Adoption Support Group?

Crail86, you wrote "We are hoping to adopt newborn to 2 years of age". I'm little confused here. I thought all kids older that 1 year go to foster care. Am I mistaken? Can you adopt a 2 year old with domestic agency without becoming foster licensed parent?Thanks!

We are currently going to be trying to adopt a newborn but depending on how things go we may seek adoption of an older child from the foster care system. Those are the options that my husband and I have discussed but we would prefer to adopt a newborn. Does that make more sense?

Ok) I got it! You probably already know it, but just in case - these are two separate programs with different features.

Yes they are just options that we have decided will work for our situation. We are going to travel one road first and depending on how things go we may need to go back to the other(being adoption through the foster care system)

I got the email today that we were accepted into the Angel Adoption program. So now we are applying for loans. I am excited but am also scared. I am not sure what to expect. I am also very nervous about a home study. My husband and I are pro spanking. Does anyone know if they will deny you if you include spanking in punishment? Other than that I feel we are very united with the rest of the questions and such I have looked up etc. We are now jumping in full force. Any advice?????

Well everything seems to be going smoothly but now my Husband and I are looking at getting loans. The new stressor lol. How are you ladies or how have you in the past dealt with this? My husband has a high credit score but mine is poor. My parents have offered to cosign on a loan which will better our odds. Any words of wisdom on this would be great.

Good luck! Can't advise on loans((( We are also deep in process :banana: We are preparing all the paperwork and writing autobiographies (our agency requested). I have 3 appointments this week: doctor's appointment for me and my husband to fill in medical forms and one for our cat to get vaccination certificate. Busy busy))))

Hi Ladies! I was once where you are in the adoption process and I wanted to throw out some advice… First, be careful signing up with an agency who requests a large amount of fees upfront. They may call it an “advertising fee” or “profile activation fee”. An agency that wants you to pay a large amount up front should be a red flag. We found out on our own that signing up with a single agency and waiting for them to have an adoption situation that matched what we were looking for is more of a thing of the past. By signing up with one agency you are limiting yourself to only the situations they have… We chose not to sign up with a single agency (such as American Adoptions) and instead we signed up with as many referral services as we could. Little Bit of Heaven, Bundle of Joy referral, Heaven Sent, One World etc all charge a minimal fee (often $100) to have your profile listed with them. This allowed us to have access to many more situations than a single agency would have. Make sure that you own your homestudy once it’s completed, you’ll want to be able to send it to referral agencies/other agencies. You can have a homestudy done by a private provider, unless you are going through the state. You don’t have to have an agency do your homestudy, In general, a homestudy should not cost more than $1500. You can make your own profile book. We used Shutterfly. We looked online at several examples of profiles and then made our own. Some agencies charge $1000 to make your profile. We were able to do it for under $300. One advantage to using a site like Shutterfly is that we were given a link to our profile that we could email to agencies. Be very careful taking out a loan…many agencies have a no refund policy, where you will not receive any of your funds back if the adoption does not work out. Often you are told that they will “roll over” your funds to a new situation, but it could be a long time before another situation presents itself and you will still have to make payments on the loan. There are very few financial institutions that offer personal loans for adoptions, and if they do the rate will probably be very high. Many agencies have a fee schedule where you make payments as you go along, for example: Due at entry in the program $1,500 Due upon completion of the home study $2,500 Due at match with birth parents $2,500 Due on day of placement $15,500 Any unpaid balance due prior to the finalization of the adoption and legal expenses are due prior to the finalization. Hope that helps! Feel free to PM me anytime with questions, etc. I know it can feel like you are going at this alone and it can be overwhelming.

Oregongirl, thank you so much for your advice! :love: It's great that you've found a minute to write it down. Reading your post makes me feel that I'm doing everything right)))) As if I were following your instructions from the beginning))) I joined local support group recently and they have advised the same thing - to work with a few little agencies. I wish all the best to you and your family!!! I feel this constant fear ...that we won't pass home study or won't be chosen. Though we do have layers of complications which are very rear, but I think that this fear is more irrational...because there is no reason for a rational one...at least for now. I wish I didn't feel that because it makes me nervous. But I guess I know where this comes from.....all this unsuccessful IVFs etc :(

Rori, You're welcome! And thanks for the good wishes! Now that our LO is almost 2 I need all the positive energy I can get :) I totally understand the fear...I made myself crazy with our homestudy and it turned out that all of the stuff I obsessed over didn't matter i.e. she didn't even look in my amazingly clean closets :) I think it helps to remember that the social worker doing your homestudy wants to approve you! They aren't looking for reasons to deny you, they are really there to help you along your journey. We had unsuccessful infertility treatments too and I remember feeling some relief when we decided to move forward with adoption...I knew that in the end we would come home with a child, no matter how long it took (and it turned out that we didn't wait long). It sounds like you are on the right path!!! Good luck to you!

Oregongirl, thank you thank you!!! Your journey was extremely fast!!!! That's great!! How did it feel when it all happened? Yes, I also felt sort of relief when we decided to go forward with adoption. It feels like new step in life already with all new information I'm getting everyday by reading books, forums etc.

We did exactly what Oregongirl did, but we had to wait a lot longer. It took us 2 months to have Peanut home with us. :eyebrows: (and that included 2 matches-one family decided to parent.) she gives good advice.

Yes it was extremely fast! It was all very overwhelming, but so very worth it! Our daughter was born in Texas and she had a heart murmur so she wasn't allowed to fly....that meant that we had to drive the 42 hours to the hospital where she was waiting for us! It all worked out beautifully, because our daughter's birthmother had to wait 48 hours before signing the relinquishment papers, so we had her in our arms hours after we arrived! My husband likes to say that we are an instant family, but we had to add gas instead of water lol. I think that part of the reason that it was so fast was that we had everything done BEFORE we signed up with the referral services...we had completed the 10 hours of required education online, our profile was complete and ready to be mailed/emailed, we had a copy signed copy of the homestudy, etc. Thanks @theLB's :) If I remember correctly we used the same referral service and both had great results!

Oregongirl, theLBs,Thank you for your support!!! :love:This information is very useful.

Hi everyone! How is it going? Any news? We had a rough week. Wanted to share with you. So we went to our doctor to fill out medical papers. She ran some blood tests and TB skin tests. And my husband got positive reaction. I read Internet all night(((( to understand how could this happen. In the morning doctor send him for chest x-ray that of course came back clean. 3 days of stress....But now I know a lot about all this TB thing. BTW, I found a lot of people here who had same situations. So, if you ever get positive TB skin test don't worry, just do chest x-ray. If you have had positive TB skin reaction before, never do it again, It will be always positive (so called false positive if e.g. you were vaccinated in childhood, or just allergic reaction) go strait for x-ray. Thanks god this stress is over.