We Are Going to Adopt a Child!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Nine years ago I posted a thread here about my interest in adoption. That’s pretty much always where my heart has been set, and Sr. Weasel has been into it too because his sister is adopted. It’s been a brutal ride through my husband’s grad school program (7 years!) and a devastating miscarriage, but he finally has his degree, we are financially stable, we have a home, we are close to family support, and we are ready to do this.

I’ve been doing fairly intensive research for the past few months. I’ve looked at national agencies as well as local ones (the biggest challenge in Michigan, honestly, has been finding an agency that doesn’t discriminate against LGBT couples, as such discrimination is a dealbreaker on principle.) Yesterday we met with a local agency that specializes in voluntary domestic infant adoption and got the full rundown on fees, process, etc. It was an incredibly thorough meeting, so much my head was spinning, thank Og we wrote it all down. That lady knew what she was talking about through and through, and never sugar coated a damned thing, so we have agreed, we have found our agency.

There were a couple spots of really good news:

  1. She said adoptions through their agency are $14-18k including additional expenses, and we had anticipated closer to $25k. While their fees aren’t outrageously (suspiciously) low, they are lower than any of the other agencies I investigated. We have some of the fees saved up and are on track to have them all by the middle of next year, which should be well before they are due, but worst case scenario we do have the savings to drain our bank accounts and make it happen tomorrow if we absolutely had to.

  2. She said my history of depression is unlikely to count against me and in many cases may even be viewed as a positive, particularly if the birth parents have a history of mental illness and are concerned about our ability to handle it (doesn’t hurt my husband is a child psychologist.) Honestly that was one of my biggest fears so it was a relief to hear - similar concept with my history of childhood abuse, they said the purpose of the home study is to assess our ability to parent a child currently, so while past issues are relevant the important thing is that they have been addressed.

We’ve got the application in hand and this weekend Sr. Weasel and I will convene to complete the application and discuss at length what we’re willing to take on. (She said the process length depends on whether we are open to adopting a child of a different race, a child with alcohol or drug exposure, a child with a mental health history in the family, etc.) So we’re going to start by taking this online course they recommended called ‘‘Conspicuous Families,’’ specifically about dealing with race issues and adoption. Then we’re going to talk about whether we really are equipped to parent a child of another race (we are white.) If we submit the application next week, we’ll probably be on the Waiting Families List by January.

I am, to say the least, a bit overwhelmed. I knew the process was unpredictable, but I didn’t really grasp the zillion factors that contribute to that. I knew the wait could be 2-3 years (she said if you’re open to those things above, it’s usually 1-2 years) but I didn’t know that some matches happened literally the day the baby was born. She said we’d have anywhere from 5 months to zero days advance notice once we got a match! How crazy is that? Waiting and waiting and waiting and BAM! Baby. Then there are all the details of who the birth parents are and what extent they want to be involved moving forward. Then there’s what they deem the ‘‘high-risk’’ period of six weeks where the baby is home but the adoption is not yet finalized. She said about 10% of the time, the birth parents do change their mind, and that it happens most frequently at the hospital the day the child is born.

Right now I’m just trying to process it all. I’ve got an Excel Doc with each successive step and am going to be as organized as possible about this, but damn. It’s a lot to deal with, not only logistically but emotionally as well.

I will probably be posting a lot of updates to this thread, both for my own sanity and maybe to educate others in real time who might also be interested in going that route.
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General Disclaimer I Really Wish I Didn’t Have to Make But I Think We All Know Why:** The purpose of this thread is to share experiences, support, advice, and generally educate anyone interested in being educated. Anyone who comes in here to attack the motives or ethics of adopting parents will be reported for threadshitting.

2

Congrats Spice Weasel! I have no doubt you are going to make an awesome mom. :slight_smile:

3

Congratulations! Best wishes for the whole process!

4

Do you own a coal mine or something?

:stuck_out_tongue:
No sorry, just joking around. Congratulations. I’m sure you’ll be a wonderful parent. :cool:

5

Goodonya, hope it all goes well.

Question, are you looking to get a baby or do you have an upper age range? Do they adopt kids out who’re older than babies?

6

The private agency we’re going with does domestic infant adoption only. It’s increasingly more difficult to adopt a child domestically that is not an infant but younger than say, eleven. This is at least in part because, in the state of Michigan, when a child is removed from a home, the priority is to place the child with the birth parents’ family of origin/extended family. I’ve heard of children 3 or 4 years old getting adopted through the state by non-relatives, but it’s rare. We aren’t closed off to adopting an older child in the future, we’ve even talked foster care, but right now I think we want to stick with an infant.

7

Thanks for that, it’s an area I know almost nothing about so the explanation’s appreciated.

Hope it goes well for you.

8

The best advice I can offer to people who are considering adoption (or any other commitment), would be to make a list of the down sides. What are the things that can go wrong? In what ways can adoption turn out to be a bad thing for anyone concerned?

If you can’t think of any, you are deluding yourself. If you can, spend some time thinking about them and whether the pitfalls are strong enough to outweigh your hopes and dreams. Whether you are strong enough to endure them.

The last thing I want to be is a wet blanket. Adoption is a wonderful thing, but it is a much more serious issue than deciding what deductible to put on your car insurance, a decision that you probably have considered from both sides.

9

Congratulations!

