Entries from May 2009 ↓

still more excerpts from an e-mail

more explanation about why we have to choose TWO agencies:

Basically, the agency here will do our home study and education classes and will “hold our hand” on this end, guiding us to the best choices.  But this local agency doesn’t deal with the birthmother side of things.  (Agency #3, which only does in-state adoptions would handle both ends of the adoption, but the social worker at #4 pointed out that in our state, the birthmother has SIX MONTHS to change her mind and she is required to  go to court and state, on the witness stand, multiple times, that she understands what she’s doing and that it’s forever and yes, she does want to relinquish her child into the care of these other people and…. understandably a lot of birthmothers apparently sort of break down at that point and change their minds.  #4 had seen this happen way too often, and she’s decided not to do in-state adoptions because of that.)  The “away” agency will deal with the birthmothers, with the “matching” process (and yes, generally the birthmother chooses the adoptive parents from a pool of applicants, so we’ll have to craft a very careful letter of introduction and perhaps even a scrap-book style photo album about ourselves.  at first, this seemed sort of creepy and advertise-y, but since i tend to enjoy packaging and branding and stuff, this will be the ultimate “packaging” quest–to package our lives in hopes of finding the best birthmother match.), and will, in some cases help handle some of the legal aspects.  My understanding is that SOME local agencies might strongly suggest a particular agency once they’re familiar with your specific case, but this agency seems to want to give us more control.  Which, like I said, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I mean, we’ll be working with the “away” agency at LEAST as much as the local agency if not more.

[my friend writes:] I hope that you are also able to take a break when needed and just enjoy each other some, too.

[i respond:]  we’re actually doing pretty good on that front.  in some ways, this is less personally stressful than the infertility stuff–I mean, we don’t have to get shot up with hormones galore, or ride the monthly emotional roller coaster.  Maybe it’s just because we haven’t actually started the paperwork part of the process, but so far, we’ve been following our guts and whenever we both agree about something, that’s the direction we go.  I’m sure it will get intense and frustrating at some point, but right now, since we have clear (ish) steps to follow and since there’s a good chance that when this ordeal is all over we’ll have a baby to bring home…. i’m finding myself doing a better job of relaxing and remembering that my child-free days are numbered (granted, it might be a BIG number) and I’m going to take full advantage of them for as long as i can.

[my friend writes:]   Thanks for writing about where you are in the decision making process. Is it helpful for you to write this down and put it out there?

[I respond:]  It IS helpful, if for no other reason than that if I want to share this story with someone, I can just give them the briefest summary and if they want more details, I can send them to my blog for “catch-up.” Plus, I’ve read so many other blogs of people going through this and I
find it helpful.  Hopefully, someday, someone will find what I’ve written to be helpful.  And if not, well, maybe someday our kid(s) will want to read it?

decisions, decisions….

i just realized that this blog doesn’t have details about some of the decisions we’ve made so far–like the fact that we’re currently pursuing domestic adoption (not international) because we’d like as close to a newborn as we can get and because the idea of having our adoption process halted because some country’s government decides to lock down their borders to adoption seems extremely frustrating.  (not that domestic gov’t roadblocks wouldn’t be frustrating too, but…  i think they’re slightly less likely to just say “there will be no more adoptions coming out of Florida until we can figure out what we want our laws to say.”)  Apparently, if you go the international adoption route, the youngest child you can expect to bring home is about 8 months old.  At this point, I don’t want to miss any of the earliest stages.

Anyway, that got me thinking about all of the other (sometimes awkward) decisions that we, as prospective adoptive parents get to make that biologically built families never have to consider.*

1.  what country (or state) your child will come from.

2.  how old your child will be when they join your family.

3.  what race your child will be.

4.  what health conditions you’re willing to accept (is down’s syndrome okay?  how about cleft palate?  how about babies with cocaine in their system?).

5.  whether you’re willing to accept sibling groups (say, an infant plus a 2-year-old).

6.  what agency (or agencies!) you’re going to work with or whether you’re going to try to pursue independent adoption (i suppose this is SORT OF like choosing a delivery doctor vs. home birth….).

7.  what gender your child will be (granted, i know that biological parents wonder about this, but we could, if we wanted to, actually limit our pool of options to only one gender or the other).

During the process of adoption, you are also asked to spell out things like:

1.  your childcare plan (granted, i’ve been trying to figure this out ever since the “not trying not to” phase, but I know some people don’t worry about this until they actually have their child.  Also, the nice thing about pregnancy is you have SOME idea of your timeline when planning childcare.  Not so much with adoption.)

2.  your discipline strategies (and I’m not certain that “well, we’ll figure it out as we go along.” will cut it)

3.  how (and how soon) you plan to share your child’s adoption story with them

And I haven’t even gotten into all of the “hoops” that we’ll have to jump through.  I’ll save that for another post.  whee!

*earlier this week, I was talking to my sister and, in reference to the onslaught of decision-making, she commiserated by saying, “we can’t even decide whether to get a new battery for the lawn mower or switch to a gas-powered motor!”  I agreed with “we can’t even decide what to have for dinner!”  Although thinking about it now, sometimes the bigger, one-time type decisions (what couch to buy, what city to live in) seem to be easier, more go-with-your-gut types of decisions.  so, hopefully that’s what we’ll be able to do with most of the decisions listed above.  hopefully.

i think we’ve found “the one”

the AGENCY, i mean.

