?).
A week after he arrived home we discovered that I’d missed most of the first trimester of my own pregnancy (we’d adopted due to infertility) and that I was approximately ten weeks pregnant. To add insult to injury, my daughter was born two days too late to make her technically preemie, so my kids are all of not quite thirteen months apart in age and arrived in our lives six months apart.
The process was relatively easy. Its intrusive - i.e. a social worker comes to your house and asks you questions. But no more intrusive than having a OB and a RN looking up your unmentionables while in labor - just in a different way. There is a lot of paperwork, but it wasn’t overwhelming Its expensive - but not that much more expensive than birth fees, maternity leave, and six months of baby expenses (except insurance covered most of that for my daughter). (There is a very nice tax credit now for adopting).
I have friends who have adopted from Khazikstan, Peru and Guatemaula as well. They all had more expensive processes and longer waits. The international programs vary a lot from country to country - in expenses, in waits, in the need to travel abroad, in age of placement, in the requirements they place on parents. Domestic adoptions are a whole different ball of wax.
Advice…think about what you are looking for. Adoptions range from special needs older kids in the US to domestic babies to International toddlers. What special needs are you willing to deal with (if any)? How much are you willing to spend? How long a wait will you accept? Is race a big deal to you (and, I’ll say this as the Mom of an Asian kid - don’t say “I’m not racist, so it isn’t.” There is a big difference between being non-racist and being willing to embrace the culture and ethnic identity of a different race - as well as putting up with looks in the grocery store). Once you think about this a little, start contacting local agencies (and doing internet searches, if you wish, for other agencies).
Best of luck.
(If you are interested in S. Korea - www.adoptkorea.com)
Any questions, my email address is in my profile.
And from the guy side of adoption…
I’m the dad in Dangerosa’s story. Comes with being married and all. 
She covered a lot of the key questions to ask, so I won’t repeat them. I will just offer one observation, guy-to-guy.
If you adopt internationally or inter-racially, be prepared to stifle your urge to punch some insensitive prick in the face.
The question “Is he yours?” gets asked often enough that you get used to it. Sort of. But when you encounter casual, unthinking racism (and there is a lot of it in this world), it makes you angry.
It made me angry before – comes of being raised liberal – but it makes me fighting mad now.
Not necessarily something you want to think about in the context of children, but as Dangerosa points out, race matters – if not to you, then to your coworker, or someone at the grocery store. Be prepared to deal with it and come out a better person.
Can I, as the other sideof the coin, give some input?
The adoption agency that I went through gave a pack of papers with questions about, oh most everything, to be answered by both the man and the woman. When I was trying to decide whom to give my kick happy kitten to, I read literally DOZENS of them. I sent couples packing for all sorts of reasons. Attitude being the number one reason, I figured you cop an attitude with me before we’ve even met there’s no way we’ll get along later! The other thing I rejected the most was not answering the question clearly or only with one or two words.COme on meet me half way here!
The couple, I finally chose, wrote and wrote and wrote. She poured out her heart and soul on that page and when she ran out of space she flipped the page over and wrote some more. By the time I finished reading the profile, I felt like I knew them, I could be friends with them and I could trust them to take good care of my kitten. We have an open adoption as well.
So what I am trying to say is be honest, go a little extra distance and try to make friends with someone you havent even met! It most likely will pay you back ten fold! And trust me if you’re nervous, the birth mom is even MORE nervous!
GOOD LUCK!
How about some insight from an adoptee?
My parents (the people who raised me) were having trouble conceiving, so they signed up to adopt. Friends of theirs were also going through the process. I was born, and after spending the required time in hospital, they went to get me. Unfortunately, my mother was very nervous, because that same day she found out that she was pregnant. Knowing they were getting me, the pressure was off to conceive. Apparently quite common. My mother was afraid the adoption people wouldn’t let her have me.
So, they picked me up and brought me home. I spend nine peaceful months as an only-child. Then my sister entered the world, and the horror began! 
We ended up starting school at the same time, but were never in the same class until out first class in high-school - where they seated us in alphabetical order. “Psst! Chris! What’s the answer to question two?” A lot of people thought we were twins, and that we looked alike. (Interestingly, not many people did double-takes when I told them I was nine months older, before telling them I was adopted.)
Anyhoo, one thing that sticks out to me is the fact that I don’t remember when my parents told me I was adopted. I was quite young when they told me, but it didn’t bother me in any way. I simple understood. Granted, I was a pretty bright kid, but I do believe it’s better to tell your kids something like that as soon as they can understand the basic idea. Over time they’ll come to understand the finer details, but nothing will come as a shock.
