Adoptive Parents

[~Lisa~]

When did you first think about adoption?

When did you start the process?

What type of adoption did you do?

Did you adopt a boy or girl?

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share)

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind?

How old was your child when you adopted?

What adoption sites have helped you?

Have you or will you adopt again?

Share your story (optional).......

[~Lisa~]

When did you first think about adoption? I thought about it a lot when I was younger as my parents adopted. I guess we thought about it a lot when we were married but didn't know how to go about it.

When did you start the process? We first heard about our daughter in Feb. 2003.
Heard about our son May 2005

What type of adoption did you do? Open Domestic Adoption (private)

Did you adopt a boy or girl? Girl @ birth, Boy @ birth

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share) We didn't go thru a agency but if anyone would want to know who my lawyer was you can pm me.

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind? Nope, not with either.

How old was your child when you adopted? We've had them both since birth.

What adoption sites have helped you? http://www.forums.adoption.com

Have you or will you adopt again? Yes right now we are our son

Share your story (optional).......
My brother called and said he knew a girl that was pregnant and wanted to place her child up for adoption. She called me that same night and talked to me. She was 19. We flew her up here to stay with us about 3 weeks later and she ended up staying almost 2 months with us before our daughter was born. She had a c-section and I was able to go in and experiance that birth which was amazing. I carried her from the surgery to the nursery where I met up with my husband/family/friends. We got to do all the fun stuff, first diaper, bath, it was amazing. She's been with us ever since and it's been so wonderful being a mommy. Nothing compairs to that love!
Right now we're adopting our son from the same BM .........Our family is complete.

[so-tired]

Originally posted by Mama2Destiny
When did you first think about adoption?

On and off after my diagnosis of PCOS. It became a real option when we learned about DS
When did you start the process?
When DS was taken by social services and put in our care
What type of adoption did you do?
Social Services closed adoption
Did you adopt a boy or girl?
A litte Boy!!
How old was your child when you adopted?
6 weeks when he came home to us, 11 months when the adoption was finalized
Have you or will you adopt again?
We really want DS to have a sibling! I am definitely having baby fever!!!

[dna]

[i]
When did you first think about adoption?

About 4 years after TTC and nothing...

When did you start the process?

In 2002 we started our homestudy in May

What type of adoption did you do?

International

Did you adopt a boy or girl?

A boy !

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share)

CIAS in Ontario

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind?

No

How old was your child when you adopted?

15 months old

What adoption sites have helped you?

www.fertilethoughts.com
any local and agency sites

Have you or will you adopt again?

In the process...mama needs a baby girl !

Share your story (optional).......

Aerik is our doll, adopted from Ukraine in 2003...We are going again to either Kazakhstan or China TBA

[Lisa67]

When did you first think about adoption?

I have thought about it off & on for about 12 years but it really started as a strong pull for me about 4 years ago.

When did you start the process?

We started the process for Emily in July of 2002 and for Kate (??? is that her name ??? !!!) in November 2004

What type of adoption did you do?

International

Did you adopt a boy or girl?

Girl first time, requesting girl 2nd time too

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share)

We used China Adoption With Love, Inc (CAWLI) for both.

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind?

No fundraising (unless you consider calling your dad a fundraiser! lol J/K!!)

How old was your child when you adopted?

11 months, 1 week old!

What adoption sites have helped you?

I mostly stick to my travel group, agency, and China websites--all are Yahoo membership sites.

Have you or will you adopt again?

We are in the process of adopting again but this will be the last time, unfortunately. I could do this thousands of time over.

Share your story (optional).......

After years of IF and a preemie birth I couldn't go through any more treatments and took my DH to a few adoption meetings. His heart was stolen when we met with our agency and the rest is history!

