Last week, someone asked me a question that I was not prepared to answer: "Are you still planning to adopt?"
We made our announcement to family and friends a couple of months ago, and I guess this particular person thought that perhaps we changed our minds. I know that is possible, but I don't understand why anyone would make that kind of announcement and then back out. But I think I have a pretty good handle on WHY that question surfaced in the first place.
Unlike pregnancy, adoption has not firm and definite progression of time. When you're pregnant, you really can't speed up or slow down the process. Pregnancy produces very obvious visible signs that you are preparing to add to your family. Adoption is a lot different.
Since I'm not pregnant, those visible signs are completely absent. In fact, we're stuck right now. The work of choosing a professional has started, but school started and so many things thrust back into our lives that were absent during the summer. It's oh-so-easy to put our search for a professional on the back burner when there are very real deadlines and tasks looming right in front of us. And it doesn't help that I am trying to be careful and GET IT RIGHT rather than jump in, making decisions too quickly. That will cost us money in the long run...money we really can't afford to gamble by making rash decisions.
Plus, I think I have a case of the nerves. When you're pregnant, you know your due date. You have time to wrap your mind around the changes that are and will take place in your family as your body changes. With adoption, there's so much uncertainty built in to the process. I find myself often wondering how long we'll end up waiting for a baby, whether we're making the right decisions financially, and what kind of sacrifices we'll end up making that we don't even realize yet. I wonder we will have to suffer the heartache of a birthmother who decides to keep her baby after all. I continue to pray about these things.
I've resolved to take time every day to work on locating an adoption professional in hopes that once we have made that decision, the process will begin to feel more real. As long as we are stuck in this place, nothing will happen - we'll be going nowhere.
Thank you for your prayers, friends. We need them!
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Oh, the choices!
When Bill and I started this journey, we had no idea that there were so many decisions to make before we even paid anyone. I used to think that if you wanted to adopt, you just went to an agency. That's only one choice, I discovered, and it's not always the best choice for everyone. Going through the foster care system is another option (often called the "foster care shortcut"). You can also hire an attorney. And then you have to consider whether you will adopt in your home state or in another state that allows non-resident adoptions.
Alaska is a wonderful state, but it is also one of the least populous. The number of adoptions completed in Alaska number less than 650, and a larger proportion of those are adoptions from foster care. Our local adoption agency says on their website that they made fewer than TEN infant placements the year prior. With so few options available to us, we decided that perhaps we should look outside Alaska, as well.
Adoption by Randall Hicks has a state-by-state review of laws so readers can compare their options. The first thing I did was eliminate states that allow only residents to adopt. That cut my list down to half of the states in the US. Then we looked at how long the birth mother has the right to change her mind about adoption (called "revocation of consent"), and how long it takes for the adoption to become final in the courts. Believe it or not, we found a couple of states that gave the birth mother as long as 45 days to change her mind, but during that time the child could live with you. Alaska's laws give the birth mother 10 days to change her mind, and there are many other states that allot the same amount of time. But some states are much shorter, and that's where we hit a bit of a snag.
We had our list down to 13 states at this point. But we wanted to narrow it to just two beside Alaska. Randall Hicks recommended in his book to hire three professionals instead of just one. His reasoning was that with three professionals working toward a match with a birth mother, we could finish the adoption with the party that made the match. He also said that this approach could shave months off the time we wait for a birth mother to choose us. That sounded really good to us!
Deciding on the final two states was really a financial decision. We have quite a few airline miles racked up with Alaska Airlines, but they only fly as far east as Detroit. To help us save money, we removed any states that were farther east. That left us with five states; Michigan and Illinois were the most populous, having thousands of adoptions completed every year. We decided that those two states might be our best option.
So now we're in the process of compiling a list of attorneys and agencies, requesting their written materials and reviewing those materials. Once we're done with those tasks, we'll narrow our lists further with some phone calls and consultations to get a feel for whether we want to work with these professionals. There's still much more work to be done!
