OA&FS Annual Report

Every fall, our adoption agency releases their annual report which gives a great rundown of all the activities over the past year, stories of successful open adoptions, lists of volunteers and contributors, and also a summary of statistics.

If any of you are interested in taking a look, here is where they have it available online.

While I like the background and stories, I've got a mindset that has me skimming to the end to see the numbers.  Those numbers hold a lot of interesting pieces of information for us as we're waiting to be chosen.  Here are some key data points which compare the most recent fiscal year (July 2014 to June 2015) to the previous year:

Overall, there aren't too many differences of note.  The average wait time is 15 months which ticked up slightly.  (This is based solely on the adoptive families chosen during each 12 month period.)  If Andy and I were chosen today, we would just be slightly above the average as we are over 16 months in.

There are a few other fun numbers in here which can at least partially relate to the numbers from our last post showing statistics on selections from the waiting pool for all families joining after us in the window from June 5, 2014 to June 5, 2015.

Focus Shift

So, we're in the pool. Hooray! But does that mean that we're ready for a baby? Well, yes and no.

Up until now, we've been focusing a lot on getting paperwork done and getting ourselves mentally and emotionally ready for a child. And really, you can't go through the homestudy process without doing that. Obviously, there's a mountain of paperwork to be done, and even just the basic biographical data parts of that were hard enough to fill out.

But there's been a lot of careful thought and evaluation that we've had to do during this whole process as well. Starting with OA&FS's pre-adoption seminar, we did a lot of talking about why we wanted to become parents, what our family would be like, etc, etc. And that continued during the homestudy as well, especially in our interviews with Katie. She really delved into everything, from thoughts on our own experiences with our parents to how we would handle a trans-racial adoption. Lots of probing, thought-inducing conversations in there. And then let's not forget the screening tool, of course - that really brings it home with some specifics when you're considering that your child may have prenatal exposure to all sorts of scary things.

So suffice it to say that we have completed all the forms, we have had all the talks, and we feel very ready to have a baby. Except for one small thing - we don't know where we'd put it!

We've put off a bit the practical aspects of having a baby in our home. Things like, I don't know... Food? Clothing? A crib?

This was really the plan we talked about all along - we know there's likely going to be a fairly long time that we wait for a placement, and we're going to use this time to get some basic items prepared and ready. But it also seems a bit weird to know that we could (in theory) get "the call" tomorrow, and we'd be totally unprepared!

Now we don't want to go overboard, either. Neither one of us wants to set up an entire nursery, complete with crib, mobiles, plush animals, and the like, only to have it sit empty for the next four years. So we're going to try to find a nice balance in between. We know that we'll need a carseat to bring our child home from the hospital, so we've already started looking into that. We know that we'll need some basic items of clothing, diapers, and a blanket or two. We know that we'll need some formula (although I don't know how long its shelf life is, so that might have to wait). But we really only want to get the basics for now.

The most likely case is that we'll get a placement with a birthmother in her third trimester. That will give us more than enough time to really prep our home for a baby, and we'll definitely know a lot more about said baby once we've met the birth family! A last-minute placement is possible, but thankfully not as likely. And even with a last-minute placement, we'll be able to manage with the help of our friends and family.

The other major focus for us now is also largely practical: the "how" of parenting. Sure, we want a baby - but do you think either of us can actually change a diaper? Now that we've done a bunch of reading and preparation for "adoption", it's time to do the same for "parenting"! I've already been soliciting advice on good parenting resources from a number of our friends who have little ones. And we'd also like to find a parenting class to take around the Seattle area, hopefully to get a little more hands-on.

So now, we really start preparing. It's going to be a fun road ahead!

Brian's Homestudy Interview

As Andy posted yesterday, we've both completed our homestudy interviews!  While Andy went first, I setup shop in a nearby Starbucks and got to work on a variety of things.  I worked on some edits to my autobiography from Katie, started some preliminary research on fetal alcohol exposure, and then took about 30 minutes to relax by finishing the last 40 pages of the Hunger Games trilogy.

Heading into the interview, Katie started things off by asking me a similar version of Andy's favorite question "What traits would you use to describe yourself?"  Thinking back to elementary school, I'm pretty sure that everyone has taken their first name and used each letter to represent the first letter of various traits that represent who you are.  Unfortunately, I didn't remember any of them right off, but I think I muddled through everything just fine  :)

Like Andy's interview, we talked a lot about my personal background, history, and feelings.  Not being a big talker, it was interesting having a large expanse of time with Katie where I was expected to be mentally on and going 100% full time.  In other words, I didn't have Andy around to use as a shield if a question stumped me or if I couldn't come up with the right words to explain something.  In the end, I think I hit on the themes that I'm somewhat introverted (great excuse for an interview setting!), that I've been extremely lucky to have great parents and a great husband, and that I'm totally ready to have kids.


