Somebody in our adoption support group commented about how wrong they were in assuming that when they turned from infertility treatments to adoption, they were finally getting off the roller coaster. Everybody else laughed. The consensus is that you're off the coaster, but you're still in the amusement park. But the new roller coaster is smaller, and it's usually a shorter ride.
For reasons that we don't feel appropriate to put on the Web, we went directly to adoption, skipping the common path of first going through endless failed infertility treatments. (We don't want to put down the medical approach. It's fantastic when it works. But it seems to be a truism that most modern adoptive couples have gone that route, without luck.)
This is the story of our successful adoption search. There were plenty of ups and downs, but the end result was sure worth it.
Our first step toward adoption was to have discussions, of course, but we dragged our feet on the action front. Then we heard about a baby that was available, and realized that we were both ready to be parents and excited about the prospects. That baby didn't come through, and we went back to inaction. A second baby appeared and fell through, and that was enough to galvanize us.
We started with books, and then began calling attorneys and agencies. Geoff's brother is a lawyer, so he asked colleagues to find us the name of a top attorney. Two different friends who had adopted each recommended their agencies. We talked to all, and eventually settled on The Independent Adoption Center, which is based in Pleasant Hill, California, though it has offices in many parts of the country.
There are a lot of books. We bought three or four that we found interesting and readable, and they were very helpful. Dear Birthmother: Thank You for Our Baby, by Kathleen Silber and Phylis Speedlin, is well-known and popular, with good reason. But the one we would recommend most highly was given to us by our agency: The Open Adoption Book: A Guide to Adoption Without Tears, by Bruce M. Rappaport, Ph.D., who is also the agency's founder and director. If you're thinking about adopting a child, or if someone in your life is going through open adoption, we strongly recommend that you purchase and read this book. It's easy going, and of course it's available from amazon.com. Search for "open adoption" and you'll find both of these books, plus many others.
We decided not to go with an attorney because it wasn't a one-stop option. An adoption attorney is probably the best choice if you've already found a birthmother who is well adjusted and committed to adoption. But if you're in the search phase, the attorney will leave it up to you to find a birthmother. That can be a daunting task. A good agency will help you to locate your birthparents. This was a big factor in choosing the agency route.
Okay, why this particular agency? Location played a role: we knew that we'd be seeing a lot of the agency. (Ironically, that turned out to be incorrect. Most of our contacts are via phone, and the support group meets much nearer to our home than to the agency's offices.) Recommendations were a big factor. But the most important one was the one-stop nature and the (soft) guarantees. We felt like we were getting into a known situation. The major costs were prespecified, the agency has a really good success rate, and they have an extensive outreach program for locating birthparents. That's important: over 90% of their clients find birthmothers through the agency (the other 10% succeed through "networking," which is also very important). IAC also provides counseling for the birthmothers themselves. This is critical, because it helps them to be sure that they're doing the right thing and so reduces the "reclaim rate" of mothers who change their minds after birth. It's much easier to have the birthparents cancel on you before you've got the baby in your arms, rather than after.
To top it off, at least in California, the IAC can even do the feared home study for you. Instead of a state worker, the home study is done by somebody you've already met and feel comfortable with. There's none of the "inquisition" attitude that scares so many people.
After we chose IAC, we went to a two-day "weekend intensive" workshop where we met adoptive parents and a birthmother, discussed requirements and fears, and started on the paperwork. It seemed like a lot, but it wasn't really that bad. The most daunting form to be filled out is an autobiography that's only a few pages long. There are many details to track, and the agency gave us a checklist to help out. Fingerprints, medical exams (Geoff tested positive for TB, which is a whole other story, but he's healthy and it's not a big deal any more), marriage certificates, state bureaucracy -- at times it seemed endless. But we did the workshop in late October, and by early January, even with the holidays slowing things down, we had all of our ducks in a row and were ready for the final step, which was to have our birthmother letter approved.
Then came the cutting and gluing. We have four photos on our letter, one on the front and three on the back. The first prices we got were around 25 cents per photo, so we looked into color photocopying as a way of doing the back side. But there were a number of problems, and when we added up the costs, it turned out to be cheaper to just do photos. We found a one-hour photo place that would not only make hundreds of copies at 18 cents each, but that had a big paper cutter and would trim them to our size requirements at no additional cost.
Photocopying turned out to be much more hassle than you'd think. We provided our own paper. The first place we tried had an older machine, and it started smearing ink across every copy. We ruined about 75-100 sheets that way. The second place didn't smear things (at least, not a lot), but their fast copier wouldn't do double-sided copying automatically on our paper, so we had to do a bunch, flip them, do a bunch, flip them, etc. We hate copiers!
Gluing is real fun. We set up a production line, doing one side at a time. We used spray glue, which is great stuff but gets all over everything, so the spraying was done in the garage. Geoff would put a fresh newspaper in the bottom of a cardboard box, then cover it with face-down photos. Then he'd carry the box out and spray them. He found that the instructions on the can didn't work, because the force of the spray would lift the photos so that they got glue on the front, so instead he'd hold the can at waist level and spray directly downwards. (Yes, his shoes got kind of gluey.) Pat took the sprayed pictures and positioned them in the right places. A pencil eraser was useful for getting rid of minor photocopier smears. It took us a couple of evenings at two hours a night to do our first 200 letters.
