New to the Process

Hi, all. I've been reading your posts here on the forum, and you are all very helpful.I'm hopeful that I can get some additional information from you. Here is our situation.I'm a Caucasian man, engaged to an African American woman. She's 45yo, so we are unlikely to conceive, and know that it is unlikely that we'll be able to use IVF successfully. We don't have a lot of money, so we don't want to use it for a procedure that is unlikely to succeed. Thus, we're here, considering adopting. Neither of us have children, and we would very much like to try adopting an infant.I guess that my questions start with the basics - I see lot's of advertisements on the Internet for private adoption agencies. The costs for these seem to be very high, but I don't see much alternative based on my searches.Do I have this right? Is our best choice to go with a private agency, and just pay the money? Or are there public adoption alternatives that I'm not finding in my searches? If we go private, how much money are we likely to spend to get through the process?Thanks for your help. We're very excited to learn and to start this process.BarryEDITED - it seems that this matters, didn't think about it :) - we live near Baltimore.