What to Expect When We're Adopting...

Thank you for your sweet messages of congratulations in response to yesterday's post.


We're very excited and glad that you are finding joy in the news, as well. Here's a link to the profile so you can check it out for yourselves if you're interested.

We talked about what kind of information we could share with you about our adoption efforts that would be interesting for you on days when we don't have big news. Many of our family and friends have limited experience with domestic adoptions in general and much less in open adoptions. So, today we thought we'd fill everyone in on how this process works. It will be like our own version of What to Expect When You're Adopting! 

Open, Domestic, Infant Adoption

We're pursuing a domestic, open infant adoption. We chose to pursue the adoption domestically for a number of reasons but mainly because we knew there were so many children in the United States who need good families and forever homes.


Also, we wanted to be able to share details with our child about their birth families: culture, customs, language, health records, etc.  As a result the birth parents in our adoption could reside in any state in the US; which we like because we think that increases our odds of a tolerable waiting time (we'll see though, right?).

We decided that the state-managed public adoption process wasn't a good fit for our first attempt at adoption.


 Our state requires public adoptive families to foster children before they adopt; and the opportunity to adopt won't always result from every situation they could foster.  We couldn't bear the idea of fostering a child in the State's protective services and public adoption program only to have them removed from our home to be reunited with their biological families. While we would be delighted to learn that a family could be reunited, it would break our hearts to have to say "goodbye" to a child we helped raise. After so many losses in our journey toward parenthood, we both agreed our hearts just couldn't take that; especially for our first child. As a result, we're working on a private adoption utilizing a licensed adoption agency, attorneys and a nationwide search for birth parents who might like us. In theory, this also results in shorter wait and finalization times. 

We decided that, while we're open to adopting a child who is up to four-years old, we prefer to adopt a newborn infant. As you can imagine, especially those of you with children of your own, we long for the opportunity to raise our child from birth.


Although....some of you with children have told us to maybe get one that sleeps through night, or is potty trained, or is already out of the house and has a job!


All good points but this is just going to have to be one of those lessons we learn on our own! :)


 All joking aside, we are so excited about the opportunity to adopt a newborn child and to be a part of their lives from the day they are born.

Tomorrow, we'll fill you in on what we hope our Open Adoption will be like. 

As always, feel free to leave comments on the blog. 

XOXO