Q&A Part Deux

Lately, I have had a lot of people asking unique questions about the adoption. I thought I would compile some of them and do a new Q&A post as a follow up to the one I did in February. This could get wordy.

       I think the question I get most often is “Why are you not adopting through the state or county?” 

It is a pretty loaded question, because we think that foster to adopt is a wonderful way to expand a family. We have talked about the possibility of doing that in the future. So why not now? I can say that it all comes down to what feels right in our gut. When we looked at different types of adoption, domestic infant open adoption clicked with us. We also want the experience of having a newborn and all of the sleepless nights that come along with it. It really isn’t so much a choice, but a drive coming from deep within.

We have had criticism that it is selfish to not be open to foster to adopt at this point. I don’t agree that we are being selfish. I think that what is right for one family is not right for another. At this time in our lives, this is our path.

  What makes you think you can raise a child of a different race? 

This question is huge. I can sit across from someone and say the race of the child doesn’t matter to me and mean it 100%. I think the bigger question is how we will help it to be ok with our child as he or she gets older. Since we have zero experience with having a transracial family, all we can do is continue to keep ourselves updated on the transracial family dynamic through education and community involvement. We plan on keeping our child’s culture and heritage alive, no matter the race or ethnicity. 

Our community and the people we keep in our lives are very diverse. We have friends with transracial families and plan to keep in contact with our friends who are adopting children of all backgrounds. I know it is not a perfect plan, but I also know that times have changed and continue to change. The picture of a modern family is so different than it once was. We are aware that there could be additional challenges to us and our child, be we feel prepared to tackle those challenges head on. 

     Can you adopt from any state in the US? Why don’t you just go get a baby from another country? 

We can adopt from the 48 contiguous states. This means no Alaska and no Hawaii. As much as I would love to sit through two weeks of waiting for the government to clear us to go home in Hawaii, we won’t be adopting and couldn’t afford to live there for two weeks anyway. Our agency has offices in many states and those states would be ideal, because the legal stuff would be easier. This does not dissuade us from adopting from “non- IAC” states though. Nothing that is truly worth it is easy, so we will do what we have to do to in whichever state we end up adopting from.

As far as international adoption, there are a couple of reasons we decided not to go that route, but I will explain the main one. The number one reason is that most of them will not accept me as an adoptive parent. In other countries, kidney transplant recipients don’t necessarily have as good of outcomes as they do here in the US. Some countries, especially the countries that Americans generally adopt from, will not let you adopt until you are 10 years post-transplant. I had my transplant at age 30, so at 40 we could have applied and then at 45 we MIGHT have had our child. Sorry, no, I can’t do it. You wouldn’t want to know me if I have to wait that long. 

Since here in the US we know that kidney transplant recipients can live long, normal lives, it is not a problem to be approved and adopt domestically. An enthusiastic letter from my doctor and we were well on our way! Also, can we all leave the word JUST out of any adoption talk? Or infertility talk? There no simply just do this or just do that. It is so much more complicated than that.

      How much is this adoption going to cost you?

Sorry, that is personal. If you are legitimately looking to adopt and want to know, so you know what you are getting into, contact me privately. It is not cheap, but the costs cover the legal stuff we need to make sure everything is done ethically. There are extra costs involved that may or may not apply to your situation as well. Take into consideration legal, agency fees (they have to pay their employees and provide services to expectant mothers and adoptive parents), travel costs, materials (such as printed dear “birth parent” letters, cost of a photographer to get a good shot for your profile), background checks, and many other incidentals. 

          I get a lot of being saying that I am “strong” or “brave”, because they feel like they could never get through this process. I want to address this.

John and I are strong and brave, but not because we can and will get through this process, but because we are just that sort of couple. We get through things. I think our 13+ years together has proven that we can get through things even harder than this. The fact is that we want a family and are doing what it takes to have one. It is much like putting yourself on auto-pilot and flying through the storm.

There are moments where we lose that strength and let the pressure of it all get to us, but no one can be strong 100% of the time. 

       People ask about the dynamics of open adoption a lot. I think the question that comes up most often is “How can you share your baby with the birth mother? Won’t it hurt to have another mom in the picture?”

It is very hard to explain open adoption to someone who doesn’t even have the slightest idea of what it is all about. Open adoption is not joint custody or co-parenting. John and I will be the legal parents. Generally speaking in open adoption, you find something for the child to call the birth mom that is not “mom”. I would be mom. A lot of birth moms I have read about have the kids call them by their first name, while some have special name that is only for them and their child and the adoptive parents. 

If all goes according to what we would like, the birth mom will be in the picture in some way. We would love to know her on a casual basis- emails, phone calls, texts, even visits. I think it is pretty typical to agree on a few visits a year.

We would hope for holidays, birthdays, other special occasions if we are close enough to work it out. We know that not every woman who places wants that much contact, so we would be flexible with the amount of communication we have. 

          Here is my favorite (sarcasm!) comment I get from people. This one is happening a lot lately: “Why don’t you just accept the fact that God didn’t want you to get pregnant and learn to be happy with no children?” 

Okay, not to shock anyone, but we aren’t religious. No, our lack of faith in organized religion is not the cause of our infertility either. I won’t believe for a second that there is an all-powerful god deciding the fate of my uterus, but I do think there is a deeper meaning to it all, bringing us together with our baby. I am sure that if the adoption never happens for one reason or another, we could find happiness just the two of us, but we have to give this our most determined of all tries, because this is what we want. 

       Ending on a light hearted note, people are always asking what we will name our baby. 

That is a good question. We have our favorites and we have our disagreements on which favorites line up. We would like to stay flexible in case our baby’s birth mom wants to have some input or has a name that means a lot to her that we can incorporate. It is hard to choose a name without having a timeline for baby’s arrival. I promise we won’t choose something crazy like "Rocketship Koopa Paratroopa” or anything. We are huge fans of simple and classic names. We would prefer that our kid not have to go through life having to spell their name to everyone, though I still do and my name is Sarah….go figure.

Holy moly, that was long. I even had more questions to add, so I guess I will do a part three soon read  part 1 here. Let me know if I left anything out or there are questions about what I have said or why we wouldn’t name our little one after a Nintendo game.