Our Adoption Process - Pt 2

So we wrote the agency a check for the $6,000 to get the ball rolling. We were handed a binder that was so thick with information that it would make your head spin. The adoption agency filled out some papers, we filled out some papers and the process was begun. So they had our money and now we had to figure out what we needed to do. In the front of the enormous binder was a checklist that we went through.

Attend “Get Acquainted Weekend” – check done that.
Schedule consultation appointment – check done that.
Read, “Who We Are And What We Do” – it’s in the binder, can do that (Have done that).
Complete application and intake form – Well let’s take a look at this.

The application form starts out like any application. It asks for your name, address, and email address, that sort of thing. Then it asks you information on the baby you would like to adopt. Are we OK with and American Indian, African American, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic, or Middle Eastern child. Mark and I answered yes on all of them. It didn’t matter what race. It only mattered that the baby, wait…that’s the next question. How old do you want the child to be? Are we willing to take a child up to one month? Up to 6 months? Up to 12, 18 or over 18 months old? Mark and I decided that we would take a child up to 6 months. It didn’t matter as long as the baby was healthy, wait…that’s the next question.

We then have to ask ourselves the hard questions. We had to answer the questions that not many parents have to answer, but fall into daily, unaware. Would be willing to adopt a child with Down’s Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Fetal Drug Exposure, HIV, Unknown Birth Father, Unknown Birth Father (Rape), or Conceived in Incest. How can anyone answer these questions? Mark and I didn’t know how to answer. Would the agency look down on us if we answered no to all? Would we be put on the backburner and not get a child because we don’t care enough? These and other thoughts went racing through our heads. What would people think of us? Were not bad people, but were we able to handle some of these things? We left them blank and moved on to the next set of questions.

The next set of questions was dealing with the pregnant parent’s medical history. Here is where my head sort of imploded. How were we to answer these questions? Doctors couldn’t tell me what is happening to the joints in my body, how can they predict what is going to happen to a baby’s body? If the mother/father of the unborn baby had Cystic Fibrosis, hemophilia, Huntington disease, muscular dystrophy, autism, mental retardation, or suicidal (I didn’t list them all because there are 18) would we be willing to adopt this child? Oh god, I don’t know. Then there was more history, alcohol abuse/use, cocaine use, crack use, ecstasy use, heroin use, LSD use, marijuana use, or methadone use. Would we be willing to adopt under these conditions? Too much input and not enough knowledge of what is a real concern and what isn’t.

Since we needed to find a pediatrician, we would ask them for some insight. We were going to use our neighbor’s pediatrician, but she was out of town so we found someone in the same office. Little did we know that our pediatrician was going to be gay. He wore so much cologne that my eyes started to water, but he was nice enough. He tried to answer any questions we had concerning these diseases and prenatal habits. He couldn’t tell us the specifics so he told us to talk with a geneticist. We had planned on calling, but life got in the way.

Mark and I forgot about the application for a while. There were other things that needed to be done. We needed to get our home study done, find a lawyer, get our finger prints taken for an FBI criminal background check as well as any child abuse record, and put together our profile, but first we needed to get the two rooms upstairs completed. If we went “live” before the two rooms were done, there would have been two adults, one baby, three dogs and a cat in about 600 sq feet. Not the best for a newborn. So we (Mark actually) finished the upstairs (I painted) and it looks great. This took all summer. Even though we didn’t have the upstairs completed, we could get our home study done – not sure how, but not complaining either. Getting the home study has to be the hardest part to date.

Part 3 coming soon…