Alaska is a wonderful state, but it is also one of the least populous. The number of adoptions completed in Alaska number less than 650, and a larger proportion of those are adoptions from foster care. Our local adoption agency says on their website that they made fewer than TEN infant placements the year prior. With so few options available to us, we decided that perhaps we should look outside Alaska, as well.
Adoption by Randall Hicks has a state-by-state review of laws so readers can compare their options. The first thing I did was eliminate states that allow only residents to adopt. That cut my list down to half of the states in the US. Then we looked at how long the birth mother has the right to change her mind about adoption (called "revocation of consent"), and how long it takes for the adoption to become final in the courts. Believe it or not, we found a couple of states that gave the birth mother as long as 45 days to change her mind, but during that time the child could live with you. Alaska's laws give the birth mother 10 days to change her mind, and there are many other states that allot the same amount of time. But some states are much shorter, and that's where we hit a bit of a snag.
We had our list down to 13 states at this point. But we wanted to narrow it to just two beside Alaska. Randall Hicks recommended in his book to hire three professionals instead of just one. His reasoning was that with three professionals working toward a match with a birth mother, we could finish the adoption with the party that made the match. He also said that this approach could shave months off the time we wait for a birth mother to choose us. That sounded really good to us!
Deciding on the final two states was really a financial decision. We have quite a few airline miles racked up with Alaska Airlines, but they only fly as far east as Detroit. To help us save money, we removed any states that were farther east. That left us with five states; Michigan and Illinois were the most populous, having thousands of adoptions completed every year. We decided that those two states might be our best option.
So now we're in the process of compiling a list of attorneys and agencies, requesting their written materials and reviewing those materials. Once we're done with those tasks, we'll narrow our lists further with some phone calls and consultations to get a feel for whether we want to work with these professionals. There's still much more work to be done!
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Let's start at the very beginning
I guess I should introduce us. My husband is Bill, and I'm Cheri. We have decided to begin our family through adoption!
We've been waiting for years for God to bless us with children, but appears that is not God's plan for us (or at least not at this time). So we prayed and talked and prayed some more - finally ending up at the decision to seek out adoption.
I had already read a couple of books and a few magazines about adoption, but today was the first time Bill and I sat down together and talked about what I had discovered. We had NO IDEA that there were so many choices open to us! We both had assumed that if you wanted to adopt, you went to an agency. Well, that's ONE choice, but there are so many more. We did know from the beginning that we wanted to adopt in the U.S. and that we wanted to adopt a newborn. Today we sat down with our list of states to decide what state(s) we wanted to pursue. Right now, it looks like our home state (Alaska) and two others are the front runners (Illinois and Michigan). But we are far from making a final decision on that...
Next time I post, I'll share a bit more about our decision process - how we arrived at the decision to adopt out of state, why we chose IL and MI, and a strategy that may be unconventional. In case you're wondering, we are using an excellent book, Adoption by Randall Hicks, as a guide on our journey. If you have other suggested reading, let us know!
We've been waiting for years for God to bless us with children, but appears that is not God's plan for us (or at least not at this time). So we prayed and talked and prayed some more - finally ending up at the decision to seek out adoption.
I had already read a couple of books and a few magazines about adoption, but today was the first time Bill and I sat down together and talked about what I had discovered. We had NO IDEA that there were so many choices open to us! We both had assumed that if you wanted to adopt, you went to an agency. Well, that's ONE choice, but there are so many more. We did know from the beginning that we wanted to adopt in the U.S. and that we wanted to adopt a newborn. Today we sat down with our list of states to decide what state(s) we wanted to pursue. Right now, it looks like our home state (Alaska) and two others are the front runners (Illinois and Michigan). But we are far from making a final decision on that...
Next time I post, I'll share a bit more about our decision process - how we arrived at the decision to adopt out of state, why we chose IL and MI, and a strategy that may be unconventional. In case you're wondering, we are using an excellent book, Adoption by Randall Hicks, as a guide on our journey. If you have other suggested reading, let us know!
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