Adoption Process

• Information Meeting
• Pre-Adoption Seminar
• Application Submission
• Application & Intake Interview
• Homestudy Interview #1
• Homestudy Interview #2
• Homestudy Interview #3
• Homestudy Interview #4
• Homestudy Completion
• Pool Entry

Taking a look back at the adoption process we outlined several weeks ago, we've taken a big leap towards getting into the waiting pool of families.  After a seminar, 5 interviews, mountains of paperwork, FBI background checks, and many other things, we still have a long ways to go before pool entry.  However, it definitely feels good to look back at how far we've made it in just a few short months.

Andy's Homestudy Interview

I'm done!

I just did the final of my meetings with Katie, our adoption counselor, and Brian's in with her now for his portion. After today, we'll be done with all the meetings needed for the homestudy, so that's a nice milestone to pass.

Today's meeting started with: "How would you describe yourself?" I hate that question. I mean, I don't mind talking about myself; I think a lot of my friends will recognize that I often wear my heart on my sleeve. But that question is so vague and so open that it's always a difficult one for me, especially to start off with! Luckily I managed to say something that passed for acceptable, so we moved on.

We turned in autobiographies to Katie a couple weeks ago, and most of today was spent with Katie delving into more detail based on that material. I got to spend a lot of time talking about my childhood, my brothers, my parents, and anything/everything related to that. Once I got going, I actually think Katie had a hard time stopping me from talking! Don't worry, Josh and Matt, I didn't tell any stories that were *too* bad...

The homestudy meetings have really not been a nerve-wracking process so far. I was a bit apprehensive going into them, especially since they included a tour of our home to make sure it wasn't a death trap. But I think a lot of my nervousness was due to a misunderstanding of what the meetings would entail. The homestudy is a legal document that certifies our home to receive a child, and so I was expecting the vetting process to be difficult (and perhaps even adversarial). As it turns out, the OA&FS homestudy is more than just the legal document; it seems they're really trying to profile us as a family, so that expectant mothers considering adoption can get a sense of who we are. To that extent, the meetings really ended up being more like a set of long interviews by a biographer, and less about judging us and our home.

Anyway, so today's meeting was the last of those for me. After this, we have a few more documents we need to turn in (thanks to everyone who wrote us recommendations - they've all been received!), and then Katie will use them all to write our homestudy in about 4-8 weeks. So things are moving forward pretty quickly! If all goes well, we should be in the pool of waiting families sometime mid-June. Exciting!

Homestudy Interview #2

This morning marked another step forward as we had our second homestudy interview!  First off, we're in an adoption stage known as the "Homestudy."  While part of this stage is getting our home approved for children (already completed in Interview #1), the majority of the time is spent collecting additional information about us as a family.  Katie, our counselor, went over several important topics like our relationship, how we operate as a couple, general strengths/weaknesses, how our parents influenced us, and how we plan to handle discipline.

Before we wrapped things up, we talked about transracial adoption and the Screening Tool.  Before the meeting, Andy and I went through a special transracial adoption packet of information.  With Katie, we talked about our perspectives and she really felt that we're both completely ready for a transracial adoption.  With the Screening Tool, Katie gave a great overview and answered a lot of our questions.  In the next couple of weeks, Andy and I will do some research and finalize some of our answers beyond the draft level discussion in our previous blog posts.

• Homestudy Interview #1 - April 9th
• Homestudy Interview #2 - April 23rd
• Homestudy Interview #3 & #4 - April 25th 

Next up, we have interviews #3 and #4.  This homestudy interview was the last one where Katie meets with both of us at once.  On Wednesday afternoon, Andy and I will have separate interviews where we meet with her one-on-one to talk about more personalized information, the autobiographies we submitted, and any other info Katie will need to write our homestudy report.  Check back later this week for final homestudy interview updates!

Homestudy Interview #1

After a great weekend in Providence, RI with Josh, Elise, and Cora, we came back to Seattle for our first homestudy interview with our counselor, Katie, on Monday morning.  Given that we wanted to put on a good show, Andy and I did a fair amount of cleaning before we left town for the weekend, after getting home close to midnight on Sunday, and then some last minute work before our 9:30am meeting.