After the letters were done, we went into "the book," which is IAC's file of parents waiting for children. We forgot to record the date, but it was mid-to-late January when the letters arrived at the office. Then the eager waiting began.
To protect the privacy of others, we are going to use only invented first names to describe birthparents with whom we've had contacts.
Our first contact actually happened in January, before we went into "the book." For various reasons, we're going to keep most of the story private, but the contact came via e-mail to Geoff. Susan told a heart-rending story and said that she'd chosen us based on our letter, which she found on the Internet. She said she'd looked at hundreds of letters before picking us, and picked us because of a particular phrase that exemplified hope to her.
Naturally, we were very excited. Geoff replied right away. The disappointment came gradually, when we never got any calls or more e-mail, even though we sent her several more messages. Eventually, we realized that the heart-rending story was probably untrue. Perhaps Susan had exaggerated her tale, or perhaps it was all a scam to try to get us to pay "medical expenses" that never really happened. Or perhaps it was all real, and Susan had just decided to back out for her own reasons. Part of the frustration of waiting for an adoption is that we'll never know.
The second contact came in late February or early March, on a Saturday morning. Again, it was our Internet letter that led to the call. James explained that he and his wife already had three kids, were barely making ends meet, and just couldn't afford a fourth. They were already in the hole for major medical expenses. They'd come to the very difficult decision to have this one adopted. One of the things they were looking for was for us to pick up the medical costs, which would have made this an expensive adoption for us. James talked to Geoff for at least half an hour. Again, we were excited, though that was tempered with the knowledge that James was looking at a number of possible adoptive couples and that we probably wouldn't be able to afford it anyway. At the end of the conversation, Geoff asked him to send e-mail if he decided against us, so we wouldn't be left hanging again.
After discussing it, we decided that we should turn this one down because of the cost. As it happened, James sent us a very nice note the following Tuesday, explaining that he was very uncomfortable working with agencies, and so they'd decided to go elsewhere. That seemed a bit odd to us, since we're so happy with our agency, but it saved us from backing out.
Our third opportunity was in mid-March. At 4:45 on Friday, Pat got a call from Carrie, an IAC social worker in Northern California. There was a day-old baby boy, the first couple had backed out, and our profile matched him. That was about all we learned from the call. Carrie would call us again on Monday.
It was a hectic weekend. We called everybody, got really excited, and frantically started preparing to pick him up at the end of the week. Monday arrived, and we called exactly at 9 AM to say, "We want him." Carrie was in a meeting, and would call us back.
When we talked to Carrie, the roller coaster took off. We weren't the only couple, and she was going to visit the birthmother to let her choose. We waited for hours. At the end of the day, Carrie called again. She hadn't been able to contact the birthmother. However, the boy was healthier than had been expected, and the hospital was going to release him the next day. The bad news was that if the birthmother couldn't be found, he would be sent to the county's Child Protective Services department (i.e., foster care).
On Tuesday, Carrie went driving all over the county, trying to find the birthmother. We both stayed home, in case we had to fly up and get him quickly. No call. At 6, we finally went out to meetings we had previously scheduled. In the evening, Carrie called from home and left a message on our machine. She hadn't had any success, and the boy had been released to the county. She'd call us again the next day.
Wednesday finished this one for us. The birthmother had been located; apparently she'd been driving around trying to find Carrie and they'd just kept missing each other. She was very upset that the boy had been sent to the county, but with her presence it was going to be possible to get him back. However, after seeing the birthmother letters, she had picked a couple that was closer to her so that she could maintain some level of contact after the adoption. We were disappointed, but happy that we'd been getting close, and it certainly spurred us to become more prepared for suddenly acquiring a baby.
The call came as expected, and Theresa sounded almost too good to be true. She told us that she was just finishing in a local community college, had applications in to 4-year schools, and had received her first acceptance. Education was an important question (she was planning on continuing into graduate school herself), and she had picked us at least partly because of our educational background and commitment to making school a priority for our child.
Just to keep our lives exciting, we learned that the baby would be arriving in two weeks or less. Needless to say, Theresa was planning to pick a couple as soon as she'd finished interviewing all three, and we'd find out the next day whether we were the lucky ones.
The next day came, and because I was going to be leaving my desk, I called Pat to give her a different phone number. While I was talking to her, our adoption counselor called me with the news that Theresa had chosen us. Yay! The next step would be to meet with the birthmother and a counselor, so we could fill out some pre-birth paperwork. That was scheduled for Tuesday the 14th of April.
However, babies wait for no one, and on the morning of the 11th Theresa went into labor. We rushed to the hospital, and Pat was able to help coach her through the delivery of a beautiful baby girl. So now we're parents! She now has her own Web page with the sort of pictures that only doting parents could love, but what the heck, she deserves it because she's the best thing that ever happened to us.
This page last updated April 11, 1998.