[Calantha]

When did you first think about adoption?
After about 3 years of usuccessfully trying to get pregnant, including 2 years of fertility treatments.
When did you start the process?
We started researching in 2001 but due to various roadblocks we really didn't get the ball rolling until May of 2003.
What type of adoption did you do?
International - Colombia
Did you adopt a boy or girl?
Boy
Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share)
Children's Hope International
Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind?
No
How old was your child when you adopted?
1 year and 3 days
What adoption sites have helped you?
I don't know that I got a lot of help from adoption sites. I got a lot of support here and most of my information came from our agency. We researched different programs and such, but no site really sticks in my mind as being a major contributor.
Have you or will you adopt again?
Absolutely. We're planning to give TTC one more try this year, if my doctor thinks it's a good idea when I see him later this week, but if no pregnancy sticks by the end of the year we're looking and either China or Brazil next year. Even if we do get pregnant, we'll probably adopt at least once more when that baby is a year old or so, we want our kids to be fairly close in age.
Share your story (optional).......
I'll have to edit and answer this one some other time, my little bundle of joy is teething and demanding that I find some way to force that process to end. Poor baby.

[MaryS]

When did you first think about adoption? after 2 years of ttc, but didn't act on the thought until 4 years of ttc

When did you start the process? 1st class was feb 2003

What type of adoption did you do? Special Needs/Older Child/Sibling

Did you adopt a boy or girl? 3 boys

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share) Lutheran Social Services

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind? No, no charge adoption

How old was your child when you adopted? They will be 5, 10, and 12 when we finalize

What adoption sites have helped you? MARNS(minnesota adoption resource network)

Have you or will you adopt again? Once we finalize our 3 boys we can official start the process again, this time however we are hoping to find a baby girl or a sibling group(of 2- 1 of which hopefully will be a girl)

Share your story (optional).......
We had been ttc since we married on May 1, 1999. After 3 1/2 years of fertility treatments(we did clomid, then clomid and IUI, then Gonal-F and IUI) with no success we decided we needed a sure than and started to look into international adoption. I happened upon a website of Minnesota's Waiting Children and was amazed by the number of kids right here in the US that needed a loving home. At the time, the most important thing wasn't a baby, but to just have a family, and my heart melted when I saw all the kids right in my own state who needed a family. So we switched from International(had all the paperwork done) and moved to Special Needs. We found our boys listed in June of 2003 and let our case worker know we were interested. We didn't hear ANYTHING from the boys worker until September, that we were 1 of 3 family's who had shown an interest. We tried looking at other kids, as we were told by our case worker that most county people won't place 3 kids at once in a house with people who have never parented before. Well- We were CHOSEN!!! We met our future sons in November and started the long transition of getting the boys. The 3 brothers had been living in 3 seperate foster homes for 2 years and did not know how to be siblings to each other so it took us until the end of December to finally have our family together. Tommy- our youngest- moved in on Dec 26, 2003 and Jeff and Scott moved in on Dec 31, 2003. We have been waiting for a court date to finalize for almost a year, the boys have an older sister(who chose not to be adopted) that we have been working on setting up a contact agreement with. We are just waiting for her to approve it and then we can call for a court date. We are hopefully to have our FOREVER FAMILY finalized by June 2005.
For those of you that are struggling with infertility, let me just say, I feel for you. I understand your struggles, a huge hug to you and your significant other. I've been there and never thought we'd make it thru it. Even during the process of finding our miracles thru adoption, we at times thought we'd never find a child to call our own, but God had a plan for us and that was to give us not 1 but 3 special boys who needed a mommy and daddy and more than anything needed to be together. We were scared to take on 3 kids, but it is the BEST decision we have ever made. You just need to follow your heart and let God or your higher power lead you in the direction you are meant to take to find your child/children.

Mary

[Tigger2158]

When did you first think about adoption?
Last fall after starting foster parent training in Michigan

When did you start the process?
December 2004

What type of adoption did you do?
Foster to Adopt

Did you adopt a boy or girl?
2 wonderful little boys!

