AA couples who have adopted AA children

hi jamie, I send you a pm with more detail. we adopted dd in july, with a wait time of 4.5 weeks between completion of homestudy and dd's placement with us. She was not the first child presented to us (there were 4 possibles presented to us before dd). at age 43 when dd arrived, we are clearly old enough to be her grand parents (and greatgrandparents if you do the math- :eek: ), but it's great. we originally thought we'd adopt toddlers (2-5 years old), but after doing research decided that our lifestyle at the time didn't work for kids with possible attachment issues (we both have to travel for work). just keep in mind that you will be in demand (AA parents are relatively rare in the formal adoption arena, but AAs adopt at a higher rate than other groups), so go with your gut. Oh and we decided that we'd both have to be on board without reservation to go forward with a potential situation. This meant either one of us could veto a possible without problem-good for the marriage to have neither one of us with reservations.we learned this while househunting, and use this whenever we need to make a big decision. hope this helps and best of luck! LisaCA

LisaCA How did you decide between the situations that were presented to you? My husband and I are AA and we are having our homestudy converted so we can do a private adoption. Hopefully everything will be finished this week. Our caseworker expects placement to happen possibly in March or April. I'm a little nervous in making the decision on which child is right for us. Were there issues with the birthparents or the baby that made you turn down the first situations that you were offered? I'm just trying to get an idea of how I should go about making a decision if we are presented more than one situation. The agency that we are using has lots AA babies but very few AA families doing private adoptions.

Hi LisaCa,If you don't mind me asking, which agency did you use for your adoption? Please pm

sleeplvr, wow, that's a difficult question. The twins were easy-dh was traumatized just by the thought LOL. I figured since i wanted to work when our child arrived, that would be impossible with twins, plus my family lives far away and so no assistance. good thing too since I really had an adjustment with colicky, milk allergic, and neurologically immature dd. one situation was too soon for us-I was grading the spring semester and had to turn in senior grades in two days, while dh was on a business trip. another was a child that was older, 5 months and had hypertonicity that may have been cerebral palsy. we agonized over him, but we both weren't in agreement whether to go forward so we both said no. we'd agreed that we had to both be on board without any reservations. I think about him often and wonder how he's doing. Another was a situation in the south, but I hated the private attorney handling the situation and walked away-he was creepy, made my skin crawl ( he made it seem like a cash for baby transaction). I can't remember the others off the top of my head-have to look at our files. so you can see that we had many reasons for making each decision. I'm sure that we would have been thrilled with any of these placements, but we had a schedule and a plan and decided to stick to our guns. It was hard in that you think that this could be the last baby, but we knew what was best for our family. my advice is to make an agreement about how to decide beforehand (maximum expenses, health issues you'll consider, etc). emptyarms2000, I'll send you my info via pm. take care, LisaCA

LisaCA Thanks so much! Timing is an issue that we have to address too. I thought it was kind of weird for us to be worried about the timing. But when you think about it....if I had a baby biologically...I would have quite a few months to prepare for it.

exactly! we figured if we were ttc we would be concerned about timing and aiming for a late May birth, so why not have the same schedule for adoption? It's hard to think that we're entitled to the same selfishness and obscessions that families ttc have. I did not have a baby shower, mostly because I hate showers in general, but also because I felt weird about having a shower when there was no baby apparent and I didn't want to jinx things. I was also not entitled to maternity leave (it's a medical disability thing) so society seemed to view it differently as well. I did enjoy the good things that you get with adoption-it is private so you don't have people involved in your personal life. I was able to be the stealth pre-mom, doing my thing and not worrying about others and what they thought. anyway, we made a list of things that were important to us, ranked them, and then compared them with each other. our key thing was that we both had to be in agreement that this was the one, no doubt. we learned this while house shopping-when you make an important decision (and adoption is way more important than a house) you need to make a joint decision in a way that satisfies both. for us, we needed to be able to say "no" without the other arguing or attempting to persuade the other. When dd's bfamily info came to us, it was clear this was the one. we read the paperwork and then both said yes. one thing that our facilitator asked us to do was to think about last minute situations: getting on a plane and picking up a baby in a day or so. by nature dh is cautious, so this was hard for him (I'm much more impulsive). I think our situation was the best, since we thought we had a week or so to prepare but we really only had two days :) . I left dh behind to deal with his job, the cats and rabbits, setting up the nursery, etc. a lot to think about, but it's exciting! I wish you all a speedy placement! LisaCA

Jamie, I'll second what Lisa shared with you. I think the important thing for any AA family to know is that once you've completed your homestudy and your profile starts getting shown, it can happen VERY quickly. We were matched with our daughter four days after completing our homestudy, and brought her home a week after that. We hadn't bought a single baby item, the nursery was still an office, and I hadn't told my boss ANYTHING about our adoption plans. Nonetheless, she was still very excited to hear that in a week's time, I would be gone for four weeks. Somehow we managed to get all the necessities and everything together for her arrival. I will PM you with the name of the agency that we used. Best wishes to you on your adoption journey and please let us know if you have any additional questions. Peace and blessings, Kelli

Kelli could you PM me as well? Thanks, Jeannem

Hi, Kelli, could you also PM me as well with the agency you used. Thanks for the wonderful information.

:) Hi, Kelli, could you also PM me as well with the agency you used. Thanks for the wonderful information.

what state are you in my husband and I are also AA couple tryign to adopt AA or biracial infant we went an agency that my sister and brother in law went with 13 years ago we wanted someone that had already gone through the process to lead us in the right direction

My Dh and I are a iracial couple. He is CC and I am AA. We found the same thing that Lisa did in that there were enough stituaions that we could afford to pick and choose. I think that gives you the opportuntity to choose the professiional and the process the YOUR want. YOu have to remember that youa re a resource. I wish I had known that in our first two adoptions. Ir ecommend that you do some reading and really research the process. It took two aency adotpions,o ne of them foster/adopt and a couple of months on these bbs to discover that there are other kinds of adoptions and that our family was very well siuted to indenpendent adoptions. Our second two came that way after only a few weeks of waiting. Idiscoverd that professionalswork differntly and it is possible to find just the right ones for you. Ones that fit your needs and personality and most importantly priorities. This can be a tough road and it is so much easier when the folks who are there to help you are a good match. lisa

We had our homestudy complete in October and our son was born in January. His birthmother chose us in December. We had a wonderful experience with his birthmother. We live in PA but we used an agency in NJ. You can PM for more info. African American parents are in high demand just as Lisa said. There lots of African American children being placed with not as many African American parents to adopt them.