Part 24

Before September hit, Ben and I started doing a little research about adoption, to just get an understanding of what our options were.  There are a mountain of things to consider as you begin to think about adoption – more than I think we even ever imagined.  There’s a thousand questions you have to ask, decide on and investigate before you actually choose an agency…and that’s just step 1!

Are you going to adopt domestically or internationally?
If international, what country?
What are that country’s policies on American adoptions?
What are the fees included?
How much is it going to cost?
How many times and for how long are you going to have to go to said country?
How old do the children have to be before you adopt?
What’s the Body Mass Index requirement for you to adopt in said country (yes there are some that require that).
If domestic adoption are you looking nationwide or state wide?
What state?
What agency in that state?
Do you want a religiously affiliated adoption agency or not?
Do you want the agency to allow same-sex couples or single women to adopt (surprisingly it is EXTREMELY difficult for a single man to adopt – ever – anywhere)?
Does the agency charge different prices for different races?
How many families do they have on their waiting list?
How many children to they place each year?
What is the average wait time for one of their families?
How does they wait time differ by gender or race?
What are the prices for the adoption?
Are there fees you have to pay?
What are those fees?
Are they refunded if the birth mother changes her mind?
Does the adoption fees include birth mother medical and living expenses?
Does the adoption fees include legal fees to finalize the adoption?
What type of support services do they offer the birth mother?
What type of counseling and classes do they offer the adoptive parents?
What are their Home Study requirement?
Do they require that one of their social workers performs the home study?
How many visits do they do?
What kind of paperwork is required?
How much is the home study?
Do they require more than the state requires to be Home Study Approved?
What type of child do you want?
Newborn? Under 12 months?  Don’t care about the age?
What about the race/ethnicity of the child?
What about drug addicted/drug use babies?
What about physical or mental disabilities?

…and the list goes on and on and on and on.

There is so much to consider – things to ask – things to know, before you make you EVEN make a decision about an agency.  It’s overwhelming.

I turned to a great woman, friend, and honestly, role model from graduate school named Becky for advice, support, insight…help.  Becky probably doesn’t realize how much I admire her – and how much I admired and learned from her while in grad school together.  She taught me more than I think she knows.  She taught me patience, grace, and the ability to love yourself and others fully and unconditionally.  She’s a remarkable woman.  Becky and her husband have adopted 3 (at the time they only had two) beautiful children.  While Becky and I lost the close connection from graduate school, I’ve followed her journey and their growing family.  I’ve marveled as an amazing couple that I knew in grad school grew into a family – a family that is the greatest exemplification of who they are as people.  It’s honestly indescribable.

So, as Ben and I embarked on the adoption journey, she was the first person on my mind.

Becky and I chatted back and forth on Facebook for a couple of months.  She told me about the experiences adopting their first two children and described a rollercoaster of emotions.  She shared with me the very real experiences that they had.  She recommended agencies in the area that people had good experiences with…she warned us of other ones.  Through all of this, I was starting to get a picture into what this journey would be like.

We also asked some friends in the area, our neighbors who just adopted, and some other friends for advice, too.  Our neighbors offered a glowing recommendation of an agency that they used to adopt their son, less than a year before, here in Indianapolis.  We will call this agency “Agency B”.  So Ben, being the activator that he is, made a call to Agency B to learn about their process and perhaps set up a meeting with them.  Now, I am a skeptic about Agency B.  This is one of the agencies Becky warned me about.  This is one of the agencies that countless people she’d known had TERRIBLE experiences with.  I understand, though, that my husband wants to feel useful in this process, so I let him make the call.

The day Ben finally talked to one of the owners (and adoption attorney) at Agency B was the day that our world seemed to come crashing down…again.

Ben’s experience with this agency and this man were terrible.  That day on the phone, the owner didn’t seem interested in anything but how much money he could make off of us.  He wanted to know how much money we made.  He wanted to know where we lived.  He wanted to know our race and religious preferences.  He said some terrible things to Ben that don’t bare repeating (but have made countless other adoption professionals and social workers GASP in shock and simultaneously say, “that’s not okay”).  Ben hung up the phone, walked into my office, and I could tell by the look on his face that whatever happened wasn’t good.

At that point, we began to question everything.  We were still very much reeling from the failed IVF attempt and the news that adoption might be our only path – and now – we weren’t even sure if adoption was going to be an option.  That conversation Ben had with Agency B led us to believe that adoption may not be an option for us, either.  That we may never be a family.

We began to question everything.  We began to question if we were really meant to be parents. We began to question why we bought our big house that we thought we’d fill with children.  We began to question our purpose in life – a purpose we thought was to raise children into incredible humans who would put more good into the world.  What was our purpose if we couldn’t do that?  What started as a hopeful journey that would result in us finally being parents – turned into despair.

A few weeks later, in July, Becky sent me a message on Facebook.  She was in town for awhile.  She told me she was in town awaiting paperwork for them to take their third child home from an agency in Indiana.  I asked her to meet me for coffee.

The day I met Becky, I was excited to see her – it had literally been years.  I was excited to hear about her beautiful family and their newest addition.  I was excited to catch up with an old friend.  I wasn’t sure I was excited to revisit the adoption conversation.  Ben and I had stopped talking about it completely.  We had decided that we weren’t even going to think about it, much less talk about it, until September.

The day I met Becky was a nice cool morning in Indy.  We met at Starbucks on the northside of town and when she pulled up, she had the newest baby with her.  We ordered some coffee and sat outside.  The first thing she said was, “Do you wanna hold her (as she pulling her out of the car seat)?  When I was going through this stuff, it always made me feel better to hold a baby.”  I said, “Sure,” skeptical that holding this tiny little girl could actually make feel better about the situation.

But it did.

I started asking her about the baby (the adoption happened fast) and how she was feeling and how the family was, etc.  But, the conversation turned quickly to our journey with adoption.  I began to tell Becky about what happened.  The conversation Ben had with Agency B (she wasn’t surprised).  The feelings of despair that we were having.  We started talking about what to look for in an agency.  We started talking about the flaws with the adoption process.  We started talking about the ills of adoption agencies (that’s a whole separate blog).  She taught me so much in that conversation.  I felt like I learned so much about the process and what to look for and how to pick an agency.  I started to feel like maybe our experience with Agency B, wasn’t representative of every adoption agency.  I started to feel like maybe we still had a chance.

At the end of the conversation, Becky said to me, “I think you should call Rebecca from the agency we just used.  Just tell her what happened and how you’re feeling.  Let me give you her number.”  I took the number down, unsure that I would actually do anything with it.  I wasn’t 100% sure we were ready to move forward again or ever.

And I didn’t do anything with the number.

I didn’t do anything with it until September 9th.  On September 9th, I sent Rebecca from Adoption Connections in Muncie, IN a long email.  I told her our story.  I told her about our experience with Agency B.  I told her about some of our challenges.  I laid everything out on the table.  I wanted to be as open and honest as possible before we moved forward any further.  I wanted to guard us from any more disappointment.  So I told her everything.

A couple hours later, I got a response from her.  It was a long email filled with lots of information, but a whole lot of compassion.  At the end of her email she said, “We’d love to work with you and your husband.  Let’s set up a time to chat via phone so I can tell you more about the agency.”

By this time I am in pure tears and finally feeling hopeful.  Hope for our family and hope for our future.  Hopeful that we may actually get to be parents one day.