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share)
Used FIA (Family Independence Agency)

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind?
nope

How old was your child when you adopted?
still in process....A will be 3 and B will be 2

What adoption sites have helped you?
Fosterparents.com

Have you or will you adopt again?
I would like a little girl. but DH isn't sure about fostering again
Share your story (optional).......

[mia_2005]

When did you first think about adoption?
I have been thinking about adoption since I was a teenager. I read a book called The Family Nobody Wanted, that was abot a couple who adopted a bunch of kids of various races. Ever since, I have known that I wanted to adopt.

When did you start the process?
October 2005

What type of adoption did you do?
We are working on a private, international adoption from Guatemala.

Did you adopt a boy or girl?
Our baby is a boy.

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share)
We are working through The Shepherd's Crook and also through International Voices. Both have been wonderful!

How old was your child when you adopted?
We expect to bring our baby home in April. He will be 8 months old then.

Have you or will you adopt again?
Probably, but we're taking it one at a time!

[Kaelinsmom]

When did you first think about adoption?

I first thought about it when I was a teenager, I was always aware that there were children who needed parents and decided it was something I wanted to consider when I was older. I always expected to adopt children after we "had" several but with pcos and ttc for several years and a wonderful opportunity came up for us to adopt Kaelin it happened sooner rather than later.

When did you start the process?

We started on Kaelins first Birthday. 9/27/04

What type of adoption did you do?

We had a private, open, domestic adoption.

Did you adopt a boy or girl?

We adopted a little girl

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share)

We did not use an agency just a lawyer, his name was Randall Lambert and he was with the Law office of Lambert, McWhorter, & Bowling from Ironton OH.

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind?

We did not do a fundraiser. The total of all of our fees were less than $2000.00

How old was your child when you adopted?

We signed papers on her first birthday, she was legally placed in our home a month later and the adoption was final 6 months later.

Have you or will you adopt again?

We have not adopted at this point, we are still ttc but adoption is always an option for us. If the oportunity came along again I'm sure we would do it. I kinda hope Kaelins BM getts pg again so we can adopt him/her too!

Share your story (optional).......

Our story is long but I will try to shorten it for you. We had the oportunity to adopt our baby when she was three months old but we had just experience a death in our imediate family and really didn't feel we were in any mental condition to entertain such a decision. Months went by and we still were hearing about this child. Her Bio Mother was a friend of my husbands family and so we would hear about her through them. On Sept 4, 2004 my FIL told me that she(our baby) had been taken to a neurologist and it was suspected that she had brain damage. He told me he thought we should adopt her, that she was being neglected and the mother didn't want her. Months earlier when it was brought up I wanted to adopt her, but my DH wasn't as sure. I suggested that we wait and see if it were brought up again and that if it were we should take it as a sign from God. My dh said that wouldn't work becasue his mom would bring it up all the time and we already knew that. So we set up the stipulation it had to come from his dad, because he was a very unlikely source to tell us what to do about children. When we left his house I told my husband what he had said and since we had the previous discussion about our sign from God we decided we would take the baby for a couple of days to see how it worked out. We picked her up that night and she has been with us ever since. We started feeding her baby food (which she had never had before) giving her attention and love. Now she is thriving, she has no brain damage. She has some developmental delays but she is catching up. What is the most amazing thing to us is that in late January of that year our pastor came to us and told us that God was giving us a blessing. He told us later her knew we were going to have a baby but as time went on and I wasn't pg he started to doubt what he had been told. Then we got Kaelin. We were talking about what a miracle it was (In sunday school class a couple of months after we got Kaelin) and our pastor had said how amazing it would have been if Kaelin had come to us in 9 months, as he had believed, instead of 8. That is when we realized what a miracle it truley was because Kaelin was born one month premature. She was in the womb the same amount of time we had to wait for her. God truley is amazing! His plans are always so much better for me than anything I could imagine!!!!!!!

[Ange75]

Oh boy - I posted this originally in January and now it's Oct 2006 and I get to update it with all sorts of wonderful news!!!

