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Later that day, Cory and I went to the adoption agency office and signed our own paperwork to have her placed with us. Until then, we operate pretty much as any other parents do. Until she gets to the tail-pulling phase, at least. After years of talking with social workers and agency folks, taking all the steps to complete and then annually update our home study, marketing ourselves online or at least attempting to , and just generally waiting around hoping for a call that would lead us to our child, everything about our adoption happened very quickly and not in the way we anticipated.
We had been hoping to adopt for several years prior, first through foster care, then through private adoption. As we moved through month after month with no contacts from potential birth parents, we looked for other ways to increase our chances of being noticed by people making adoption plans.
8 Families Open Up About What Adoption Really Means: “She Is Ours, and We Are Hers”
We asked friends to share our adoption Facebook page and family profile, we made sure coworkers knew we were hoping to expand our family through adoption in case they met someone hoping to place a child , Cory mentioned our adoption journey in music label interviews , I talked about our desire to adopt with the county social workers I met through volunteering as a Guardian ad Litem for kids in foster care, and we updated our family profile with new photos and a more eye-catching design.
Then I remembered a women whom I had gotten to know years earlier, while working together on local adolescent pregnancy prevention efforts. She started her own adoption referral service several years ago. After making sure it was ok with our adoption agency, we signed on with her service in early February of this year. A referral service serves as something of a middleman between agencies and waiting families. The woman at the referral service is in contact with around 12 adoption agencies across the country.
Once she chooses a family, everyone can agree to be matched together and the waiting family connects with the agency that the birth mom has chosen. We got several emails while on the referral list, but none of them really spoke to us until one that came in May. There was a young woman in Florida seeking a family for her baby to be born in late June. Her profile described her as quiet and a book lover. She had plans for her future that included starting high school—not taking care of a child so soon.
There were still lots of unknowns about the baby-to-be, but we felt connected to the potential birth mom just through reading her profile.
I had a really good feeling about it. We asked the woman at the referral service to submit our family profile for the potential birth mom to consider, then waited. A week later, we learned that she had narrowed her choices down to two families, and we were not in the top two.
Two days later, we got another email saying that there had been some miscommunication about us being ruled out and the potential birth mom hoped we were still interested. She had several more questions for us to answer. That was on a Friday, and we got the word the following Monday that she had chosen us!
We drove down to Florida the second weekend of June to meet the potential birth mom, her mother, and the adoption coordinator with the agency she chose. We were all nervous! It was also clear that she made this decision, herself, and was getting strong and positive support from her mother and her adoption agency.
That was a huge relief! Once home, we brought all the boxed-up furniture, baby clothes, and other goods up from the basement and started putting the nursery together. Luckily, the adoption wait had given us time to poll parent friends about their favorite baby items and to check Consumer Reports for the safest ones. I installed the car seat base in my car, but kept it covered with a towel to avoid any questions people may have had about it.
Although we were excited, we tried to stay cautiously optimistic about the adoption. We wanted to stay realistic and allow the idea that this young woman may change her mind. We kept in touch through her adoption agency over the next several weeks. There were three different estimates for her due date, over a range of three weeks. Rather than wait for that date, Cory and I opted to drive down to Florida a few days beforehand. We rented a cottage and visited local museums and an aquarium while we waited.
There was a James Turrell skyscape at one of the museums, which was probably the highlight of our sightseeing. We let her know that we were already in Sarasota and she called back several times throughout the day to give us updates. But a few hours later, we learned that the plan had changed. I was talking with Mary, a fellow adoptee friend of mine, this afternoon when she asked how our adoption progress is going. Our parents waited as well, but they were on a true waiting list. Back in the olden days ha ha , infant adoption was something of a first-come, first-served situation for adoptive parents.
Potential adoptive parents would go through background checks, have a home study done, and register with their adoption agency, who would put them on a list. A birth mother would place her newborn with an adoption agency, then the baby would often live with a foster family or at an orphanage-type home until after any waiting period was over. Adoptive parents were then called to pick up their child.
Through open adoption agencies like ours, potential birth mothers are presented with a stack of family profiles based on their preferences such as geographic location, race, whether or not there are other children in the family, etc. From there, she can choose to contact families of interest to her and plan a meeting. All of this is usually done while she is still pregnant, so a match can last a few weeks or several months, depending on how far along she is in the pregnancy. She may or may not want the potential adoptive parent s to be there when she gives birth, and her adoption plan may include spending lots of time with her new baby, none at all, or something in between.
Legally, the potential adoptive parents have no connection to the baby until the birth parents sign paperwork voluntarily terminating their parental rights. The baby goes home from the hospital with their adoptive parents-to-be, and the adoption is finalized within several months. That can mean that the adoptive family sends updates like school photos and letters to the birth family, or everyone gets together several times a year.
One birth grandfather's awesome adventure
Lots of families use social media and texting to keep in contact now. Modern-day infant adoption is complicated, but studies show that it works best for everyone involved. The risk is definitely scary for potential adoptive parents. Several months ago, I asked some of our friends to offer suggestions for adoption blog topics, or other information to put in our family profile. Not long after that, a couple using our adoption agency got a similar question from a woman thinking of placing with them: What are the flaws?
You be the judge! Families waiting to adopt have different opinions on whether or not to buy baby things before they are matched with a potential birthmother or otherwise have a good idea that a baby is on the way. Some are superstitious about purchasing anything baby-related at all until they have a little one in their arms. Others jump right into decorating a nursery so that whenever they and their baby find each other, their home will already be ready and waiting. These days, I tend to hold a few outfits aside for our future child and donate the rest.
We ordered a crib that was on sale around the time our new homestudy was finalized with our agency because it matches the twin bed set that I inherited from my grandmother. Again, if we end up not needing it, someone will. Speaking of safety issues, waiting to be chosen for adoption has given us plenty of time to do a lot of baby item research. Pushing past the super cute patterns or mod designs to get to the most solid and safe baby products around will not be a problem for us. Most of the research has merely resulted in a lot of Pinterest pins for us.
But if you want, I can show you our hidden stash of baby goods. International, domestic, foster care, and private infant adoption are highlighted more in November than other months of the year. In addition to the happy stories, there also seem to be more and more focused on loss, written by birth parents and adoptees. There are also tales of adult adoptees from closed adoptions finding and being reunited with their birth parents after years of searching. By promoting primarily the stories of those who have had less-than-stellar experiences with adoption, the stereotypes of the troubled adoptee, broken birth parent, evil adoptive parents, and manipulative adoption agency are what take root and become the norm.
To be fair, there are also stories that focus solely on happy adoptive parents with newborns or toddlers.
- Search form.
- Suspense and Resolution;
- Ranger (The Heroes of Elgin Book 1).
Ignoring birth parents or adoptees is also problematic. We will be honest with our child from the start, and since our adoption will most likely be open, she or he will know their birth family to the degree that the family wants to be known. Acknowledging this does not denigrate birth families in the least. Although I know very little about her, I have great respect for my birth mother for making a choice that was undoubtedly difficult for her, and wonderful for me.
I believe my story is exactly what birth parents want for their children when they make adoption plans. It combines two of the loves of my life: What could be better? Cook vegetables, covered, in a small amount of boiling salted water for about 5 minutes or until crisp-tender.
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8 Families Open Up About What Adoption Really Means | Babble
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