AUTHOR: M. DATE: 6:59:00 PM ----- BODY:

Found this on my lunch break today (yes, I'm googling adoption stuff already - but I promise not to make it a habit. Maybe.) This is from Bringing Desta Home, a blog about a family adopting two children (also from Ethiopia). "When she was pregnant with Ramona it was all, "Ooohh, how do you feel... what's the baby doing now.... how much longer... what's the name going to be... lets have a shower... lets go shopping for baby things.. oooh this is just the most fabulous thing ever. With Efram and Desta it's more like, "Oh... you're adopting... why?... Did you know so and so who had a horrible adoption experience back in '71? Yup, the kid burned down the house, fed the dog to an alligator and spilled grape juice on the carpet ON PURPOSE!"
Sounds familiar already. I've had friends who have told me that as soon as they got pregnant, everyone insisted on telling them their horror stories about pregnancy. I hadn't realized this would apply to adoption too, especially when we haven't even officially filed the initial application with an agency, but already they're filtering their way through. Note to self: remember planning the wedding. Everyone has an opinion, wants you to do it the way they did it, thought the way they did it was the best, genuinely wants their experience to benefit you, but they want it so badly that they often forget that it's sometimes really helpful to learn this stuff on your own. I've been told it only gets more intense, not less, when you actually become a parent. Hope I can remember this. Last night I told my mom that we had decided on an agency. She was interested, but I don't think she could really make heads or tails of any of this quite yet. This tells me two things: one, that I need to have a much longer conversation with her (and the rest of our families) about what this process might look like, and two, that we actually have learned a lot in a very short time. This second one is actually a more helpful insight than it might seem, because it still seems like an almost indecipherable process. I think what Leah at A Red Thread did for us was boost our confidence that we could figure the process out - we don't actually understand it yet. But I guess we know more than we think. So, for anyone who's following this and is equally lost, here's the nutshell version of the process: 1. Find an agency. This can be a full-service agency, which we're not going to do, or an agency like A Red Thread that does all of your pre- and post-adoption services. If you do that, you will sooner or later need to work with another agency to actually help you identify and find a baby. You would also look at programs at this point: domestic programs can be private (which we're doing) or through social services. International programs vary in terms of requirements and what children are available - for example, in China, it's almost entirely baby girls. 2. Apply to the agency and start a home study. The home study is a series of meetings with the social worker, and can take as little as 30 days, though 2-3 months is more typical. The social worker comes to your house at least once. They say it's not supposed to be a "white-glove inspection" (why do so many adoption agencies use that exact phrase?), but more because your home is the easiest place to get to know you and because they need to make sure you've got the basics covered: 2 exits in case of fire, enough living space for another human, enough air and light, etc. The social worker usually meets individually with each of you, and then once more together. They want your family history, information about your relationship, health history, financial situation, etc. This process is also designed to get you to really do the kind of work that almost-parents should probably be doing anyway: thinking through issues around child-rearing strategies, discipline, religion, money, and the like. This process also involves paying a lot of money. About the home study: as I understand it, the vast majority of people who do a home study are approved. And the financial stuff is more about whether you're stable and able to get by on your income, not about whether you own a fancy house and have tons of money stashed away in the bank. Somewhere in here you also really have to think about who you want, if you don't know already: newborn, older child, race and ethnicity, etc., and your willingness/ability to accept a child with a family history of mental illness, drug abuse, genetically linked illness, etc. You also need to figure out if you're going to do open adoption or closed, and if you want to do open (which most people are doing right now), what level of openness you're willing to have. We've read about some families sharing Thanksgiving dinner with birth families. I think what's more common is agency-facilitated communication, like letters and photos once or twice a year, with no identifying information. But it's a whole spectrum. 3. Put together a family album. Pictures of potential adoptive parents with friends' children, pets, and large extended happy families in holiday clothing seem to be the usual currency. The way Leah uses these (it varies from agency to agency) is to bring them to agencies that do placements to say, "this is who this family is, here are their parameters for a baby, etc." If an agency has a potential match, they'll share the information from our album (or the album itself) with the birth mom/birth parents. If she/they pick us, we're all set. Once again: this process involves a lot of money. The placement fee, due when you get your baby, is usually the biggest expense. Sometimes this process is more haphazard than others. Some people seem to have 5 months notice, and some people get a 5 a.m. phone call from an agency saying that there's a birth mother in labor and she's picked them. Then they call in to work and say, "I'm on family leave - TODAY!" 4. Adopt a baby. This comes within a few months of actually getting the baby - and usually in this kind of situation, when the baby leaves the hospital where he or she is born, they go home to YOUR house. 5. Adopt the baby AGAIN. This is specific to us, because the %&*)^&;*^*(&*()! federal government doesn't recognize us as married, even though the state does. Unmarried couples can't adopt a baby at the same time; we'll have to do a second-parent adoption. More legal fees that would be better spent on diapers or a college education. Again, hrumph. But at least we live in a state where we can do that - some states don't do second-parent adoption with a partner of the same sex. Reason number 77 why we can never leave Massachusetts.

--------