DIA Cost & Planning the Nursery

olson2903 · October 2013

My husband and I are going to pursue DIA. We are hoping to start the process in April 2014. We don't want to take out a loan if we don't have to, so I started working a second job to save up, hence the wait. The agency we are going to use essentially said it typically takes 2-3 months once you apply to be home study approved, then average of 20 months until you take home. I know its not always the average wait, sometimes sooner, sometimes longer.

My question is when did you start the nursery? Buying the big items? Stocking up on the everyday essentials?

Also, how did you cover the cost of DIA? Did you take out a loan? Did you save up until you had the funds?

bumpuser794640 · October 2013

We started buying nursery furniture and things like cloth diapers after sending our paper work. We waited about 3 months from then until our seminar was scheduled, and then there was another month before our interviews, and a month after that before we were HS approved.

We saved money and were blessed by several donations from family and friends, including some inheritance money. Our original projected date for meeting our goal was Nov. 2013, and if we were somehow placed before then we would have gotten a family loan or used our credit card that has 0% interest until June of 2014 for the remainder. With the inheritance money our goal was met in February, so we don't have to worry about it now.

Dr.Loretta · October 2013

olson2903 said:

My question is when did you start the nursery? Buying the big items? Stocking up on the everyday essentials?

Also, how did you cover the cost of DIA? Did you take out a loan? Did you save up until you had the funds?

We picked up random clothing and cloth diapers anywhere from the very beginning through a couple of days before we were matched. When our profile went active, we got a crib, car seat, Pack n Play, and stroller. It's person dependent. Some people want to be super prepared, some don't want an empty nursery.

We sold a rental property to fund our adoption

orangecupcake · October 2013

We started our nursery once we went active. We purchased the crib, car seat, dresser during that time. We used an inheritance to fund our adoption.

ab8174 · October 2013

Since everything was so sudden for us, we had 6 weeks to get a nursery together and figure out the funding. For the nursery, we were lucky enough to get a lot of nearly new things from friends who had older children. We were able to get a stroller, 2 car seats, a crib, and a pack n play within the first week. As for funding, we used savings for our attorney and home study and will be using my husband's bonus check for the counseling and post placement costs.

kva11isho · October 2013

The nursery was already painted and had a wall border and window treatments we loved when we moved into our home. I searched and searched for the matching crib outfit and finally found it fairly early in our adoption process. I would have bought it earlier if I could have found it (it had been discontinued). We purchased our nursery furniture about 6 months after our home study was complete. I just had a feeling that we should start getting the bigger items around. A little less than a month after that we were matched! We haven't really purchased anything else yet, but our families are both throwing us showers in the coming months. My sister-in-law has two girls who were born in the same season as the little one we are expecting is due, so she has started passing down lots of clothes. I've been separating those according to size, washing and putting away in the dresser or a storage bin.

As far as covering the cost, we have cut back on everything we can. We got rid of high definition cable and DVR and have opted for Hulu Plus for $8.00 a month instead. We went back down to basic cell phones to avoid paying for data on our phone bill. We did have a lawn service fertilize our yard every few months (a story in and of itself), but that's obviously been canceled. We have stopped eating out, turned down our furnace a few degrees and closed vents/doors to any spare rooms, I started helping my husband cut his own hair and I switched to a less expensive stylist (I really don't go that often anyway), and XM radio has also been canceled, obviously. Luckily all the debt that we had that could be paid off, we got rid of early in our marriage, so this is everything we could think to do.

I know there are a lot of people who are against adoption fundraising, but we do have a couple going. You can check out the fundraisers link on our blog for more info on that. Link below. The only one not mentioned is that our families recently held a Premier Jewelry and 31 designs party and had all of the proceeds donated to our adoption fund.

Also, if you haven't looked into it or heard about it yet - there is a Federal Adoption Tax Credit. You'd still have to have the funds up front, but can claim your expenses on your taxes for the year you finalize.

Good luck!

aligross · October 2013

Hey there! We are just finishing up our home study process... (last visit will be on the 6th of November!) After we receive final word that we are approved, I have no problem buying our larger items for our nursery or even starting to buy gender neutral clothing or diapers in multiple sizes (when they are on sale/clearance etc). Up to this point I was hesitant to purchase something "too early". Now that we are in this place, bring it! I know that we could possibly have a 24 month wait, but if that is the case, I will have been able to prepare and save a ton of money by shopping the deals. (No I am not an extreme couponer by any means, but hey if it is an awesome deal! DONE).

