Welcome to Our Adoption Story!!

We hope that those of you who are in the process of adopting can learn something from our past experiences and failures. We have shared what happened as well as the important lessons we learned along the way. I can't believe how challenging the whole process has been. It was an emotional roller coaster ride. Worse than dating!!

That being said, here is where we now stand. At the beginning of this year, after years of waiting and 2 change of hearts we "pulled our book" only to end up putting it back in again due to possibilities in Florida (which didn't pan out). But since the annual home study was already paid for we decided to go ahead and give it one more year (just to see what might happen). The original plan was to pull our book in December (the 5 year anniversary of our approval), but the last few months have been torture (including a 3rd change of heart), so we are now calling it quits. Stick a fork in us we are done!!

The reality is after some major grieving (and a lot of chocolate cake), we will be just fine. If God wanted us be parents, we would be, but instead he has other plans for us. I wonder what those might be???

So, if you have any questions or would like to post comments, please don't hesitate to ask or post. The blog is archived (on the left) by date (most recent first) and by title (earliest posts first) to make finding what you need easier. Take care and have a great day!!!!

Meeting Birthmom Number 3

Here we go again!

We got the call from our social worker Thursday night at 9 p.m. A 22 year old who gave birth that morning, was looking for an adoptive family. Since her boyfriend took off after learning of the pregnancy, she had always planed on adoption, but hadn't spoken with a social worker or made an adoption plan.

The hospital social worker called Catholic Charities that morning requesting someone come down to meet and counsel birthmom. After spending some time with her they decided she would be a perfect match for us, so they gave her our book. She decided she liked us and wanted to meet! YAY! So we set an appointment for Friday morning.

Needless to say we didn't get any sleep Thursday night at all.

Now for the sticky part. I can't remember when, but either later Thursday night or Friday morning we learned that the doctor who delivered birthmom's baby found out she was making an adoption plan, and decided to get involved by suggesting his close, personal friends who were looking to adopt their 2nd child. He told her all about them and gave her a copy of their book as well. This changed everything. We went from being the chosen family to having to compete with a family who was recommended by birthmom's doctor (the man who delivered her baby).

So Saturday morning we arrive at the hospital to find out that she is also meeting the Doctor's friends later that afternoon. To be honest if we had known that, we never would have agreed to the meeting in the first place. I mean really... who can compete with her OB's personal, perfect friends?

We got along with birthmom really well and had a lot in common. But she was very blunt and made it perfectly clear that as long as the Doctor's friends were good people she would choose them over us because she wanted her son to have a sibling. So after 4 hours of driving and meeting we find out that once birthmom's doctor got involved, we really had no chance at all.

Needless to say our social worker, birthmom's social worker, and the social worker at the hospital were really REALLY angry at the situation. Evidently it could be considered some sort of ethics violation on the part of the doctor. Honestly, I have no idea about that. I wasn't really angry for some reason. I'm just hurt. How many times has our book been given to birthmoms only to be rejected? And now this is our 3rd time meeting a birthmom only to be turned away. After 4 1/2 years, 3 rejections, and all sorts of other drama I think I might have just gone beyond my breaking point.

My emotions are really mixed right now. Part of me doesn't really even care anymore and part of me is tired of being judged by others only to be found lacking in something. I can't begin to tell you how old this is getting and how brutal it is. From what I hear we are the only family to have to wait this long for a placement. We are also the only family to be rejected by birthmoms 3 times.

I'm actually seriously considering pulling our book now instead of in December. I mean really.............. What's the point of keeping it in?

What Now??

I know we pulled our book..... but there has been something going on lately......

My sister-in-law knew of someone who adopted in Florida (numerous times). Evidently they have a tough time finding homes for a certain race of baby there. I can't even begin to tell you how crazy that makes me!!