When did you first think about adoption? After my first failed IVF. We did IVF twice. We had the money to do one more IVF and decided to put the money towards adoption.

When did you start the process? June 2004

What type of adoption did you do? Open Domestic Adoption with the Independent Adoption Agency

Did you adopt a boy or girl? Boy

Who was your lawyer/agency? Independent Adoption Center

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind? Nope

How old was your child when you adopted? 1 day old

What adoption sites have helped you? gosh..a ton

Have you or will you adopt again? Absolutely would adopt again in a heartbeat!!

Share your story (optional).......
Our Son Joshua was born...April 3rd, 2006 and was 5 lbs 12 oz - 17 inches long

We had been working with a birthmother for a few weeks, N. and weren't sure if things were going to work out - so I definitely didn't get my hopes up. Two weeks after our original contact with N, we received a call that she had just given birth 2 weeks early and wanted to place him with us. She had him so fast she delivered him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. We were shocked, overwelmed, and had to get on a plane within 3 hours - because she lived on the other side of the country.

We arrived late the night of Joshua's birth and went straight to the hospital to see our newborn son. With 6 hours to think about it on the plane - I was a nervous wreck. Thinking - will I like him? Will he like me? Will we really get to take him home?? As soon as we saw him we melted. He is absolutely gorgeous! In the wee hours of the morning, we decided to finally get some rest because we knew the next 18 years would be tiring. We got about 3 hours of sleep before we needed to go back to the hospital.

At the hospital we enjoyed spending the most wonderful time bonding with Joshua's birthmother, N. She is absolutely amazing!! She loves Joshua so much - but knew she couldn't give him the life she wanted him to have so she choose us to be his parents. I really can't say enough about what an incredible sacrifice this was and how amazing she is. She will continue to be in our lives as an extended family member. She hopes to come visit Josh on his first birthday and we can't wait to have her!!

Anyways, back to the hospital, we met with our agency (who is also GREAT) and did paper work. We sat around - crying, laughing, and just being completely overwelmed with what was happening to us. N got discharged around 2pm and went home. Josh got discharged around 3pm and we got to take him "home" with us. We are fortunate that DHs aunt and uncle live fairly close to N so we got to stay with them during our wait to be cleared to go back home. We stayed 10 days before going home. We finalized our adoption 4 months after his birth and are loving EVERY minute of being parents!!!

[keepinthefaith]

Wow, I didn't know that there were so many adoptive parents on here, that's great.

If it's ok I would just like to share my story which has most of the questions answered in it.

My husband and I decided that we wanted to adopt right after we were married, we actually found a birth mother pretty quickly and we found ourselves with a beautiful baby boy, 6 weeks into the adoption the birth mother changed her mind and our sweet baby was taken from us. We were devistated and really leaned on our church for support. About 8 months later we were at church and were approached by the woman who ran our youth group and her daughter. Her daughter who was 14 had been molested by her friends older brother and was pregnant. This 14 year old girl asked us if we would want to adopt her baby. They told us that they had been praying for us through our tragedy and knew that we could provide this baby with a loving home. We found out at her 12 week appointment (which was her first) that we were going to be blessed with twins. We brought our son and daughter home with us from the hospital. Their birth mother is now a wonderful young woman in her 20's who is getting married in April. The twins know that they were adopted and they know who their birth mother is. She likes to spend time with them which we think is awsome. She has told us that her and her husband to be wants to wait a few years before having kids but she has told us that she would be happy to be a surrogate for us next year. She is like a sister and an angel to me and we have been so blessed.

[Adoption Momma]

When did you first think about adoption?
When I was a teenager, I worked two summers with CEF (Child Evangelism Fellowship). I worked with inner city kids as well as the "rich" kids. Regardless of where I went, I saw children desperately in need of love. The desire to adopt started to develop. When DH and I met, we both knew regardless if we have biological children, we wanted to adopt.