So, how did it go?  Our home has been stamped with approval and is safe for children!  (For those of you that have asked already, you already know this as I've been enjoying passing on the fact that our house is surprisingly not a death trap.  Go us!)  Amusingly, Katie was at our condo for about 2 hours and we spent the majority of the time in our living room just talking through some of the basic interview questions that she had.  One of the primary purposes of the homestudy meetings is to learn more about us.  Katie will write a 10+ page homestudy report that will tell potential birthfamilies all about who we are and what our home is like.

Katie led us through some basic 'get-to-know-you' questions to help get that ball rolling.  We talked about each of our typical days at work, what we do during the evenings, our weekend hobbies, and how some of those things may change after we have a baby.  For example, I know my 3x a week gym schedule will be converted from running and weight lifting to bouncing a baby and lifting loaded diapers!

After our extended chat, we led Katie on a tour of our house which turned out to be really laid back and easy.  She was rather impressed with our awesome evacuation plan (yeah!) and it didn't take long for her to fire through her checklist and give us a stamp of approval.

Even though this was just the first of four interviews, it felt great to get all of that completed and out of the way.  I know I had been carrying some stress about this meeting even though I was 99% sure we'd pass through with flying colors.  With this one done, here's a check-in on our process:

• Application & Intake Interview
• Homestudy Interview #1 - April 9th
• Homestudy Interview #2 - April 11th  April 25th  (Just rescheduled today)
• Homestudy Interview #3 - April 23rd 
• Homestudy Interview #4 - April 25th

As mentioned in previous posts, two of the interviews will take place at our condo and involve both Andy and myself.  The other two will be individual interviews with Katie.  Interviews #1 and #3 are the joint interviews at our condo.  Interviews #2 and #4 are individual one-on-one meetings at Katie's office - one for me and one for Andy.  These will both be on the 25th so that means "Interview #3" at our condo is up next on the 23rd.  Until then, we'll have some fun posts to entertain you before a flurry of updates during the week of the 23rd.  Stay tuned!

The Financial Impact of Adopting

Adopting isn't cheap, as we're learning along the way, but there's also a lot of ways to recoup fees that we have to pay. We thought it'd be interesting to write up a post about what the various costs are for adoption, based upon our experiences. (Of course anyone else's experience could vary greatly, depending on whether they use an agency or an attorney, which agency, the geographical location, etc.)

Adoption Costs

With our agency, we have the following standard costs for various parts of the process:

Service/Event	Fee*
Pre-Adoption Seminar	$490
Application and Intake Interview	$1,160
Homestudy and Family Preparation	$3,850
Pool Entry, Program and Marketing	$7,345
Adoption Planning I	$4,730
Adoption Planning II	$2,780
Placement	$4,730
*These amounts are based on what we were quoted, are subject to change, may not be valid for others, etc.

These fees are "standard" because every adoption through the agency will incur them. The total standard fees are then $25,085.

In addition to standard fees, there are some additional fees that can come up on a case-by-case basis:

• Travel Costs for Counselors: If it's necessary for the counselor to travel during any part of the process, travel is billed at an hourly rate of $30-$55 per hour, depending on the situation. We'll assume $250 in travel costs for this post.
• Agency Attorney Fees: For adoptions finalized in Washington (our agency can finalize either in Washington or Oregon), the law requires the agency to be represented in the termination of birthparents' rights. A retainer of up to $2,500 is required. For this post, we'll assume the adoption is in Washington and requires the retainer.
• Attorney Fees for Finalization: Finalization of the adoption in court requires attorney involvement. We'll assume an average $500 attorney fee.
• Twins/Siblings: In the event of a twin or sibling placement, an additional $1,000 fee is assessed. We will assume only a single placement.
• Birthmother Expenses: The adoptive family can be expected to pay for reasonable pregnancy-related expenses, such as pre-natal care or maternity clothing. We will assume $2,000 for this post.

There will likely be other miscellaneous costs that I've missed, but hopefully they aren't large-ticket items. With these fees, the total expected amount for us will be $30,335.

Financial Assistance

There are two very large sources of financial aid that we can take advantage of when adoption. The first is from the federal Adoption Assistance Program. The program offers a $12,170 tax credit for all adoption-related expenses. It's important to note that this is a credit, and not a deduction, so it will literally be a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement of our adoption expenses.