Here’s to wishing you both years and years of unsolicited hugs from a tiny little person who calls you both Mommy & Daddy!

10

Squeeeee! Very happy for you!

We are a mixed race family. If I you ever want to talk about that side of things, just let me know. Happy to share our experiences.

{{{Weasel Family}}}

11

Yikes, poor Kid Weasel won’t be able to get away with anything! :p:D

But seriously, congratulations. :slight_smile:

PS: upon adopting a tiny human, you are required by federal messageboard law to post lots of pictures for everyone to squee over.

12

Congratulations! My daughter adopted both of her children and they have made such a positive difference in all of our lives.

I’m very happy for you!

13

How wonderful! Congratulations! My cousin and her husband have adopted three kiddos, and the advice I have is to BE PATIENT and be mentally prepared to not get the first or second or even third kid that comes up. It’s an emotional roller coaster, but eventually, you’ll find it was all worth it. :slight_smile:

14

I am so, so very happy for you!! Super, duper congrats! I think you’ll make a fabulous mom. <3

15

Just wanted to chime in that these days, mixed race couples have become common enough that adopting a different-race child isn’t the only way to be a “conspicuous family,” and IME, “conspicuous” families are becoming a lot less conspicuous.

My cousin married a man who is half Ethiopian, and half Sephardic; when her children were little (like, 13 years ago), and she was out alone with them, people would often assume they were adopted. That never happens to her now. She just recently mentioned that in a conversation.

I realize that this might not matter to you, but it matters to kids. However, your kids will probably go to school with at least a couple of kids in each of their classes whose parents are a mixed couple, and depending on where you live, it may be more than that. My son’s school is wonderful in that it’s like it came straight from central casting. It’s about 1/3 white, 1/4 black, with the rest being Asian or mixed. Seriously. A black or Asian kid with white parents would not raise an eyebrow.

I also realize that that’s an outsider’s perspective, and there are a lot of things to consider-- if a white person adopts a black child, you have to learn how to care for their hair, and so forth. If you adopt a Native American child, you should keep track of their tribal rights… I’m just saying that it’s better now than ever, and probably will just keep getting better.

16

does the happy dance

17

Best wishes. It takes a special kind of dedication to navigate the adoption system, and I hope you have a happy result quickly.

18

I don’t think you’re being a wet blanket, I think you’re being a realist. People need to critically examine the choices they make.

When I miscarried, that’s when it hit me was a total crapshoot parenthood is. Maybe it helped in my acceptance of the myriad unknowns and potential heartaches inherent to the adoption process. I’m trying to see it as a moment to moment transient experience with emotional ups and downs like any other relationship worth investing in. They said to think of the first six weeks as babysitting, since nothing’s in stone until that adoption is finalized. No way I’m not going to be attached to that child. I decided a long time ago that if the price we have to pay for love is grief, that’s okay.

As for the impact on the child, that is everything. And there is no way of knowing what issues if any that kid is going to face as they begin to come to terms with where they came from. All I know is it’s a journey I’m willing to share with them. We’re going to be there every step of the way, in every way we can.

19

I do a lot of work as a guardian ad litem with a local adoption agency. I love being involved in these types of cases. The actual adoption hearings are pretty much the only type of case I handle where nobody is mad when the case is over. Some of the stuff that happens before the adoption hearing can get pretty unpleasant, but it’s worth it to give a child a real shot at life.

20

My brother Jay is adopting, too :slight_smile: George will be here in December.

Jay has known Lupe since we were kids; she was in the year behind mine in school. He’s liked her romantically since he figured out that girls could be objects of romantic interest. Like me, she finished school at a time when unemployment was sucky-high and worked abroad for a few years; specifically, in New Zealand (I’m officially envious, the furthest I’ve been is Argentina!). Unlike me, eventually she came back home and stayed. He asked her out, she liked him but didn’t want to dad-block him (she can’t have kids due to very serious bone issues). He didn’t care! He’s ok with kids once they can talk, but his reaction to babies is “uhm… can someone take this away? Preferably someone who won’t break it?” and he’s happy having kids, not having kids, raising another man’s kids… whichever. He has never really had a plan about kids other than “if I ever get a partner, whatever comes with her”.

Fast forward several years in which both explored other romantic options, she signed up for adoption from Bulgaria as a single mother, got accepted for “preferably a girl” (she thought that, as a single mother, the teens might be easier with a girl than a boy) “up to age 4-5”. Jay and her got together, yay! There was much celebration and many people saying “what the hell took you guys so long? :D”

Seven years had passed since Lupe had signed up for adoption, and she was beginning to think she might have to give it up: Jay’s addition meant that there would be a whole new bundle of relatives to help with the kid, but running after a 5yo little girl who doesn’t speak your language yet is very different at 40 and at 50. And then she got the call, she’d been assigned a boy who’ll be 3 next month!

They went to meet him last month. His foster mother is an older woman who’s been telling George she’s his Grandma and his Mom would come to get him; her children (the youngest is 16, the other two already out of the house) are thus his uncle and aunts. The first thing she asked was “are you serious about this or not? :mad:” Turns out two previous couples had rejected the boy. He’s bouncy, he’s healthy, he’s curious, he likes kittens and balloons and slides and he’ll be here in December!

Did I mention he’ll be here in December? I think I did :smiley: