Any military families out there?

wither16 · January 2013

We are active duty and will be starting our journey soon (most likely when DS hits one year). We have been at our current duty station 3.5 years and I cannot help but feel like as soon as we get the ball running, we are going to get orders- especially with the recent events going on.

Wondering if anyone with more experience has been thru here and would share your story on how/when you decided to bite the bullet and just move forward?

I have consulted with 3 agencies here and one attorney, as well as base legal- and I am being told that any money that we put down with an agency would be non refundable if we had to move.

I know that we can transfer our home study state to state with a re certification/update fee, but dropping the big initial fee seems terrifying knowing what the wait will be. It's silly for me to think that we won't get orders in the next 2 years at least. And apparently if we get OCONUS orders, we are just screwed. (That would be another question, any military families ever adopted while on OCONUS orders from the country they were living in- is that even possible??)

I hate thinking that our kiddos will be so far apart in age, and we want at least 2 more.

HELP! :-)

IRR · January 2013

No military experience here, so take my thoughts as unverified opinion only. Couldn't you choose a National Agency to work with so that is won't make a difference where you live? The other option is do not work with an agency except for your home study and try to identify a BM on your own and go the private adoption route. Just a thought. GL.

wither16 · January 2013

IRR:
No military experience here, so take my thoughts as unverified opinion only. Couldn't you choose a National Agency to work with so that is won't make a difference where you live? The other option is do not work with an agency except for your home study and try to identify a BM on your own and go the private adoption route. Just a thought. GL.

There is one national agency that we spoke with, which is an option. However, they also had the highest requirement for time married- which we actually will hit this month to even "qualify" yay!

We thought about finding our own BM- which is how I was adopted many years ago- but not being from the area, it seems very daunting. We literally know like a dozen people. But we did speak with the attorney about going that route, and possibly locating a BM in our home state where we do have more connections.

Both those options would be out however if we got stationed overseas. The agency said how would they complete the check ups after placement etc. I don't even know what we would do if we got a placement and DH had to go ahead without me while I stayed here for finalization and what not. I have tried to find some resources that deal with military and adoption, but am coming up short. I know I'm not the only one, LOL.

12bailey18 · January 2013

We are!! And we are just as confused about all of this as you are...LOL. We are also trying to figure out how a possible upcoming deployment may interfere with this whole process too. We know nobody in the military that has adopted so it's been kinda hard. The two agencies we are deciding between both are able to work with out of state couples, should we get orders. We just moved here so we have another 3 years here. However, it's very important to me that these agencies have experience working with military families and that is one of the questions I'll be asking about when we attend their information meetings in a few weeks. I have no experience with OCONUS either, I'm sorry. I just wanted you to know I'm right there with you too! I'll be sure and page you if I learn anything new about military and adoption. I haven't found out much so far, though. =(

12bailey18 · January 2013

12bailey18:
We are!! And we are just as confused about all of this as you are...LOL. We are also trying to figure out how a possible upcoming deployment may interfere with this whole process too. We know nobody in the military that has adopted so it's been kinda hard. The two agencies we are deciding between both are able to work with out of state couples, should we get orders. We just moved here so we have another 3 years here. However, it's very important to me that these agencies have experience working with military families and that is one of the questions I'll be asking about when we attend their information meetings in a few weeks. I have no experience with OCONUS either, I'm sorry. I just wanted you to know I'm right there with you too! I'll be sure and page you if I learn anything new about military and adoption. I haven't found out much so far, though. =(

Also, I forgot to add that we are doing international adoption, so finding a national agency wasn't hard for us at all. But, finding one that has military experience may be harder. Good luck!

wither16 · January 2013

YAY!! Someone sharing my shoes!

Of course, we are AF- and we don't have controlled tours, so we have no idea how long we will be here and we have been here 3.5 years. UGH

Feel free to share any info you come across!

CaptainSerious · January 2013

I'm not sure, but I believe there might be a group for military families on adoption.com. You might want to check there and check Yahoo groups as well, since there are a ton of adoption groups on Yahoo. But beware, some of them are not as pleasant as we are here!

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