November is National Adoption Awareness Month. An entire month dedicated to raising awareness of the increasingly large number of children in need of a loving home.
Our Journey
Our choice to become adoptive parents was a long journey filled with multiple doctor appointments, medicine, treatments, injections, and finally surgery. My husband and I discussed for months if adoption was the path for us. Honestly, it was one we had never previously considered. Two days before we were to again begin treatment, my back herniated. I still insisted on visiting the fertility doctor because my heart couldn’t let go of the chance to have a second kiddo. He said there was no way to treat me until I healed, a process that ended up taking 9 months of physical therapy and six months of private pilates instructions. I knew what the doctor would say, I just needed to hear him say it. As he was speaking, my heart changed then and there. My heart, head, and instinct aligned. Thankfully, the same happened to my husband as well.
Our Questions
We looked at each other and said, “Now what do we do?” Our biggest decisions and questions we faced were:
1) Do we use an agency or go through the Department of Child Services and foster to adopt?
2) Do we focus on a local adoption or reach out internationally?
3) How much money is this going to cost?
4) How much paperwork will there be?
5) How long is the process?
What We Discovered
For 1) and 2) we both trusted our instinct and what we connected to. Our choice was to stick close to home in the hopes of having an open adoption. We chose to use an agency because the process overwhelmed us and we needed the comfort of a long-standing, child-centered organization to guide us. 3) Private adoption is expensive. There is no way around the cost. The adoption tax credit helps, and thankfully we live in a technological age where fundraising is easier than ever. However, fostering to adopt has minimal cost and typically the only out of pocket cost is for a lawyer to finalize the adoption. 4) I thought the paperwork would never end. But the more information we filled out, the closer we got to becoming adoptive parents. 5) It was 16 months from the first phone call to the agency until we left the hospital with our baby daughter.
I believe this is our destiny, that this is meant to be our journey. I am so thankful.
Favorite Resources
Live 1:17
Adoption Support Center
The Villages