As far as how we paid for our adoption - thankfully our agency is a "pay as you go" service. So, we technically haven't paid for the home study (and if for some reason we had to go on hold etc before the paperwork was written, we don't pay for it yet). So it has been considerably easier to come up with $3000 here and there instead of $22,000 off the bat. We were mostly debt free prior to the process so we made it a goal to be fully debt free and then begin the process - We knew at any point if necessary we could take out a line of credit on our house because we had a considerable amount of equity in it, but thankfully we haven't had to and we won't need to. We are forever blessed by some very generous family members who have wanted to make this journey not so hard on our pocketbooks and have generously given us monetary gifts.

Ooofta - that was long! Welcome to the boards & Good Luck!

maryoosa · October 2013

We had a non-typical situation in that we had an independent match- and didn't wait for matching through our agency. Once we knew about the match, we started buying our big ticket items--- well, maybe more like we found our an expectant person had picked us in January. I think we started buying our "big" stuff in March--- we bought a gliders, in April- we bought a crib, by May the nursery had been painted and we bought our car seat/travel system, we had a dresser that we moved into the baby's room and a small end table. We bought 1 box of diapers and 1 box of wipes (Costco sized). My partners' work places threw her showers, so that's where we got almost all of our other baby stuff.

In terms of saving-- -we saved close to 1/3 the cost of the adoption. And then we took out retirement loans. Sad but true. So instead of a downpayment on a house we've paid placement and other fees. But we have our son and that's awesome.

Flamingo86 · October 2013

We are also hoping to start the process in early 2014.

We aren't setting up a nursery for a while, but we are accepting any free items we come across. If we don't need them we can pass them along later, and my parents graciously offered to let us put things in their storage unit. My work recently had a kid's clothing exchange and I was able to get a diaper bag and some gender neutral infant clothes. My brother (who is done having kids) is saving their crib and some other items for us, which is very kind of them.

We are saving like crazy right now. We are anticipating spending around 30k for our adoption. I just took a second PT job and we are cutting back as much as possible w/o becoming hermits. We are also planning on asking for help from family and friends and doing some fundraising. I know this is a controversial move amongst adoption circles, but after much discussion my H and I decided it is the best thing for our family.

Best of luck!

Mush-Tastic · October 2013

I can't really answer the cost question as we used the money we'd set aside for my husband's original med school plans after he decided to drop out and pursue a different avenue in the medical field that he was already working in.

I wish we'd started the nursery sooner rather than later. Our agency (and the way you describe it, sounds like the same agency we used here in MN) had an average wait of 20 months. We were chosen within 6 days of being homestudy approved, but then had a failed match and didn't bring baby home from the hospital. However, we DID bring our son home from foster care less than 3 months from being home study approved and we had literally nothing set up. I was so unprepared and he just literally dropped in our laps out of nowhere. I wish we had started it during our home study. We were prepared to supposedly wait a long time, but that was definitely not the case. We were also one of 2 couples chosen by another birth mom during that time as well so we were technically involved with 3 babies in less than 3 months. I say it totally depends on your mindset. If you're OK having a nursery set up and possibly having to wait for a while and see it everyday, then I say do it as you can and get it ready to go. The only reason I had wished we'd gotten it done earlier is because it would've relieved a lot of stress for us at a moment that was already crazyness in suddenly having a child come home with us and having nothing. It was an added layer of stress I could have done without. BUT...if you're not OK with that idea of having to wait with a fully functional nursery not in use, then I say wait until you have a potential match and then get going on it. We didn't have any showers or anything until after placement and so we got a lot through that.

cvpis4me · October 2013

I had purchased a gender neutral bedding set when we were still going through fertility treatments but didn't begin decorating a nursery till we became active for adoption. I'd recommend not buying too many gender neutral clothes though. We had a girl and all the green and yellow clothing on her made her look like a boy. I couldn't wait to get her into something pink! lol

sumati · October 2013

We are still at the very beginning stages of adoption. However, when we were TTC, I bought different things as I saw them on sale (Zullily is evil). I have a few gender neutral cloth diapers, a few bottles, and a diaper bag. After we decided we were going to definately adopt and stop TTC, I noticed the crib I wanted was one sale for $79! So I bought that. I'm glad I did, b/c it is now back up to regular price. I also fell in love with a mid-century modern dresser on craiglist for cheap, so I bought that to clean up and paint for the nursery. We've already picked out colors for the nursery. I picked out a color scheme where I can add touches of pink or red to make it more gender specific once the adoption goes through.

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