not what I wanted

I shared a few days ago that we were exploring some more adoption options, and I got more news on that today, and it wasn't the best news.

Let's back up a step, so any new readers can catch up, my husband and I have been with our current adoption agency for a little over a year. We are hooked up with New Life Christian Adoptions out of Garner, NC (click on the sidebar link to see our profile.) We love them. We love their attitude towards adoption and the women that work there are totally amazing. We were matched with a birthmother last April, but she decided to parent once the baby girl was born. It was hard, as many of you know. We are already homestudy approved through them.

So, back when we signed on, we said we would give it a year and then talk again. It has been a year and so we have started talking about various options. One of them is a local adoption agency (Children's Home Society) that wasn't doing infant adoptions when we first were looking for an agency. They have since re-opened their infant networking program and we have a couple of connections there, so we called to talk with them. They do a lot of work with the foster program and it sounded like they might be a good fit from looking at their website. The one thing they don't post on their website is the fees, which I find frustrating.

Today we found out a couple of things. One, they don't accept other agencies homestudies, which is odd. Many agencies might charge you a fee to review your homestudy, but they don't take them at all. So, that would need to be re-done at a fee. Second, the total adoption cost is about $17,000 (including homestudy, but not legals.) That is on the low end for agencies, as you may well know, but I was hoping it would be closer to what we already have budgeted for New Life. You can use as many agencies as you like, but most of the time you can pay once for a homestudy and then send that around. With them we would have to go through that again, and you know how complicated that process can be with all the paperwork, interviews and home visits. If we had started with them to begin with it might have worked, but at this point I'm not sure what to think. I really haven't even shared this with Charlie yet, so I'll be talking with him later.

Maybe when our homestudy expires, we might consider this agency, because last year they did 49 infant adoptions. Our agency is a lot smaller and doesn't have the same volume. We'll see though...any day could bring another match.

I'm curious what other adoptive families consider their financial threshold. I know that many can't even afford the $15,ooo we are considering, but some families can consider more expensive agencies/options. When looking around on the internet for available options, there are babies already born that adoption consultants are advertising for $25,000-45,000 plus their time and travel. It might be a faster process if we could afford a more expensive consultant. But I don't know that having a baby faster would force me to change from our agency that does so much for the birthmoms counseling wise.

Anything you want to share is great. If you aren't comfortable talking about the money, that's fine. You can email me too (sissyreads@gmail.com) if you want to share privately. I'm always curious about other agencies that people use and the process their adoption takes. I just learned about an agency the other day that had a very unique process and it was interesting to read about!

Anyway, that new agency is on hold for awhile. I was excited to learn more about them, so the news I learned today wasn't what I wanted to hear. But then, I find that to be typical in adoptions...there isn't good news until there's GREAT news.

Talk later, all you Mommas!