The Adoption Lottery

Another question that people ask a lot is what you do while you’re waiting to be matched. While it’s pretty much just waiting, we get monthly updates from most of the agencies we’re working with about how many times our profile has been shown. There are also situations that we apply to outside of our agencies that Rachel finds on her own through various adoption communities she’s a part of, and those situations are the subject of this post.

We hear of anywhere between one and ten situations a week this way, and if the situation works for us we apply for it. That’s when the Adoption Lottery begins. Pretty much everybody has dreamed of winning the lottery, and that’s kind of what applying to an adoption situation is like. When you buy the lottery ticket you know that the odds are very low that you’ll win, but you still think about what it would be like if you did. An adoption is the same (though the odds are a lot better than winning the lottery). You know that there are a dozen other families applying for the same situation and that the odds are against you, but there’s still that what if feeling, and the hope that maybe this will be the one, that this will be the child you’re meant to raise. You start looking at the date the child is due to figure out how much time you have to get everything figured out, and if it’s out of state, what the travel will be like. How long will you need to be out of state? Are you going to fly, drive, or take the train? What hotel should we stay at? How big of a car do we need to rent? What are the travel restrictions for newborns? All of these questions occupy your mind until you hear back from the agency and find out you weren't selected. But that’s okay. That just means that it wasn't meant to be, and there's no time to worry about what might have been. The next situation is right around the corner and you have to get ready to repeat the process again, because maybe, just maybe, the next one will be the child you've been waiting for.

Adoption Update

I get asked frequently about how the adoption is going and today had a lot of action on that front, so here goes.

I know most people probably aren't too familiar with the adoption process, and when it's complete and you have the child it's great. It's getting there that sucks. As Rachel described it this evening, it's an emotional roller coaster, and the worst day we've had in the process since the failed adoption last year. We were told of a situation Tuesday for an African American child that was born a month ago, and the scenario was perfect for us. The fees were about $15,000 less than a typical adoption because the the child was already born, she was in Missouri so it was only about an 8 hour train ride, no drugs, alcohol, or mental health issues, and the birthmother was open to any race for the adoptive couple, and they wanted to child picked up next week. There were only 5 couples that they could find that were interested, so we had a 20% chance. This morning we heard from the agency, and the birthmother decided she wanted to see more profiles since she now wanted a family that had one African American/Biracial parent or child, so that one fell through.

Later this afternoon Rachel received a phone call from an adoption lawyer that was working on a case where a baby boy was born 10 weeks premature and the family he had been matched with backed out because they didn't want a premature baby and they had to find a family for him asap. The birthmother had already signed over her parental rights so there was no possibility of another failed adoption. The up front fees were fairly reasonable as well. I had to call him to talk about some insurance stuff and everything was going great until he said that the child was in Arkansas, and one or both of us would need to be there for 6 weeks until he was at normal birth weight and could be released from the hospital. With the medical expenses, travel, lodging, food, and car rental, those hidden fees increased the overall charges to about $15,000 over our budget, so we had to pass on that one. After all the time we've spent waiting, and the failed match, it was very difficult to pass on it, but there was no way we could afford it.

Thankfully, once the adoption is all done and we have our baby, none of this will matter. Right now the roller coaster is at the bottom of the tracks, but we're nearing that final incline. Maybe one day I'll tell our future child the story of how everything worked out in a How I Met Your Mother-esque manner (I'm watching that right now, so that's where the idea came from.)