A couple of questions...

[Ange75]

Okay if you are adopting...

- When do you start decorating or buying stuff for the Nursery?
- Do you have a baby shower?
- Do you have to be a stay at home mom for them to accept you?
- If you don't have a TON of expendible income are they likely to not accept you?
- Also - when do you start telling people that you are doing the process? I feel like since it isn't a sure thing that maybe I shouldn't tell people. And how do you prepare your employer being that you might not exactly have the 9 month lead time?

I'm curious about when they do the home study what would make them turn you down - how common is that? I think we are a pretty typical couple but of course we have debt and stuff. Ya know?

Thanks for your help!!

[cyndl]

Debt!? Good Lord do we have debt!! our cw chuckled when we asked if that looked bad for the HS. she said everyone has debt. as long as you can support your family and the child you plan to add that it shouldn't be a problem at all.

- When do you start decorating or buying stuff for the Nursery?
We started decorating right away. but that's just how i am. some people don't start till they are matched. as long as you have a room for the child to show the case worker you're good.


- Do you have a baby shower?
Lots of people have showers! now i didn't and probably won't, but that is because we are doing foster to adopt. so we don't know if our children are staying or leaving. if you're doing private or international it would be alot easier to have a shower.


- Do you have to be a stay at home mom for them to accept you?
We were told the only reason a stay at home mom would be better is if you are taking a special needs child that required it. if you're a working mom you obviously wouldn't be looking for that kind of child. also if you do foster/adopt the caseworkers wouldn't discriminate, but they tend to send infants to stay at home moms first for some reason.


- If you don't have a TON of expendible income are they likely to not accept you?
i can tell you we had like NO extra money and were accepted. we were paying of IF treatments and stuff. but again i don't know how that works with domestic/international agencies.


- Also - when do you start telling people that you are doing the process? I feel like since it isn't a sure thing that maybe I shouldn't tell people. And how do you prepare your employer being that you might not exactly have the 9 month lead time?



I'm a stay at home mom to our miracle DS (and now our foster ds's too!) so i can't say anything about employers. but we told people as soon as we started looking into the classes. we had to wait 6 months to take the classes, and pretty much EVERYONE knew we were waiting to start!


HTH! mine is just the perspective of a foster to adopt mom. so the other ladies can help you with the other types of adoption. Good luck!'

cyn

[JenJen78]

Here's what our experience was:

- When do you start decorating or buying stuff for the Nursery?

we started decorating a little at a time. our adoption was international, so we knew who our child would from the start. I didn't place the last item in the room though until we were leaving to get DS.


- Do you have a baby shower?

we had 2 baby showers, and a welcome home party. to me, I enjoyed the welcome home party the most because I got to show off DS and DH was able to be there. The 2 showers were done after we found out we were out of the last court (so we knew we only had about a month left to go)


- Do you have to be a stay at home mom for them to accept you?

I'm not a SAHM, and I told them I wouldn't be one. I love my son dearly, but I'm just not cut out to stay at home. After being home with him a month, I was going nuts to get out of the house and get back to work. (of course I wanted to take him with me though)


- If you don't have a TON of expendible income are they likely to not accept you?

we didn't have alot of extra money. I mean after what little fertility treatments we did, as well as having recently bought a house and new car, we had plenty of debt. that wasn't a problem though.


- Also - when do you start telling people that you are doing the process?

we told close friends and family when we started researching adoption. we told everyone else once we had pictures of DS to show off. If I had it to do over, I would probably wait until we were further along to tell everyone, as people drove me NUTS asking questions about when he'd be home.


And how do you prepare your employer being that you might not exactly have the 9 month lead time?

I had a VERY understanding boss. I was able to take off under the FMLA. It's unpaid leave, but at least that way my job was secure. I told my boss when we found out who our son would be.


I'm curious about when they do the home study what would make them turn you down - how common is that?

I don't know why they'd turn you down unless you'd harmed children or something. Our homestudy was so easy. The SW made us feel so at ease. I think everyone worries WAY too much about the homestudy. Typically they're not trying to keep you from becoming a parent, they just want to make sure you're prepared.

Good luck to you, and keep us posted on how it goes!

[Calantha]

- When do you start decorating or buying stuff for the Nursery?
We started when our homestudy was over. I'm a big worrier and was afraid that we wouldn't make it through the homestudy due to my history of depression (which turned out to not be a problem at all!)

- Do you have a baby shower?
My family was going to give us a baby shower and I asked them not to. Our adoption is also international, but with Colombia you don't know who the baby is until about a week before you go to get him. I didn't want anyone spending their money on stuff he might not even be able to use. My mom did let slip that my brother (Sam's Godfather) is planning a huge "suprise" welcome home party for a couple of weeks after we get home though. (My mom is HORRIBLE with secrets, she's already told us what she's giving us for Christmas this year, I can't believe he trusted her!)

- Do you have to be a stay at home mom for them to accept you?
I plan to be a stay at home mom, but I know many women who are not and it never seems to be an issue. The sw may ask you what your plans are for the child while you are at work (babysitter, grandma, daycare, etc)

- If you don't have a TON of expendible income are they likely to not accept you?
We did have a bit of a hassle over this, but I think it was just because our sw was a bit of a snob. The adoption agency said it was not an issue at all, but since they didn't do homestudies, we had to deal with the sw's insistance that it was. She made us write up a "plan" for how we were going to get out of debt and save money for our child's future. (We too had just bought a house and new car, so our debt was astronimical. The sw didn't KNOW how to calculate a net worth, so she counted out mortgage against us, but never added the value of the house into our assets!)

- Also - when do you start telling people that you are doing the process? I feel like since it isn't a sure thing that maybe I shouldn't tell people.
We told everyone right away as soon as we even started looking into the process. We knew that we wanted to do international adoption. We also knew that there are some racists among us and we wanted plenty of time to make VERY clear to them that we would not tolerate such attitudes toward our son. At first we had a lot of people upset over the fact that we were adopting an American baby. No one ever complained about his race, most likely because they knew from the beginning we were firm in our decision and would certainly choose our son over them if we had to ( I say most likely because some people in my family are EXTREMELY racist and there is NO WAY they didn't have a problem with it).

And how do you prepare your employer being that you might not exactly have the 9 month lead time?
I am not employed. My husband tells me though that for the past 11 months, he has walked into his boss' office at the beginning of the month and reminded him that "this COULD be the month", just so he wouldn't be taken by suprise. His entire office has been very supportive.

I'm curious about when they do the home study what would make them turn you down - how common is that? I think we are a pretty typical couple but of course we have debt and stuff. Ya know?
I've never met anyone who has been turned down. I know that if they think your house is not safe, they will give you time to fix it. If you have what they consider too much debt (like us ) they will make you show how you plan to support the child now and in the future. The only thing I can think of that we were ever told would be an automatic fail would be a history of child abuse (you abusing a child) or "crimes against children". They are required by law to specifically ask you if you've ever abused a child or committed a crime against a child, if you answer yes to either, I believe it is an automatic fail (which I'm sure was already obvious to everyone, but it really is all I can think of!)