To this day, I’ve never been really interested in finding my birth parents. There’s some curiosity, I suppose, and for medical reasons it might be helpful (I suffer from migraines and depression), but it’s never really on my mind. Actually, while deep in depression following my first failed attempt at university, my mother thought it might help me to know (it never crossed my mind), and confessed to accidentally seeing the birth name my biological mother gave me. So I do have a good place to start if I do ever decide to find my birth parents.
I’m not sure if any of that is helpful to anyone else, but that’s my story. Just for the halibut, I was born in Newcastle, New Brunswick, Canada on February 16th, 1976. (I’ll keep my birth name to myself for purposes of authentication.) Who knows, somebody else might be looking for me. So, if anybody knows anybody…
Anyhoo…
We went down to the county Human Services department and picked up a sibling group (5 1/2-year-old girl and 3-year-old half-brother) 11 1/2 years ago.
The adoption, itself, was not a big effort. The county made all the prospective adoptive couples go through the training for foster parents. So we had three months of weekly parenting classes that were beneficial–bringing home adopted kids, particularly older ones, is not the same as bringing home a baby from the hospital.
We had to fill out innumerable forms for background checks and then write an autobiography along with several questionaires trying to make sure we knew why we were adopting. (I noted that I wanted a couple of kids to corrupt in my image, resulting in a horrified “You can’t say that!” from one of our interviewers and hearty laughter from the other one.)
By using the county, our expenses were minimal. (Gas to the training class and changed birth certificate fee with adoption “court costs” are all that I recall beyond the normal costs of new furniture and clothing.)
Since then, it has been an interesting journey. The percentage of kids with ADD/ADHD is much higher among adopted kids for reasons that no one understands. And, of course, the reason that older sibling groups are available for adoption tends to be that the original parent(s) could not do the job, so there are any number of issues to address: imposing actual rules on behavior; dealing with issues arising from neglect or from pre-natal neglect, recreational drugs, or alcohol; memories (or imagined memories) of how it “used to be better”; and simply the sense of loss that they were removed from their original parent(s).
For all the aggravation, however, I would note that I know lots of birth kids that have been harder to handle than my two and being a parent has certainly made a difference in my life.
Now that they are teens, (my son just hit puberty, hard), I periodically consider boxing them up and shipping them by the most circuitous route to Lower Slobbovia,but I gather that is a comment feeling among many parents of teens.
My son, just last week, announced for the first time that he was not really part of our family. That has a lot more to do with his ongoing psychological issues than an actual desire to leave the family. It is pretty easy to separate what he says when he is mad from what he really means. We’ll get through it.
I just want to point out that its my bio daughter (at 4) who has announced “you aren’t my mom!” Sometimes, what seems like adoption related issues are, in fact, normal kid things amplified through the adoption filter.
Just before I got pregnant I started to look into overseas adoption. I saw a picture of a little boy and I fell absolutely and completely in love with him. I enquired about him and I found out he was in being adopted, that the website had not been updated. I still wonder how he is.
We are not sure about a second child just yet. I want to adopt overseas because I have a horror of the mom coming back into the picture. I truly admire those of you with the strenth of having the birth mother in the picture. I just couldn’t do it.
It makes me wonder if then maybe I am not suited to adopt. I would be hopelessly crushed if my child said that they wanted to find their birth mother. 
I will not tell you are wrong to feel this way. I would encourage you to think it over and try to understand why you feel this way.
Think of all the people who are interested in genealogy and tracking their ancestors. Now consider the same impulse in a person who has been irrevocably severed from that connection. (We get lots of people posting, here, who have expressed the feeling that they have no desire for children and others who have expressed a deep desire to create their own progeny. These are not rational decisions that are good or bad; they are just feelings that different people express.) The desire for an adopted child to seek out the birth parents is simply a longing for connection that is separate from their love for their adoptive parents and does not reflect on the adoptive parents in any way.
We have all the social work that was written up on our kids while the county was forced to move to the point of removing them from the birth mom. When my kids are 24, I will help them look her up. (I use 24 at the suggestion of the various adoption counsellors and support groups who point out that there is generally still too much emotional turmoil at age 18, when they are, technically, adults, to make a reunion a good thing.)
Adopting overseas is no guarentee that your child will not want to find their birthmother. It does make it harder and more heartbreaking to find the birthparents if the child does look as an adult. I also know of several people who have Korean children and have relationships with the birthparents - “open” adoptions where the birthmom lives halfway across the world.
