Adoption
SparrowBlue
member
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New, and a Question :)
SparrowBlue
member
in Adoption
Good morning ladies! This is my first time posting on this board, but am very excited to do so! DH & I have been TTC #2 for going on 15 months - and with a visit to a fertility specialist next week, DH & I have been weighing our options, including adoption. There has always been a part of me that has wanted to adopt, and i was excited to learn that DH was interested in it as well.
So, my question is, how would one go about looking for a birth mother? Do we contact an agency and explain what we are looking for and they set it up, or is there a different route we have to take? I know its a lot more complicated than that, Im just curious how to get the ball rolling.
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Re: New, and a Question :)
Some people use agencies, some use a facilitator, some use a lawyer, some do foster-to-adopt...there are lots of different ways to go about it.
We used a local agency after we met with a couple of them and chose which one we preferred. You'll have to decide if you want to do domestic or international adoption. We chose domestic adoption because we wanted to adopt a newborn.
How it works with our agency is that you submit your paperwork (a lot of it!) and your profile and then you wait to be chosen by an expectant mother/parents. So you are waiting for them to choose you. You don't get to choose the birthparents. However...you do get to specify what types of situations you are comfortable with and you can say no if it's not a situation you are okay with (we were asked about different types of drug/alcohol use throughout the pregnancy and what we were comfortable with, we were asked about medical issues that we might be comfortable with, we were asked what race(s) of a child we wanted to adopt, we were asked if we were open to open adoption, etc.)
Our agency does mainly semi-open adoptions where you would exchange letters and pictures with the birthparents. Our agency also does open adoption which includes visits. Our dd's birthmom chose us for a few reasons but one was that we wanted an open adoption.
To 'get the ball rolling' I would contact some agencies for information and meet with them. Some agencies will not allow you to do treatment while you are with them so you'll have to consider that as well if it's an issue. We looked into adoption, pursued more treatment, and then came back to adoption. We adopted our daughter 2 1/2 years ago. We had a short wait (about 6 months until we were chosen and another 3 until she was born) but some people wait up to 2+ years for domestic. With international it just depends on the country.
Good luck to you!