Adoption Update

“You get what you pay for, but I just had no intention of living this way!” – Counting Crows

It is very late (3am) and I can’t sleep. Partially from this pinched nerve in my neck that won’t allow me to be comfortable and partially from something that is deeply troubling me.

Due to the fact that we have specific gender/health requirements for our second adoption, we decided to hire a special adoption consultant to hopefully help us locate an agency, who is working with a birthmom, who is carrying our son.

While inquiring about her services, she sent me the “only” full Caucasian boy she had on her list. He’s 6 months old. Healthy as can be. The catch?

The fees for this adoption would be $47,600.

We obviously had to pass, because if we had an extra 50K laying around, M wouldn’t have to drive my old car from college among other things.

But why? How can those fees be that high? How can that be ethical?

It broke my heart to know that this baby is waiting for a family, and no one can afford him. I can see some desperate family who so want to be parents mortgaging their house to adopt this child.

Why are the fees so high? I simply don’t understand.

Cost shouldn’t be a factor. The needs of the child should be the focus.

THIS SHOULDN’T BE A BUSINESS!!

But this brings me to the conversation I had with the consultant.

A little background: S’s adoption cost 28K. We decided not to use the same agency because the fees were increased to more than 32K. With all of the money we have spent on S’s hospital bills and health needs, that is simply too much. Way too much!

So I set about trying to find ways to make this adoption economical. I looked into grants, various loan programs and for agencies that didn’t charge large upfront fees to search for a child.

Don’t get me wrong, we are not destitute. We don’t want for much (well M really wants a Mercedes…but…). We own our home. We have one brand new car (and one old one – thus the desire for the Mercedes). We have been lucky to have not been affected much* by the economic downturn.

*except our plummeting house value which has made us continue to suffer the FL summers…but I digress…

I had given her a budget of 22K. (They don’t work with people who have budgets smaller than 20K) so I decided 22K would be the top end of what we could afford. Because you get back 12K from taxes for adoption, the total cost would be about 10K. I can live with 10K. I DON’T like it, but I can live with it.

But what the consultant said stopped me in my tracks.

She said, “I could probably find you a drug exposed baby for 22K, but if you want a healthy child with no drug/alcohol exposure – you’re looking at 30K minimum.”

Yes, you read that right. She really did say, “I could probably find you a drug exposed baby for 22K…” Seriously?

I politely explained that we were not interested in a child that has been drug exposed. ‘Not interested’ aren’t the right words…We’re not equipped at this time to handle another child with special needs.

If you can choose, why not choose the best start for the child that will be entering your family?

If I was able to create this little life and carry him myself, you can be certain that I’d do everything in my power to give him the best start. I would eat my vegetables, exercise and not even a Tylenol would touch my lips.

Just because we can’t create him, doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to make some choices. And we are choosing the best possible start.

And don’t think I have forgotten that our ‘healthy’ child has racked up probably 250K in medical expenses over her 2.5 years, so anything can happen. We KNOW that. Trust me.

Given a choice, we are choosing the best possible start. End of discussion.

Now how do we pay for that?

The Story of S - Part One

A little background:

M and I met in 1997 while traveling with an international group. We were friends for years although we lived on different continents. While talking online for many months, we were discussing what we wanted in a partner. It was then we realized that we were talking about each other. But he was in Germany and I was in the US. How could this ever work?

It would work (and still is).

It was MEANT to be.

After a whirlwind courtship (two days from exiting airplane terminal to talk of marriage) we were in engaged in August of 2002. We married in M's hometown in Dec. of 2002.

I(N) have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and was diagnosed at 19 with the most severe case that my doctor had ever seen. My ovaries were scarred and covered with tiny cysts and did not create viable eggs.

Fast forward a few years. Wedding. Honeymoon. Move. Another wedding. Another honeymoon. Another move. Still no baby. A very frustrated N and M. We charted, medicated, visited specialists, etc. But still no baby. I was heartbroken and felt like a failure. Every month. Not good for my mental health - let me assure you. Still no baby.

One summer (2006) while sitting in Panera, I was lamenting to my mother about all the fertility crap we had gone through. M and I had had discussed adoption a bit, but it was VERY cost prohibitive. In an off-hand comment to my mom about the cost of adoption, she said that she would end our fertility battle and pay for our adoption. (I would later learn that she said that in hopes that I would "relax" enough to get pregnant on our own). But she did mean it and I raced home to tell M about it.

He wasn't thrilled.

You see, we (M and I) grew up in different countries with different values. In his culture, you don't buy things you can't afford, you save for a while until you can do it yourself, and families don't usually loan/give large sums of money to each other. It just wasn't on his radar that this was an option.

So I let the conversation drop, but continued to dream about becoming a mom. Because there was still no baby.

And then in August, the phone rang....