Our info meeting and a few surprises

Already on my 2nd post.. To be fair, this blog won't be updated daily once I get it caught up to where we're at in the process. 

So.. after talking it over as a couple and deciding we were interested in international adoption the next step was to visit a local adoption service for an info meeting. Most places around here have these monthly and a couple weeks ago we attended one at Bethany Christian Services. It was what you might expect - bullet points on power point slides with lots of pictures of cute smiling kids. What I didn't expect was the woman running the seminar knew each child by name and their adoption story. We shared this meeting with one other couple, a nice pair who seemed to maybe a little younger than us. 

Sitting here now several weeks later a few items stand out in my memory as surprising. First was the great variance in the requirements between different countries. There can be a significant difference in:

• cost.. (tens of thousands of dollars difference)
• length of the adoption process
• length of time the adoptive parents have to spend w/ the child in his/her country before they can come home
• age of the parents
• age of the child(ren) being adopted
• adoptive parent's heath requirements (did you know that if you or your spouse have ever been on an anti-depressant some countries won't let you adopt)

Beyond that, I was also surprised at the success rate for domestic adoptions. I'm pretty sure this is a state-by-state law, but in Michigan the birth family has significant rights to rescind there choice to give up their child for adoption. Even though this was an international adoption meeting I asked the presenter what the success rate was for domestic adoption; last year within their group only 50%ish of all their domestic adoptions stuck. Wow! I can't even begin to imagine going through all this, even as far as bringing a child home, to have it all fall apart. 

Also of interest was the fact that the meeting bolstered my already present concern about connecting with an adopted child. Mainly, the presenter said that a lot of these kids have a hard time bonding with males because they've spend much of their lives with women. This issue still worries me and I foresee it being a part of my blogging for the duration of this process - especially once we bring a child home. 

Another thing that both Thea and I were surprised by is (I want to phrase this carefully) that the children who need "more" are often paired with parents who have "less". Lets put it another way, and I speak in broad terms here - don't take this as absolutes. It seems the most desirable adoptive children and healthy, younger and solo (i.e. not in a sibling group). It seems the most desirable adoptive parents (it varies by country but often) are healthy, younger, and infertile. So it often leaves sibling groups, older children and kids with mild to severe health issues to be adopted by older, less healthy people who already have kids. Our presenter herself adopted a (I'm guessing, honestly I forget) 5 year old girl from Russia who was wheelchair bound. Mind your, our presenter was old enough that her own kids were all grown and out of the home.

Based on Thea and my age and the fact that we're not infertile and we don't want this to extend for a decade, we'll have to carefully choose our criteria. It's possible we'll consider sibling groups, an older child, or maybe with a health issue. 

One thing that I haven't talked about a lot yet is being worried about cost. This is because Thea works at a Christian organization that has great adoption benefits. Depending on the cost of the process (again, it varies) we're hoping her benefit will cover a chunk of the cost. Frankly, this benefit is making this adoption possible. The prohibitive cost of this process probably stops many families from doing it. The couple we shared the info meeting with seemed shell shocked at some of the numbers and I'm glad that with all the many things we're going to deal with in this journey Thea's job takes one of biggest off our shoulders.

That's all for now.. Next up -- the preliminary application.