Who has adopted in recent years?

[Anonymous]

If you’re going to adopt outside of your race, start reading everything you can by transracial adoptees now. A lot of white parents aren’t prepared to raise children of color and can cause a lot of damage by living in all-white communities, not providing them with racial mirrors, etc.

[Anonymous]

I am a PP who adopted a baby domestcially. I forgot to mention that I have OCD and anxiety that I take meds for and it did not rule me out as an adopter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re going to adopt outside of your race, start reading everything you can by transracial adoptees now. A lot of white parents aren’t prepared to raise children of color and can cause a lot of damage by living in all-white communities, not providing them with racial mirrors, etc.

You can read all you want and be "prepared" but kids still are going to have questions and it be a source of stress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you’re going to adopt outside of your race, start reading everything you can by transracial adoptees now. A lot of white parents aren’t prepared to raise children of color and can cause a lot of damage by living in all-white communities, not providing them with racial mirrors, etc.

+1

IF you are a white adoptive parent adopting a child of color, please read all you can. Pactadopt.org is a great organization and resource. Ditch the whole "Love is enough" adage. You need to do your work. Do you have black friends in your life for instance? Not people you know, but people who actually come to your house, you go to their house, your kids are friends? Do you know where to find a hair salon/barber shop that does black hair? Are you ready to address racist relatives?

[Anonymous]

When we adopted from China, we had our physicals done at a walk-in clinic and did not disclose that we had had short periods of time when we had (separately) been on anti-anxiety or anti-depressant meds. It was such a short period of time, we felt it was irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

We adopted domestically last year. We went through an agency and it cost about 50K all in. We adopted a healthy baby boy born in March of last year. The homestudy and all the agency requirements were a pain and time consuming. Once we got through the homestudy and agency requirements we had our baby within six months. We got into the matching process with our agency in Oct-Nov 2016. We were chosen by our birthmother in Jan 2017. Our son was born in March 2017 and we brought him home a week after he was born. (We had to stay in the state in which he was born to go to court and complete the interstate compact) The adoption was finalized in Oct 2017.

I recognize this situation is unusual. Our son is healthy, happy and a complete joy to us. We have an open adoption. I write letters and send pictures a couple of times a year and I also have a secret FB page for our son's birthmother to see him growing up. It is one sided. I post a picture with a comment, she will respond to the posting with some variation of "Look how beautiful he is, I love him." I don't doubt for one second that she does love him and she gave him up for adoption because she loved him. I don't respond to any of the comments and she doesn't write letters back to us. All the written correspondence goes through the adoption agency.

I'm happy to talk in more detail off line if you are interested I can set up an email to chat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When we adopted from China, we had our physicals done at a walk-in clinic and did not disclose that we had had short periods of time when we had (separately) been on anti-anxiety or anti-depressant meds. It was such a short period of time, we felt it was irrelevant.

Does this work? With electronic medical records now, is there a risk of getting caught?

[Anonymous]

We twice adopted domestically, in 2011 and 2013. Both times it was a year, almost exactly, from when we began the home study to when we took a newborn home. Each process was about $25K. We had a lot of drama involving the birth family for the first adoption, but the second was basically a piece of cake except for the cost. Both are AA; one was later dx'd with ADHD, the other has no real issues.

We used a local attorney and had a different agency each time. We're in MD. One was born in NJ, the other in MD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Depending on the reason for your secondary infertility, we found it easier, more certain, and less expensive to use donor eggs. If you can get pregnant but just dont have good egg quality, you could explore that. You can also do embryo adoption which is often even less expensive than donor eggs.

But then you're dealing with a whole host of other psychological issues that your child (and possibly you) will have to deal with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP wanting to clarify a few points-

1. Our motivation to adopt is that we want to add more children to our family. The “wanting a sibling for our child” thing is regarding timing, not our underlying motivation.

2. We realize all kids avaialable for adoption have already have suffered the trauma of the loss of their birth family. But from what I’ve seen through the numerous adoptions I’m familiar with firsthand (these were all 5-10+ years ago, which is why I want to hear more recent experiences), there is a huge spectrum of health and emotional concerns and I want to know where we can realistically draw the line but still have a good chance of a fairly reasonable timeline. Almost all of the adoptive families we know adopted healthy infants domestically or from China or Vietnam. Two adopted children who were classified as “special needs” (one had a large birthmark, one has scars from a fire) and are happy, healthy, and living “normal” lives now as teens. One family adopted supposedly healthy children from Russia who had severe attachment disorder and FASD. They children will never be able to live independently and they dealt with scary, violent behavior toward their biological children. I’m trying to be realistic about what our family can take on upfront.