Yesterday evening, J and i met with agency #4 from the post a few days ago.  we both liked her very straightforward, easy to understand manner.  She seems very honest and willing to tell us the truth, even if it’s not great news and she seemed very organized (a good trait to have in this field!).  I think it was clear from that other post that we weren’t interested in working with the only-in-state agency, and we both liked this social worker better than the first one we met with.  the other, bigger agency…. well, when I called them to try to schedule a private (for an extra $100 fee) meeting, it turns out that their social worker just retired (we actually had heard that from our friends) and that the new one wouldn’t start until the Monday after next (May 18) and would be in training all the first week, so our best bets are to attend the free meetings (May 12, three hours away from here OR wait until May 27 for the local meeting).  But then, we’d likely be assigned to this new local social worker.  Hmmmm…. I’m not sure I want to be someone’s first client.  Even if they’ve got history in the field…. I don’t want to help someone learn the system.  And I don’t think we’re interested in driving to some faraway location to find an agency, so…. hooray!  the only catch?  it sounds like this social worker encourages us to choose our own out-of-state agency to work with.  She suggested a few agencies that she’s got experience working with (and I did like a few of them) but we get to do a little of our own legwork calling these agencies to ask them some basic questions.  In the end, I think I’ll like this measure of control over the process, but … sometimes it would be nice to just have someone else make at least one of these million decisions for us!

ah, mother’s day….

yeah.  this is a difficult holiday.  i feel like it’s pretty optimistic for me to say that i hope to have a kid by Christmas, but maybe by next Mother’s Day I’ll be able to celebrate?  But arbritrary deadlines are ALWAYS a bad idea.  so I think I’ll go call my mom.

edited to add:  um, apparently NEXT week is mother’s day.  i’ll spare you all the re-post.

brief book reviews

Adopting after Infertility by Patricia Irwin Johnston
This was one of the best books we’ve read about our situation.  It walks you through some of the difficult emotions that accompany the loss of the assumption of pregnancy and birth, and then talks about how to decide whether adoption is right for your family and then how to do that.

Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother by Jana Wolff
A short read that follows one woman’s story about adopting transracially in an open adoption situation.  I think the author has become pretty well-known in adoption circles.  I keep seeing her name popping up in magazines and blogs.

Adoption is a Family Affair:  What Friends and Family Must Know by Patricia Irwin Johnston
Although this book is mainly aimed at the parents of adopting couples, it would be a helpful read to anyone wanting to know a little bit about what the prospective  adoptive parents are going through and the best ways to support them through the process.

In Their Own Voices:  Transracial Adoptees tell their stories
I haven’t gotten all the way through this one, but the theme seems to be that there is no “typical” story or “typical” reaction of transracial adoptees.  Some are bitter, some are indifferent, some love their families….  it’s a good reminder of the individuality of all adoptees and a nice cross-section sampling of some of the different reactions they can have to the fact that they are adopted.

Parenting Your Adopted Child by Andrew Adesman
Although I’m about 75% done reading this book, I think it would be more useful once we’re actually parenting a child.

20 Things Adoptees Wish their Adoptive Parents Knew by Sherrie Eldridge
This book made me so nervous about adopting (no matter what we do, our kid will hate us!) that after i read a few chapters, I made J read it and summarize it for me.  He got frustrated with the poorly edited language and the fact that the author seems to have only one or two major points (don’t keep your adoption secret from the kid, don’t lie to them in general) and she just repeats them over and over using different scenarios.  He went onto Amazon and apparently there are two kinds of reviewer responses to this book:  a) “I was so glad to hear that someone else feels this way and that I’m not alone!”  or b) “This book is a bunch of fearmongering hooey.  Just treat your kids honestly and with respect.”

our local agencies

yesterday i finally made calls to some local agencies.  it turns out that there are only about 4 different non-denominationally-affiliated adoption agencies in our town.  not that i’m opposed to denominations, but if i’m not Catholic or Mormon, it feels sort of misleading to apply for adoption at one of their agencies.  anyway, we’ve already met with one of the other four agencies awhile back because a friend recommended that one.  In our conversation with her, it seemed like their agency works more with international adoption, so we’re checking out the others, but keeping #1 as a back-up plan (they have done domestic, but just not as frequently).  Here’s my report on the other 3 in case you’re curious:

#2–A largish organization that another friend worked with.  The first step in their process is to attend one of their informational seminars (or pay $100 for a private meeting at your convenience) which happen about four times a year in our town (they have other meetings in other towns in our state too).  The next big informational meeting isn’t until May 27, and we don’t really want to wait that long, so I think we might try the $100 option.  in the big scheme of expenses for this adventure, that seems like pocket change.

#3–A smaller organization that only does in-state, domestic adoptions.  They also only have 20 “active” families in the pool at one time, so if you want to work with them, you basically have to get into a waiting list to get into the active pool.  I called and right now they’ve got a full pool of 20 PLUS 8 on the waiting list (they limit the waiting list to 10, so apparently it might be possible to be on the waiting list to get onto their waiting list to wait).  She talked about how there’s one adoption that should be clearing imminently, and two more in June and one in July (when the babies are born and assuming that everything goes through without problems) and sort of thought we might be able to get into the pool of 20 by this fall sometime but…. i just don’t think i would enjoy being on the waiting list to wait AT ALL.  i think we’ll skip this organization.

#4–another small organization (possibly only one person?).  The first step in their process is a free, one-on-one meeting to talk about the options.  We’ve got an appointment to meet with them on Monday night.  They do both international and domestic–domestic mostly from Georgia, but also Illinois and Texas–so we’ll see!