And, while it does decrease the risk of a “disrupted placement” I know plenty of folks with “disrupted referrals.” Birthmother changes her mind before the child reaches you. Or circumstances change in some other way for the child (there have been rumors of “bait and switch” in some programs - where the child you were referred is not available when you go to pick her up and a child with more significant needs is subbed in).
I will say that I think of my son’s birthmother almost daily. With gratitude and sadness and a sense of loss. If its this difficult for me - the one that’s not supposed to have a sense of loss (other than infertility - in my case kind of a moot point) in the adoption triad - I can’t imagine what it is like for her, or what it will be like for my son as he gets old enough to understand. I want my son to be content - and if being content means he needs to go outside my comfort level, I’ll do that for him.
I would agree with tomndebb about the feelings you might get when your kids want to contact their bio-parents. It is not a rejection of you.
It is not, however, always going to be a happy reunion. A close friend of mine and his sister are adopted, and his sister got in contact with her birth mother as an adult. It did not turn out well. The birth mother had a great many problems in her life, and assumed that her bio-daughter was volunteering to take over and solve all her problems, many of which were financial. Then, when the bio-daughter made it clear that she neither could nor wanted to be the cash cow and main emotional support for this person, whom she had only known a month or so, the birth mother cut off contact. The daughter took this very hard, as a rejection of her that was more traumatic than being placed for adoption.
YMMV, obviously, and I know of several other cases where it turned out better.
To be honest, this was one of the reasons we adopted from overseas as well. Not the only or the main one, but open adoption is not an idea I am at all interested in. And once we adopted our son, it seemed the news was full of stories about ghastly legal battles where birth and adoptive parents were suing each other for custody. Probably no more common than ever, but I noticed it more.
Neither of my children have ever expressed much interest in finding their birth parents, or returning to Korea. We discussed a trip to Korea for the family, and the other option was a trip to Disney. Both kids were very considerate of their parents’ feelings (as they usually are), but when it became clear we were suggesting the Korea trip for their benefit, let us know that they would much prefer a trip to Disney. So don’t take it for granted that your kids will be longing to “find their roots”, at least not right away.
Cartooniverse,Brainiac4, and Dangerosa (hi, guys!) both mentioned the racial aspects of foreign adoption. Our adoption agency pushed that angle pretty hard - almost too hard. It may be a factor, but it is probably not going to be the most important factor in parenting your children, at least in my experience. After a while, you sort of forget that aspect in the general fog of parenting. It no longer occurs to me that my kids are a different race from me very often. So it is not really much of an issue.
Certainly there is still racism in the world, and you run into it once in a while. We got letters from a local crackpot some years ago, telling us we were race traitors for adopting across racial lines, but we didn’t respond and he stopped. None of my kids’ friends seem to notice that my kids are biologically Asian, even now that my son has started dating ( :eek: ). Once in a while we used to get some funny, or even hostile, looks in public, and we still get the occasional double-take when strangers put my very Germanic last name to my obviously non-Aryan son and daughter, or when people see the white folks with their Asian children in the supermarket. I got more of that when they were young. But I think real racists, when they see me (I am not a small or meek-appearing person) being gushingly affectionate with my children, realize that I would probably not be the best person in the world to confront.
As I said, people still ask questions, but it seems to be more out of curiousity rather than malice. I try not to have a chip on my shoulder on the subject, since they usually don’t mean anything by it.
I am in a fortunate position, however. My brother-in-law and his sisters are both adopted, and my cousin and her husband have two Korean-born daughters, so it is not at all unusual in my family to look different from your parents. And nobody cares.
Regards,
Shodan
My wife and I are still in the early stages of the adoption process ourselves. We went with a very Christian organization because 1) a coworker of ours went through them with great success and 2) ideally a Christian group would be less likely to rip you off.
I mentioned this in another thread (I recently changed my handle from ‘llamapoet’), but we will be adopting from Ukraine. The good side to this is that you make only one trip. You visit the orphanage(s), visit the children, check their medical records, and can take home the child you wish. The downside is that you are required to be there for up to 30 days while the court provides time to see if the adoption will be contested. If it is, then it is possible you will come back empty handed, or you may need to stay longer and go through it again with a 2nd child.
We have been told, and have been provided a cost breakdown and it will be about $25k for us as well, $30k total if we do two children (we cannot really afford to do this process from scratch twice, so if we wanted two children, at the same time seems wisest).
That all is still down the road though. We are currently filling out our second, and hopefully final, wave of paperwork before we have our homestudies. The paperwork includes personal questions like ‘what is love’, ‘what is discipline’, etc. as well as forms to get your doctor’s bill of health and fingerprints for the records.