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Our adoption journey.
Your choice to provide a loving home and open your heart to a little one is a beautiful testament to the incredible capacity for love that we humans possess.
As you embark on this remarkable journey, we’re delighted to provide an overview and guidance for every step of the adoption process we went through. In this article, we’ll share invaluable insights, helpful tips, and helping you feel confident, prepared, and excited as you welcome this new life into your world.
So, grab a cup of coffee or tea, settle into your favorite chair, and join us as we explore the wonderful world of newborn adoption together. Let’s celebrate the joy, embrace the challenges, and cherish the memories that lie ahead on this incredible adventure!
Walkthrough approach.
There is a lot to cover off in this article, so I apologize in advance for its length, however, I will try to make it as concise as possible and easy to comprehend. We will split the content into two posts. This is Part 1. There 2 parts: Part 1 Decision to Active and Part 2 Active to Finalized. For each part, we will break down the steps and also keep a running tally of days elapsed. The most common question we get is, how long does it take? Now every adoption is different and ours was no different, but this might give you at least an idea of what you can expect.
Part 1 Decision to Active.
Below you will find a visual guide to all the steps in Part 1, do not be alarmed! It looks like there is a lot (well there is a lot) but we are here to hold your hand and walk you through it.
Decision To Adopt.
Everyone has different reasons for wanting to adopt and you will be no different, from being unable to conceive naturally to a myriad of other reasons. The important thing is that this decision is made as a team, there cannot be any doubt in any partner’s mind. The real decision to made here is usually around the type of adoption you are considering, domestic newborn, foster child, international newborn etc. For our family we made the decision to adopt a domestic newborn. Start talking to each other now about having an open adoption (contact with the birth mother), most agencies prefer this approach.
Adoption Agency Research.
We spent a lot of time researching agencies, there are a lot out there. Some have varying criteria you must fulfil to be a client. After weeks of researching, calling we narrowed down to 2 agencies. One in state one outside of state. Take your time here, you will be working with your chosen agency for potentially many years, so it needs to be the right fit for your family.
- Ask about the post and pre-natal care birth mothers have.
- Ask about open and closed adoption preferences.
- Ask if they do housing (on site) or offer housing assistance to birth mothers.
- Ask for an estimate of the total cost expected.
- Ask their average placement times.
- Don’t limit yourselves to only searching within your local state, go wider in your search.
- Ask for reference families who have adopted children through them.
Adoption Agency Selected.
Ultimately, we chose the out of state agency, the agency we chose made it onto our research list by complete luck, we were visiting an attorney for an unrelated matter, we mentioned we had started our adoption journey just as small talk. The attorney motioned to a picture of twins on their desk, “see those 2 beautiful kiddos? both adopted!” and gave us the name of the agency they had used. We added them to our list and the rest is history as they say. We chose The Gladney Center for Adoption.
Visit To Adoption Agency.
Our adoption agency offered the ability to go and visit their headquarters for a weekend. If yours does the same thing I would highly recommend it. The actual visit was for a single day (a Friday) but as I mentioned we chose out of state, so we tacked on a couple of days before and after so we could spend some time exploring the area.
The reason we recommend going, if offered. Is that you get to meet all the staff who would potentially be involved in your adoption process. We met with the case workers (the staff whole typically work directly with the birth mothers), the administrators (the staff who assist you on your paperwork), the general council (the staff who will be handling the courts at placement time) and most importantly some of the birth mothers. We had an opportunity to speak with birth mothers who had used our agency, and they walked as through their experiences. It really helped us cement the decision in our minds that we had chosen the right agency for us.
Application To Adopt.
Typically, this is now down online via a portal, which was the case for us. You fill in your basic details, explain your reasons for wanting to adopt, verify your identity, potentially pay a deposit. Your application should then be accepted and then you are onto the most soul sucking section of the whole process, paperwork!
Paperwork.
The phase that will have you pulling your hair out! There is a lot of paperwork that you will be gathering and submitting at this stage, it can start to get overwhelming and frustrating, but hang on there it is worth it. You will also be doing other tasks in parallel to the paperwork (such as training which we discuss in the next section). The core paperwork might vary from agency to agency, at the very least expect to be able to supply the following.
Now there is another set of documents that you really need to take your time with, this set of documents is all around your adoption preferences. This caused us to have more than a few heart-to-heart moments as a family in determining a level that we were both comfortable with.
What do I mean by that? Well, you will be asked the level of comfort you have with certain aspects of the birth mothers medical and psychological history. For example, on a scale of 1 to 10 how comfortable are you with a birth mother who consumed alcohol during the pregnancy. On a scale of 1 to 10 how comfortable are you with a birth mother who consumed marijuana during the pregnancy. On a scale of 1 to 10 how comfortable are you with a birth mother whose relatives have diagnosed depression. There are a lot of these questions that you will have to wrestle with. There will be other questions around race and diversity.
The basic premise is that the more flexible you are with your answers, in theory the adoption has the potential to move faster, as there is potential for a larger pool of birth mothers to be in scope. The reality is you need to balance with what your family is comfortable with. We had so many questions around some of the areas, we took time to go visit a pediatrician to help us make informed decisions that suited our desires. Highly recommend you do the same, it helped us immensely.
Training.
You will most likely be doing the training required as you are filling out the paperwork, some of paperwork required includes uploading the certificates you get from the training.