When did you start the process?
May 2005

What type of adoption did you do?
Foster to adopt

Did you adopt a boy or girl?
2 boys - ages 5 & 6 (now 7)

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share)
Department of Children's Services

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind?
no

How old was your child when you adopted?
They will be 5 (almost 6) and 7; adoption will be final April/May 2006

What adoption sites have helped you?
I haven't really used any; most of my online support comes from SC.

Have you or will you adopt again?
ABSOLUTELY!!!

Share your story (optional).......
In January 2003, we fostered a sibling group of 4 teenagers which ended on a sour note. During that time, I was experiencing health problems (later dx as Sleep Apnea). September-December 2003, we did 3 rounds of Clomid; o'ed but all BFN. Took the year 2004 off due to death of my aunt. January 2005, dr strongly advised we TTC again. After the start of our 3rd round of Clomid, we met a sibling group of 4 girls in our church who are in foster care. We realized we wanted a family; bio or adoptive. Since we had planned on adopting anyway, we thought - what law says we have to adopt AFTER having biological children? Why not the other way around? We stopped Clomid and attended foster parenting classes in May 2005. We initially thought we were supposed to adopt the girls. However, DCS is still trying to reconcile w/BM. If they do become available for adoption and we were able, we would still adopt them.

At the beginning of October 2005, we received a call stating a sibling group of 4 were available. Our boys have 2 younger siblings - sister age 3 and brother 1.5 yr old. Long story short, TN state law protects the foster parents not the children (placement of 12 months or longer is automatic "first preference"). The foster parents changed their minds and contested custody of the youngest two (since our boys had only been with them five months they had no legal standing). Had DCS maintained the position to keep all four together, our boys would have ended living where they were part of a "package deal" and not because they were wanted and loved.

October 28, 2005, our boys came home!!!

Bottle of Motrin - $3.00
New van to fit your new family - $10,000.00
Having your 5 yo son wrap his arms around you and say, "Mom, you was my best Christmas gift!" - PRICELESS

[JCRILEY2]

me and hubby have been ttc for about 3-4 yr now and we are going threw a fertility clinic and doing an IUI this month. We can only afford to do one because its already cost me about $2000.00. We have more money its just i feel i cant afford to use the rest on something thats not a sure thing. my question: Where do I begin to look into adoption and how much does it cost and how long is the process? I would rather put the money towards something that has alittle more results. any replies would be great! thanks

[andysmom]

When did you first think about adoption? We just happened into it after being married for 6 or 7 years without having any kids. It just came very naturally.

When did you start the process? Started in September 2002 and completed in in June 2003.

What type of adoption did you do? International Adoption from Russia

Did you adopt a boy or girl? Boy

Who was your lawyer/agency? (if you choose to share) We used 3 agencies actually. Started with Bethany, used a local agency for just the home study, then ended up with European Adoption Consultants in Ohio.

Did you do a fundraiser? If so what kind? No fundraisers. We were actually given some money from my great aunt when she passed away. We used that for the process. If she had not been so generous we wouldn't be where we are today.

How old was your child when you adopted? Met him at 15 months and brought him home at 17 months.

What adoption sites have helped you? EEadopt.org, Adoption.com forums, many Yahoo boards for International adoption

Have you or will you adopt again? Not sure. I'm kind of interested in a domestic adoption if we do adopt again. There was nothing wrong with our experience in international adoption, but I would like to have a more open adoption if I do it again. We are TTC right now. We'll see how that goes and if we don't have a child naturally then we will definitely pursue another adoption.

Share your story (optional)....... My best friend growing up was adopted and there were several adoptions in my husband's family so it just seemed so natural. We met a few kids that were adopted internationally and just fell in love with them. We jumped in with both feet and have never regretted a minute of it. It was very trying at times and there are moments that I was very depressed, but it all turned out wonderfully for us. I never knew such a wonderful adoption community existed out there until I was involved.