Adoption

Adoption

Well lets get back to the subject at hand.  Having babies when you are infertile.  If you have kept up with previous posts you noticed Our Plan. We/ I have chosen to only delve slightly into infertility treatments only to go up to Clomid.  This leaves the question... if it doesn't work, then what next.  If you read "Our Plan"  you noticed that our next option was adoption. This post will talk about Adoption as it applies to us and our lives, all facts are not true for other people.

First off there are 3 main types of adoption.  International, Domestic Foster Adoption, Domestic Infant adoption, there are several different types within those groups as well... Our Choice as it stands now is Domestic Infant Adoption.... and this is how we came to this decision.

When I first started the small thoughts of adoption, with no research at all, I immediately thought that the only type I would even consider was International, and the country I wanted was China.  My nieve view of adoption was that International was "easy" and all countries wanted their orphan babies to go to America.  This is not the case.. Adoption is hard any way you do it.  I came to find out that international adoption has many problems along with its benefits (listed below)

International Adoption as we saw it
Benefits
-Children are considered orphans and parental rights do not have to be considered at all
-you can get a child from 6 months old to a teenager depending on what suits your family
-Depending on the country, you have access to medical history

Draw Backs
-The most expensive of all adoptions
-Every country has its limits, and you can only apply to one country, so if that country decides to close adoptions to the US during your application, you have to start all over again and never recoup the cost.
-Several Countries have severe drawbacks in our eyes, here is a short list of the main ones
-China's wait time as it stands is 6 years. Russia requires 2 visits, The first you meet the child and spend 1-2 weeks bonding, the second is to finalize, but a lot of times the time between the two are 2-3months, so after you have bonded with the child you must leave them in an orphanage for months before they are yours. Korea has a parent weight limit that Rich and I will never achieve. Guatemala is still working on refineing their adoption process, right now the risk of "corruption" is too high for my taste. Hot places such as India, Ethiopia, and the like are not really ones I want to visit for an extended period of time (selfish, yes.. but there it is)

Foster adoption is one that I have never been interested in.  I know a lot about the California foster system and it is flawed heavily.  These children do need wonderful parents, but it is a system that I do not wish to put my husband and my emotional sanity through.  Every state is different, but because we really want to move back to California, I have looked most highly into this one.  I will say that it takes very special people to go this route.. I am not one of them. Here are a list of the possitives and negatives.

Positives
-Usually ends up being the least expensive
-The child is brought directly to your home, and bonding and adjusting can begin right away
- You can get anywhere from a newborn to a teen depending on what suits your family
 -Placement is usually quick after approval

Negatives
-it takes about 1 year to be approved if done quickly
-most children in California are not orphan status, so you must go through parental right revoking before adoption, which varies case by case, I have seen it as short as a year to as  long as 4 years.
-Until the adoption is finalized there is always a risk of replacement which is heartbreaking
 -Really the biggest drawback is that the system is set up for reunification, as it should be, but that leaves adoptive parents out of the loop and struggling with social workers and the "system" that is not equipped to handle all the children that it has. So for this reason it is a large struggle, heartache, heartbreak and intesely long process

Domestic Infant Adoption
If you have ever seen the movie Juno, this is an example of one type of Domestic Infant Adoption where she sought out a family and they went through a single lawyer to make the "baby exchange".  This is probably the least popular type of DIA, but still a choice that can be made.  Most often a family would apply to an adoption agency and a birthmom would too, they are then matched on several factors. Every state/ agency is different but here are the basic positives and negatives.

Positives
- You will most likely either be in the room at the birth or at the hospital, so you get to see baby on their first days
-You can chose to have a relationship with the birth family (open adoption/ semi open) or not (closed adoption)
-Full medical histories are available
-If you join a large national agency there are usually financial "insurance" type set ups incase your adoption is interrupted (falls through).. all the money you have put into it is not lost
-
Negatives
-Probably the most feared is the interupted (not completed) adoption where the birth mother changes her mind at the last second.  Yes it happens, but not as often as you think
-you have to be very flexible because babies come on their own time, you really only want to start traveling to the place of birth when the mom goes into labor.. that means a middle of the night call can result in quick packing and cross country travel.
-Cost is variable on what agency, location and willingness to support the birthmother, sometimes there are a lot of hidden or unknown costs that pop up


The next post on this subject I will dive deeper into DIA and what choices we have made about it including agency/ state ect.