After speaking with a social worker down there who is contracted by Bethany services, we found out some basic information. Here in Colorado, most of the kids coming up for adoption have birthmoms who abuse drugs and alcohol. In Florida it's different. There, the white birthmoms usually abuse substances, but the African American and Latino birthmoms take good care of themselves because they don't want to harm the babies. She was surprised when she heard we were having such a tough time, but when she found out we didn't care about race, and we have been through the entire process already, she thought there would be no problem finding a birthmom for us. She actually had 2 in mind. This opened a whole new door....... so we thought.

So, I made a few calls and sent a few emails. It turns out that Bethany wont work with us unless we start over from scratch with them (which meant us losing several thousand dollars). The tough part......we actually couldn't get them to tell us this outright...... instead they just strung us along for a week or two and then just stopped returning phone calls. That says a lot about their ethics and sent up a BUNCH of red flags.

All this research was happening around the time of our annual review, which we were just going to skip since we pulled our book anyway. But... we found out that our social worker just took our book out of circulation and never closed our profile, so technically we were still ok. We did our annual review and updated our adoption book. During our review we found out some of the reasons we weren't chosen by birthmoms in the past. Evidently a misspelled word and other such non-important things were cause for worry with some birthmoms. They expected perfection, which we are not and will never claim to be.

Anyway, our social worker called the 3 Catholic Charities offices in Florida to see what they could do about the situation down there, but unfortunately, they never returned her calls. She also sent a letter to the National Office to see what we could open up between states.

So we are open again, but not expecting much. Our profile is very honest as are our letters. We haven't sugar coated anything because we want to make sure birthmom knows who we really are, flaws and all. Birthmom's deserve to know the truth about who their child will be with. I've seen several other profiles that are VERY sugar coated and rosy, but we just don't feel comfortable creating that sort of "image" because it's just not honest.

There is one other option..... we could hire a private lawyer to help us adopt a child in Florida. The only thing is we will have to pay for all of birthmom's expenses including clothes, rent, medical, food, and anything else she wants. After all of that she could still change her mind. The last 2 times birthmom's changed their minds, we only lost a grand or so. But if this happened in Florida, we could lose twenty to thirty grand. That would put an end to any further attempts at adoption. I hate to say it but having to adopt really sucks!

Weighing Our Options

We've been waiting to adopt for 3 1/2 years now and still no luck. Since abortion is so easy to attain, even publicly funded now, and having a child out of wedlock no longer holds a stigma, it seems that there aren't a lot of infants up for adoption anymore. So we find ourselves in a situation where we need to decide what to do next. Do we just give up after we hit the 4 year mark in December? Or do we keep paying for annual reviews and such?

There is one other option though. We've been discussing giving up the fantasy of having a baby and adopting a school aged child. It would be much more emotionally challenging since the older kids have usually been victims of abuse or neglect, but maybe we could be successful. It's really hard though. We wanted so badly to teach a baby sign language, how to read, how to walk and all that fun stuff. We've had a nursery ready to go since we got chosen the first time 3 1/2 years ago. It's a really hard dream to give up. I'm just not sure what we should do.
The social worker we had for the last several years ended up getting another job, so we are meeting next week with her replacement. It feels like starting all over again. If we do try to adopt an older child we will have to get completely different training as well.

The other issue is family. I come from a family of broken promises. People are so wrapped up in themselves they back out of promises all the time. If we have a kid who has had a hard and unstable life, how do we convince a group of people who focus so much on themselves to stop, take a breath, and realize how they affect those around them? I guess there is just a lot to consider....

New Opportunity

Well, yesterday we got a call from our social worker. There was a birth mom who was ready to pick a family and she wanted to know if we wanted our book to be included.

Birth mom is young and troubled. She drank excessively for the first 11 weeks of the pregnancy. There was also regular cocaine and marijuana use. After doing the research we realized that this one may be too much for us. If I were perfectly healthy, maybe we could take the risk, but as things are now...........

Did you know that excessive drinking of this type in the first trimester increases the chance of still birth by 70%? How scary is that?

So as it stands we are still waiting. It just seems that all the children coming up for adoption have birth mom's that use and abuse drugs and alcohol. I wonder if there is anyone out there that doesn't?