Adoption 101

Something I've noticed with many agencies is that they advertise within the church for birth mothers and for adoptive families. Great place to find families but probably not going to be a lot of girls who are pregnant looking for an agency. The agency we found and chose to work with put "ads" in the yellow pages in most major cities in the U.S. This is where girls are going when they are desperate for help and aren't able to go to friends or family. Imagine, looking through the phone book trying to find answers. She desperately looks under abortion and then sees "adoption". She calls the number and a loving voice tells her how special she and her baby are.

This may not be the glamorous way some of us may imagine that birth mothers come to the decision to consider adoption. It is time to come to the realization that if you are adopting, through an agency, it is because someone else is choosing to give up their baby . You have to find an agency that is actively looking to find, counsel and support birth mothers. Find an agency who puts the baby first and treats the pregnant mother with the utmost respect. This is her baby that she is considering entrusting with another family. Your motives must be pure.

We found our agency online through a Yahoo group. Someone posted a comment about an agency who didn't charge an application fee. Of course I called first thing the next morning. It sounded too good to be true. At the time, the wait was (and I think is still) SHORT. The wait was approximately 3-12 months depending on preferences regarding gender and race. I believe I said "we don't have a preference" to which she said "you would probably be in the 3-6 month range." WHAT!! That is not the 4 year wait I was told about when I started this process one month ago. Long story, very short.... Our sweet baby boy was born 3 months after we started the adoption process. We were even at the hospital for the birth! Thinking this was a fluke, we helped some friends using our "process" with another agency. They welcomed a little girl after a 5 month wait. Then again last week more friends adopted through the agency we used, having a fantastic experience.

In closing, no process is perfect, no agency is perfect. Not everyone is going to experience a "quick" adoption. We are going through state foster care for our next little one and realize we will not have near as much control over the process. There are always going to be glitches and setbacks. The purpose of my writing this is to encourage those of you trying to adopt to consider all of your options. Do your research. Work hard and pray for divine guidance. This is not to say that if you do everything "right" you will not have to wait. God's timing is perfect. Prayerfully consider if this is the right thing for your family before you start the process