Chris and I went to our first adoption meeting that was put on by an agency. There were 2 other couples there and one woman who was there without her husband. Every single one of us was new to the process and it was the first meeting for everyone there. It was nice to be among other newbies. The social worker who presented the slideshow and ran the meeting was very nice and took away any fears I had about social workers who will work with us on our home study.
We learned a lot of bullet points on domestic and international adoption. I think we’ve definitely decided to pursue domestic newborn adoption this time around. If we adopt a second time we will reconsider going the international route. Interestingly enough the SW (social worker) who was representing only this specific agency told us all that if we were interested in a domestic adoption of a Caucasian newborn that we should not work with her agency. I appreciated her honesty and her help in narrowing down our choices in agencies. She told us that we should find an agency that only does domestic adoptions if we were interested in a Caucasian baby. We were directed to the ACONE website to look at a list of Massachusetts agencies.
After going through the list I sent a bunch of emails out requesting information and the packets have started arriving in the mail. I have packets from 7 different agencies. There are definitely some top contenders, so that’s good. But God, they are all so expensive. The agency I am most interested in would be about $38,500 for a domestic adoption. That’s a $2,500 application fee, a $3,500 home study fee, and a $32,500 (!!!!) placement fee.
We are trying to prioritize our desires, and these are them…
- 1. A “guarantee” of a healthy Caucasian newborn (or as much of a guarantee as possible)
- 2. The time we would likely wait for our baby
- 3. Price
And in that order. The agency that is $38,500 basically states that we could be placed with a baby in under 18 months. That seems reasonable to me, especially because it could be a lot sooner. So because they can meet point 1 and 2, I feel less scared of the price.
I do need to call them though because they sent us a net worth sheet to fill out, and we are scared that we won’t meet any net worth requirements if they have one. We have negative equity in our house as well as a car payment and a small amount of credit card debt. The other scary thing in their paperwork was a statement to the affect that we had to show proof of savings for the adoption placement fee. That leads us to believe that we would need to have that money all saved up before we even got started, and I think we are hoping to be able to take out a loan to cover the costs.
It’s all very interesting, I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will all work out.
