One factor to consider when choosing an adoption agency is how the agency treats its placing mothers and birthmothers. Does the agency pressure women into placing their babies for adoption, or does it help the placing mother to consider all of the options and pursue what is best for her situation? Our agency offers free parenting counseling to any pregnant woman who comes through their doors. Of course, the agency discusses adoption as an alternative, but it also provides free counseling to prepare the mother... more

Once you have determined the type of adoption you want to pursue, you need to choose an agency or facilitator (or contact the appropriate agency for adopting out of foster care). Since I adopted through an agency, I do not have experience with adopting through a facilitator or adoption attorney. I would imagine that many of the issues I discuss would apply to facilitators and attorneys as well. I welcome comments from people who have adopted through facilitators, adoption attorneys, or any other private adoption... more

A bizarre reality of adoption is that you are a foster parent to your own baby for several months. Even when the birthparents’ parental rights have terminated and there is nobody else who is seeking custody of the child, the adoptive parents are legally foster parents until the adoption is finalized. For us, this process took 5 months.

In the meantime, I started up a neighborhood “moms group” with several other new mothers and their babies. We swapped stories and ideas and muddled through the first few months of sleep-deprived parenthood... more

We lived in North Carolina, and the baby was born in Georgia, so we had to fulfill all Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) requirements before we could legally leave the state. Even though the birthparents’ parental rights had terminated, we were still not allowed to go home.

When we adopted, the Georgia end of things was very efficient, but the North Carolina end was slow. I have heard that North Carolina’s ICPC processing has improved a great deal since then, and I hope that this is true because 16 days is a very long... more

Our son was born in the middle of the night. It was surreal to awaken after a good night’s sleep and learn that you are now a parent of a baby you have never even seen. The baby was born in Georgia, and we lived in North Carolina. We quickly packed our bags and drove several hours to meet our baby.

When we arrived, we called the social worker to ask about the next step. We had planned to pick up the baby from the hospital, but T (his placing mother) was in a fragile emotional state and asked that we not... more

The next step was to put together a life book. For those of you who enjoy scrapbooking, this probably sounds like an exciting thing to do. For those of you who are like me and would rather clean the bathrooms than scrapbook, this was a daunting assignment. How could I possibly put into one album all that a placing mother needed to know about us?

I am a writer, not a scrapbooker. I am also a computer person. My idea of creativity is inserting clip art into a document. Even the photographs in this blog are provided by a photographer friend of... more

The next step in the process was the dreaded home study. I knew NOTHING about home studies. I did not have the first clue about what to expect. I knew nobody who had been through the process. I wish I had because I would have been able to SLEEP during this time of my life.

For those of you who have a home study looming, I’ll let you in on a little secret – they WANT to approve you. If you are an optimist, you can view this as social workers wanting to find another wonderful home to shower love on a child. If you are a pessimist, you can view... more

With my very thick application to adopt in-hand (technically, it was “Part I” of the application), I was finally on my way to becoming a parent. After years of spinning my wheels, I had something tangible to do that would lead me closer to my goal. I have always been someone who likes to get busy when I feel stressed out, so working through the application was a very positive activity for me.

I was surprised at how thorough the application was. It became clear that no stone in our lives would be left unturned by the time the application process was completed.... more

I called around, using the Yellow Pages, and found one agency that I liked. They said that they begin showing hopeful parent profiles to placing mothers as soon as the home study is completed, so we could become parents in a matter of months. The longest that any couple had waited with them was just under 2 years. SOLD! I asked CSS what their policy was on signing with 2 agencies, and they said that was fine with them. They said that we could adopt our first child from another agency, and the timing would work out just right for adopting our second child... more

The adoption orientation started out with a basic history of the agency, none of which mattered to me. I came with two questions in this order:

How long will it take to adopt my baby? How much is this going to cost?

That’s pretty much all I cared about. Neither of those questions were answered during the presentation, so they were the first two covered in the Q&A session.

Somebody asked how long it would take to adopt a baby through Catholic Social Services (CSS). The leader said... more