Where to start...

GWUAlum

My husband and I have talked about adoption. We are considering adoption. I do not know where to begin, so any advice would be much appreciated. Right now I'm mostly in the information gathering stage. Googling it gives me so much information and I don't even know where to begin or what websites to trust.

Dr.Loretta

Welcome. There's an FAQ at the top of the board that will give you some resources to check out. Once you've digested it all, you can ask specific questions. This is a very knowledgeable group!

Your first step will most likely be deciding which type of adoption you want to pursue, whether it's domestic infant adoption, foster/adoption, or international adoption. Then you can take it from there.

Post often!

Allie-Jo

Ditto what Dr.L said.  Also what helped me was talking to people I knew IRL who had adopted.  I actually dind't know many people but friends of friends were pretty easy to come by and most adoptive parents were more then happy to talk to me.  GL!

Bpmg

Hi there, I just wanted to say good luck! My husband and I started the process about 5 weeks ago... I can honestly say I have literally learned something new every day! It can be overwhelming... but the end goal is obviously totally worth it!

Although we ultimately decided to go with a smaller organizations, we found a lot of the material from bigger agencies to be  helpful in understanding our options. I would try and get information packets from a couple big agencies ? in particular, we found American Adoptions very helpful.

 

DaisyZH

Welcome to the board!!  I second the FAQs, they have great information.  Also some good beginner books are You CAN Adopt and Adoption for Dummies - they do a nice job of setting out the different types and processes.

Once you know which type you're doing you can do further research into that specific type.  Good luck!!

Dr.Loretta

Also, look to see if agencies in your area (or even not in your area) are sponsoring seminars, webinars, etc. Some of them are specific to certain types of adoption, some are more general. Those can be very helpful as well. resolve.org has at least one webinar on adoption that I can remember from back in the day