3. Of course we know there are no guarantees with any child, biological or adopted.

If you are open to a child of African Heritages, minor medical needs as mentioned above and in your orginal post check out Spence-Chapin. They have a few international programs or of which is South Africa. The program specifically has a high need for 1.5 yeas-preschool age children. They can (and any agency should be able to tell) tell you over the phone/email if you have anything in your history (assuming you are up front with them and the topic comes up in uour conversations) that might cause a problem for the respective program/country before you apply I believe they will allow you to work with a number of HS agencis in the area. As with any international or domestic adoption it is a long process with tons of paperwork and red tape. But it is nothing compared to parenting!!

IF you are considering adoption I highly recommend meeting with some agencies. As well as attending educational work shops, support groups, open houses and adoption related events. There is a Adoption & Fostercare Expo Oct 13th in DC. A lot of different agencies and parents that have adopted from a number of different paths will be in attendance.

Best of luck finding the best path for your family.

Here's the new link. http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07efltxx5w3d345662&llr=6cymg5cab
.

[Anonymous]

Have you looked into Embryo Adoption? Much cheaper than Donor Egg.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Depending on the reason for your secondary infertility, we found it easier, more certain, and less expensive to use donor eggs. If you can get pregnant but just dont have good egg quality, you could explore that. You can also do embryo adoption which is often even less expensive than donor eggs.

But then you're dealing with a whole host of other psychological issues that your child (and possibly you) will have to deal with.

There's no evidence that donor-conceived children have "psychological issues" to deal with. Any non-traditionally-created family will have to be thoughtful about communicating with their children about the non-traditional way the children joined the family, but "issues" isn't what I'd call that. Parenting is what I'd call that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We twice adopted domestically, in 2011 and 2013. Both times it was a year, almost exactly, from when we began the home study to when we took a newborn home. Each process was about $25K. We had a lot of drama involving the birth family for the first adoption, but the second was basically a piece of cake except for the cost. Both are AA; one was later dx'd with ADHD, the other has no real issues.

We used a local attorney and had a different agency each time. We're in MD. One was born in NJ, the other in MD.

Would you mind sharing adoption agency?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I’m quite familiar with the identity issues- one of my best friends is an adult Korean adoptee so we’ve discussed it extensively. I’ve also been reading up on the pros and cons of open adoption and realize I would need to become ok with it if we choose domestic adoption, since closed adoptions are very rare now and seem to be considered generally worse for the child.

Do our personal characteristics as a family help or hurt our chances of being matched, or is it random how long we’d wait or if we’d ever even be chosen? We’re both 30, married, healthy (other than the mild past anxiety), are no longer in DC (Texas now), college educated, income around 200k, and I’m a SAHM.

OP, you are not familiar with identify issues. You are using the all time "one of my friends is an adoptee so I already know.....". Please check and educate yourself. Talk to more adult adoptees, reallly understand what it means to adopt transracially. I recommend visiting PACT www.pactadopt.org.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. I’m quite familiar with the identity issues- one of my best friends is an adult Korean adoptee so we’ve discussed it extensively. I’ve also been reading up on the pros and cons of open adoption and realize I would need to become ok with it if we choose domestic adoption, since closed adoptions are very rare now and seem to be considered generally worse for the child.

Do our personal characteristics as a family help or hurt our chances of being matched, or is it random how long we’d wait or if we’d ever even be chosen? We’re both 30, married, healthy (other than the mild past anxiety), are no longer in DC (Texas now), college educated, income around 200k, and I’m a SAHM.

OP, you are not familiar with identify issues. You are using the all time "one of my friends is an adoptee so I already know.....". Please check and educate yourself. Talk to more adult adoptees, reallly understand what it means to adopt transracially. I recommend visiting PACT www.pactadopt.org.

Thank you for this reference! We're not actively thinking about adoption right now, but the existence of an agency like this sure makes it seem more possible.