Hey, Local Adoption Agency: You've Got Mail!

The agency is chosen, our application is in the mail!

We're very excited, we're relieved, we're confident. A little amazed at how fast everything came together. But once we made the decision, everything just fell into place. We hope to be working with an agency here in Oklahoma City with a long history of successful adoption placements. The financial piece felt right, the placement rate felt right, the personnel have seemed great to work with. They still have to accept us, but we don't think there's any reason why they wouldn't!

Unless I find out John has a history of prison time before I met him. Just kidding!

For those interested, here is the timeline we know so far:

February:
Submit application
Upon application acceptance:
Run background checks and fingerprints (required in OK for adoptive parents)
June:
2-day introductory seminar to cover off processes and the emotional things to expect
After Seminar:
Individual and joint interviews with the agency
Additional reference checks
Submit "About our Family" book of photos and letters
Home Study
Then....we go on the list. We're hoping to be on the list of potential parents by the end of July.

It seems far away, yet we know time will fly. We have two major vacations scheduled between now and then, several business trips, birthdays, weddings, and little time to re-do our budget. Time will fly, we have no doubt and by the time July arrives we will be in a great place to get ready.
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Some questions I know people are asking:

Q: What agency are you using?
A: I'm more than happy to answer! Considering the private nature of this situation and respecting a potential birth parent's privacy in the (hopefully) near future, please e-mail me or talk to me about this in person and I'll tell you everything I know. Our lives are really open books. And being open has been much to our advantage because we've had so many people contact us (friends and strangers) with personal experiences, information, and encouragement....we won't stop being open about it!

Q: How long will you have to wait?
A: There is really no average. You can't even guess because with this agency (as with most) the birth parents choose the adoptive families. With our agency, they have several couples who waited about two weeks (including one I've been in touch with!). And there is also a couple who has been on the list almost two years.

Q: What kind of child will you adopt?
A: There is a very specific page of potential child characteristics that we evaluated and decided what we would and would not be up for. It's easy to say "I'd take any child coming my way" but it's something totally different to parent any child that comes our way. Everything from race to special needs to birth parent risk has to be evaluated ahead of time. Our profile will then be shown to those birth parents meeting those specifications. We like this, because it's making sure that all children are placed in the very best situations, and no child will be in a position that parents will later think "I can't handle this".

I am more than happy to share more info with you, and John and I are open to talking about what our specifications are. If you want to know, please e-mail or talk to me later, as it's kind of personal and I certainly wouldn't want anyone to judge our decisions without knowing our reasoning.

Q: Are you doing the foreign or domestic adoption route?
A: Well, we considered both. There are two agencies here in OK that are highly regarded with their efforts in foreign adoption. We researched both and were impressed with their success rate. Foreign adoptions can often times take a long time. They can be very expensive (although the cost of working with a private domestic agency is not much less). And there are even certain restrictions in other countries including age and body mass index. You have to travel very far for extended amounts of time.

Ultimately, we decided that while we are open to foreign adoption, for our first child we wanted to go the domestic route. This is actually pretty selfish on our part, because foreign adoptions often bring you a child 12-24 months old, which means we would miss the first laugh, first smile, first words, maybe even first steps. We just couldn't give that up the first time as parents. Though there are some pretty delicious Vietnamese babies we were devouring in pictures so who knows in a couple of years!

I should note this is not the case with all foreign adoptions. We have friends who are adopting from Ethiopia and, by all accounts, will have a shorter wait time, shorter travel time, and a younger baby to bring home. We can't wait to learn from them once their child is here (hopefully this year)!

Q: What if the birth mother changes her mind?
A: Aaahhhh....this is a terrifying question. At the same time, there are several things to consider.

Birth mother's changing their mind after placing a baby is actually a rare occurrence. I liken it to a plane crash--why are we so scared of plane crashes? Because they don't happen often (compared to the number of flights actually taken each day) and when they do it's easy for the media to concentrate on it. If it was something that happened all the time, why would Lifetime choose to focus so many movies on it?!

That's not a scientific answer. Our discussions with our agency have led us to believe there are certain things in place to protect us as much as possible from this happening. They have an extensive counseling program not only for adoptive families, but for birth families. Counseling and assurance ahead of the birth helps alleviate some of the post-birth second thoughts that plague new mothers. We have been impressed with the assistance our agency provides to birth mothers, advocating as much for them as the adoptive families.

Our agency puts extensive efforts into making sure the father's parental rights are terminated. Sometimes this can be difficult, it can sometimes involve more than one person. But they work to make sure this happens and if they can't identify a father, that is told to us before we make a commitment to the child. It's a risk we will have the opportunity to evaluate.

The birth father's rights can be terminated before the child is born. The birth mother has 10 days to change her mind. YIKES! 10 days of newborn stress and not knowing what will happen! Of course it's terrifying, but we also know that once those 10 days are past, the baby is ours.

As for the financial piece....the great thing about this agency is that if there are any medical costs to cover for the birth parents, they will come to us direct billed from the hospital. Just like if I'd been the one as a patient. If the birth mother changes her mind, we don't pay those medical bills. They come to us after the baby has been born.

One of the most comforting things we've heard from others who have adopted is to look at each situation as God's plan. If the baby is OUR baby, if it is the child God designed for US....the birth mother won't change her mind. And if it does happen (praying it doesn't) then it's not OUR baby. And God has a plan.
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Well, I know I've been going on and on. I'll do more Q&A in a later post for your educational purposes. If you think of something specific, please leave it in the comments section!
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Prayer request for this post: pray that the agency we want to work with sees us as ideal candidates and that our next steps will happen quickly.