It is important to note that the specific training requirements for adopting a newborn may vary depending on the state where you live, as well as the specific adoption agency or program you are working with. Your chosen agency will let you know what training requirements are needed. For us the below is the training we had to take.
Parenting skills: Parenting a newborn requires a unique set of skills, such as feeding, changing, and soothing the baby. You may need to attend classes or workshops to learn about these skills, as well as strategies for developing a strong bond with your child. We attended a course at a local hospital, the course was called Baby Basics and lasted about 4 hours, where I learned to swaddle a baby very badly.
Child development: Understanding how a child develops physically, emotionally, and intellectually is important in providing appropriate care for your child. You may need to attend classes or read books on child development to learn about the different stages of growth and development. For this we attended an online class (mostly involved watching videos).
Attachment and bonding: Developing a strong attachment with your child is crucial for their emotional and social development. You may need to learn about different attachment styles, such as secure attachment, and strategies for building a strong bond with your child. Again, for this one we attended an online training session, our session also included a large section on diversity. This was important for us as we had chosen the potential to adopt outside of our own cultural backgrounds.
First Aid Or more specifically, baby and infant CPR training. Will teach you all about CPR and choking recovery. Was a very practical course with lots of practice on mannequins and learning how to use AED devices correctly with infants. A quick google search will show your local establishments that offer this training.
First Home Study.
Mention Home study to any prospective adoptive parents and you typically see fear start to creep into their eyes. This is often one of the most dreaded parts of the whole process and until you go through one, it’s easy to understand why.
So, let me put your mind at rest, as this turns out to be one of the most enjoyable parts of the whole process. It’s more of a dialogue, the aim being to determine if you are ready as parents in being able to raise and care for a child safely.
If you are doing an in-state adoption, it’s highly likely that your agency already has a relationship with home study providers and will assign you one to work with. As we opted for out of state, we had to find our own provider. My wife had worked as a toddler teacher for a few years, so we knew a few parents who had adopted children. We asked them for recommendations on who had done their home studies, after a few phone calls we selected who we felt was a good fit for us.
Now the first thing the home study provider is going to do is send you (yes you guessed it) a bucket load of more paperwork to do. Good news is that it’s almost identical to all the paperwork you did in the previous step, so you will literally have to just send that same batch to your provider. You will additionally need to write a short biography about yourselves.
The home study is typically split into a couple of sessions, the first session at the providers location and the second session at your home.
The first meeting is a get to know you session, your provider will ask you questions around the following (there are no right or wrong answers here, it’s not a test in any way shape or form).
Once this session is done, you’ll schedule the next session, typically a few weeks later as the provider starts to process your documents.
Second Home Study.
Ding Ding! Round II. This time the provider will visit your home and you will give them a tour. Now my wife was paranoid to the degree that she worried it would be like a military inspection, where someone is running their finger over surfaces trying to find dust, it’s NOT.
You do not have to even baby proofed your home at this point, it’s something the provider will discuss with you for sure, but it does not need to be Fort Knox at this time. You just need to be aware. You will be asked questions about fire extinguishers, and guns in the home (and their security). You will be asked questions on what room the baby will likely occupy. The question the provider is trying to answer is, will a baby be safe and secure in this home? with an environment to flourish in.
The final part of the visit consisted of a 15-minute chat, one on one with the provider. The provider is again not trying to catch you out and make sure you both have the same answers. I was asked questions such as, what did I admire most about my partner? what sort of mother did I think she would be? what sort of father did I feel I would be?
This was probably the most intimate part of the whole home study, though I cannot stress this enough, it’s much more akin to a discussion than anything else. Speak from your heart and truthfully and you have nothing to worry about.
Home Study Approval.
Home Study approval usually comes in the form of a document sent to you by your provider, it is usually copied to your adoption agency as well. Once you have received the document, it’s on the final step in this phase 1.
Profile Creation
The fun part!
So, what is the profile? Simply put this is a small book, either softbound or hard that gets put in front of the birth mothers so they can learn all about you and your family in terms of where her child might ultimately end up.
It tells the story of you to the birth mother, its the main way she will make a decision on if she feels you are a good fit for her.
There are several ways to create one, there are plenty of firms out there who will create one for you, for a fee of course! Or you can roll your own if you have some basic design skills. We opted to roll our own as we felt it would be more personal.
We had the following sections in our book, some details below on how we created and what went into it. Ours was 16 pages in total when all said and done, there are no hard guidelines on length.
Once you have decided on the format and content, you just need to find a service that will print copies for you (such as Shutterfly etc) there are a lot to choose from. We opted to use a softbound version, we had 20 copies printed and sent off to our adoption agency.
Adoption Active
Well done, you did it! You are now officially active in your adoption program. Ok, so what does that mean exactly?
Basically, it means that your adoption agency is in position to put your profile book in front of prospective birth mothers to get feedback and hopefully a match. A lot of agencies do have queues, so a FIFO model (first in first out) for adoptee parents, so it may still be a while before your book lands in anyone’s hands. The important thing is you are now good to go!
Conclusion.
Still here? great. Congratulations on making it all the way through this post. As you can see from our elapsed time, it’s taken us 295 days to get from adoption decision to adoption active. Yes, you read that right, 295 days! Just shy of a year.
Are there places you can claw back days? There certainly are, having all your paperwork in order, being faster on agency selection to name a few.
In Part 2 of this post, we will take you from Adoption Active all the way to Adoption Finalized. We hope you join us for that journey as well.