Who’d Have Thought? An Introduction

Good morning! My name is Karen, and I’m one of the new bloggers here at AdoptionBlogs.com. I’ve already posted a short intro on the Open Adoption blog, but I’ll be writing for the Domestic Infant Adoption blog as well, so I thought I’d post a happy hello here as well.

As I’ve said before, my husband and I are older parents of a now-7-year-old daughter, who was placed with us at the age of 6 weeks. We never expected to raise an infant. Certainly not after many attempts to both get and stay pregnant. In fact, when we went adoption agency shopping 9+ years ago, we had been interested in adopting an older child.

I need to explain that we adopted in a state that does not allow for “private”/non-agency adoption. You cannot adopt in our state with an adoption attorney. There are such things as designated adoptions, but they must all go through a licensed agency; there is also mandatory counseling, both for adoptive and birth parents, both before and after placement. Now to continue with our story…

The first agency we went to was…interesting. We told the counselor that we were interested in adopting a preschooler to school aged child. We were given a “baby book” – a large binder filled with children waiting in foster care to be adopted – and left alone for almost an hour. Then she returned, gave us a list of dates when they’d be starting parent training classes, and an application.

The next agency we went to was a bit different. We were told immediately that they specialized in infant adoptions; some with medical needs, some without. Then the agency owner (yes, we wound up speaking to the owner) talked to us about the possibility of parenting an infant. It had never occurred to us that we would even qualify for their infant program. She encouraged us to apply, we did, and we were accepted. And then we waited. And waited. And waited…for the next 2 years.

In fact, it was almost exactly 2 years from the time we filled out and submitted our paperwork until the time that we brought our baby home from her cradle-care family. That will be a subject for another day. It’s been quite an adventure. Lots of the same baby things that my sister and brother-in-law (with their twins) and my brother-in-law and his wife (with their two kids), along with some other challenges. I’ll be writing about those in the days to come. If anyone has any questions, lay ‘em on me as the kids would say. I’d love to address them. Even though I’ve blogged in the past, it ma take me some time to find my footing here. I hope you’ll bear with me.

Thanks so much for reading this far. Talk to you again soon.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.