The Adoption Process 101

I started this blog mostly as a way to document our adoption story. I’m sure, at some point, we will forget what all of this was like (and, for some of it, we may want to). But we want to have a record of everything that happened, and what it was like to go through this. We want to create an “adoption book” for our child with information about how he or she came to our family, and we want to be able to go back to read past posts and remember how we felt at each step. But I also created this to keep our friends and family updated on the process and where we are. We love getting questions about our adoption, but it’s incredibly frustrating to constantly hear “So when are you going to get a baby?”. It’s not that simple. So we hope that this will help our friends and family who are interested understand the process a little better.

Some people need to invest in a filter…

This process is long. And complicated. And everyone who learns we are adopting has their own set of questions about what’s involved and how we came to this decision. We’ve gotten our fair share of outright offensive comments, but for the most part, we LOVE to get questions about adoption and share what we have learned.

We started this process absolutely decided on international adoption. We looked into several countries, and eventually started to pursue an adoption from Russia. We attended information sessions with several different agencies and familiarized ourselves with the adoption laws in dealing with Russia. For several reasons, we decided about 2 months into our research to switch to domestic infant adoption. This isn’t to say that we will never pursue international adoption in the future, but right now we feel like domestic infant adoption is the right path for us.

So we will be adopting from within the US. And we will most likely bring the baby home from the hospital (we are open to a child up to 6 months, but there is about a 1% chance of getting a situation like that). We do not at all have a preference for gender of the baby (I get this question so often!).

In Raleigh, on our way to the agency!

The process of domestic infant adoption starts with finding an agency and learning about the adoption process in general. We read several basic adoption books just to learn about the process (yes, there is an Adoption for Dummies- and it was actually really helpful). Choosing an agency was one of the most difficult parts of this process and is much more complicated than it sounds. It is not easy to find reputable reviews and you’re not only judging the services provided to adoptive parents, but the counseling and support offered to birthparents and the balance of financial stability of the agency with their moral integrity. It’s completely overwhelming to look through a huge list of agencies, but thankfully the state of New York (being the easygoing and accommodating people that they are) makes it INCREDIBLY difficult to use an out-of-state agency. We looked at dozens of agencies that would work with adoptive parents from any state…except New York. In some way, this was a blessing in disguise though. It really helped narrow down the agencies we could choose from and made it slightly less overwhelming.

Some light reading…

We chose an agency in March and attended an 2-day information session in April. Because our agency is not in New York (the closest office is in Raleigh), we had to use a New York agency for our homestudy. The homestudy was an endless mess of paperwork, fingerprinting, autobiography writing, interviews, references, medical exams, employment verifications, adoption book reading, and a home visit. These social workers have an attention to detail that would put Scotland Yard to shame. They want to know every detail about your life (and how you felt about it), and when you want to scream “This is totally irrelevant, why do we need to discuss this?!?” you still have put on a smile and try to look like a normal person. It took 3 months, and about 18 hours of apartment-scrubbing and muffin-baking for the home visit, before we were finally told on June 28^th that we were homestudy-approved.

Our apartment has never been so clean!

Having finished the homestudy now, I really do think that every prospective parent should have to go through that. I really think that there would be far fewer neglected children, unprepared parents, and divorces post-children if everyone who was having a child had to pass a homestudy. JP and I were generally on the same page about everything before starting this process, but being interviewed by a social worker several times (did I mention their attention to detail?) really forces you to discuss and compromise your views and expectations on parenting, discipline, religion, education, responsibility, your marriage, etc. before you add a little one to the family. While it was frustrating at times to go through this process, it really did help initiate conversations that we may have otherwise not had and really brought us closer.

Sightseeing in Raleigh after spending all day at the agency

So we have a completed homestudy and are working on our dear birthmother letter now. We have to create a profile with information about ourselves, written in letter form somewhat, to birthmothers who are considering adoption. In short, writing this makes the homestudy look like an afternoon at the spa. But this post is already lengthy so I won’t get into that now!

Once our letter is done (should be within the next few weeks), we will be “actively waiting”. It could be a year or more before we get a call, or it could be a week. We could get matched with a birthmother due a few months later, or someone who’s already in labor and just decided that they want us to be the parents. We don’t have any more of a timeline than that.

So despite the months of research, reading, writing, meetings and preparation we’ve already completed, we’ve barely even begun this journey. And we can’t wait to see where it goes from here.

The Life That Is Waiting For Us

“ We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” -Joseph Campbell

For some inexplicable reason, we’ve always wanted to adopt a child. I think a lot of people theoretically like the idea of adoption, but to actually complete this process is something entirely different.

We had plans. There was an exact date when we starting trying to conceive- because our plan was to have a biological child or two, and then consider adoption. And although we would have been ecstatic had our plans been fulfilled, I somehow knew all along that this was how our journey to parenthood would begin. I knew deep down that, had we gotten pregnant easily, we may never adopt. When we wanted a second or third child, we would know that we could just try to get pregnant for a few months and be successful. We would look at the lengthy adoption process, the cost, the bittersweet feeling of gaining a son or daughter but watching a person you’ve come to care about lose theirs…and we would give up. Because it’s hard. Nothing about this process is easy.

Yet we still continued to try to conceive. We went through months of frustration and tears and fertility testing and hot flashes; months and months of not telling anyone what we were going through because we knew they could not understand. After several cycles of the fertility drugs, we decided that we would start to pursue adoption. We made the decision, again and for one of the many times, to adopt. This is one of the many differences between expecting a biological child and an adopted child. For those who get pregnant fairly quickly, the decision to have a child is once and final. You get pregnant and then the baby is coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it (well, there is, but you know what I mean). With adoption, you have to make the decision to adopt over and over again. You make it when you decide to start researching, when you attend an information session, sign up with an agency, struggle through the homestudy; through the long, unpredictable wait, failed matches and every time you get a negative reaction from someone who finds out you’re adopting, you make the decision again and again. You can’t simply float through this process. We’ve learned just how much dedication is needed to get through every little step.

So here we are. This may not have been our plan initially, but it was “the plan” all along. Every step of this has felt right. Even with the difficulties we’ve encountered so far, we know this is the right decision for us. It hasn’t been an easy road, but it was necessary to go through everything we did to end up where we are right now. This may not be the life we had planned, but it’s the life that’s been waiting for us.