Additionally, Brian and I each work for an employer that offers $5,000 towards adoption expenses for a child, which can be used in addition to the federal credit. (It turns out that a large number of employers offer similar programs in various amounts.)

Between these two sources, we hope to receive reimbursements for $22,170 of our adoption expenses. (The federal tax credit is set to expire after 2012, but is likely to be renewed as it has been for multiple years now.) That means we expect to pay approximately $8,165 out of pocket.

Why So Much?

Open Adopt as an agency focuses very much on providing a full range of free options counseling to pregnant women. Only about 20% of the women they work with end up making an adoption plan. To that extent, much of the fees we pay the agency goes towards their counseling program. They're a non-profit agency that receives donations as well, but that only makes up some of their operating expenses.

Additionally, each counselor spends a significant amount of time working with both pregnant women and waiting adoptive families, so fees also go towards paying for their salaries. To that extent, I'm actually surprised the fees aren't higher - the counselors have to take a large number of hours to complete our interviews and homestudy!

Any variable fees that directly benefit a birthmother (paying for pre-natal care, for example) must be approved by a court before they are paid. This step is designed to make sure that there is no coercion happening, and to ensure that even the appearance of buying or selling a child is avoided.

Where We're At

The agency operates on a "pay as you go" system: whenever we move forward from one stage to the next, we pay the fee for that stage. We've currently paid for the pre-adoption seminar and the application/intake interview; we'll have to pay for the homestudy and for pool entry before we actually go into the pool of waiting families. All the remaining expenses after that will not be paid until we're chosen by a birth mother.

So there you go! Adoption can be quite expensive, but there's also assistance available, and the costs seem manageable in the end. I'm curious how this compares to a pregnant woman's healthcare costs - anyone out there have anything to add about that in the comments?

Application and Intake Interview

We've been overdue for an update for a little while, so luckily we've got some fun news to pass along!  On Wednesday, Andy and I went to the OA&FS office in Seattle to meet with Katie for our Application and Intake Interview meeting.  After completing the seminar at the end of February and submitting our application right away, we've been essentially on hold in the process until this meeting.

• Information Meeting
• Pre-Adoption Seminar
• Application Submission
• Application & Intake Interview
• Homestudy Interview #1
• Homestudy Interview #2
• Homestudy Interview #3
• Homestudy Interview #4
• Homestudy Completion
• Pool Entry
• Waiting in the Pool
• Chosen by Birthfamily

During the meeting, we talked about a lot of things such as the remaining steps in our process.  The majority of the meeting was spent with our counselor, Katie, asking questions to get to know us.  She asked several questions such as "How did you decide on adoption?" "How do you feel about openness?" and "How and when did each of you decide that you wanted to have children?".  Even though we may seem pretty far into the process already, one of the main purposes of this meeting was for our counselor to confirm that we were a fit for their program.  To put it bluntly, saying the wrong answers could either delay us from moving forward or keep us from moving forward with OA&FS entirely.  Luckily, Andy and I didn't have to worry about those issues as we are ready to be adoptive parents and support the agency's primary philosophy of openness.

On a personal level for me,  I was able to give a great story in support of openness.  I've only ever known that I am 1/4 Swedish, 1/16 Native American, and then a mix of 'Other'.  Being a dork that loves history, it feels really cool to me to be directly connected to specific cultures.  While it's easy to tie my Swedish ancestry to Sweden, my 1/16 Native American ancestry is right in my backyard and I barely know anything about it.  The best I had to work on was that my great-great-grandmother on my dad's side was "full blood Sioux."  That's sort of helpful except that Sioux isn't really a specific tribe and there are a lot of missing pieces there.  For me, this isn't a huge deal, but it is a regret that I don't know more.  This example is something that translates in a huge way to an adopted child.  Without an open adoption and contact with the birthparents, there's almost a guarantee that our child would have no idea about their heritage.

So after all of the touchy-feely questions and stories, Katie got down to the "nuts and bolts" discussion.  First off, Katie is the Regional Supervisor based in the Seattle office, so she doesn't take on too many adoptive families due to her limited schedule.  She explained that while she would be our counselor until we are chosen, there was the potential that a contractor would do our homestudy and all of the interviews.  In the end, we both felt more comfortable with having a single point of contact so we went with having Katie handle everything for us.  That decision might slow down our progress a bit due to Katie's limited availability, but it felt like the right decision for us.  After some further discussions, the two hour meeting wrapped up and we covered the remaining steps before we can begin our homestudy.  Let's just say that we've got homework to do!

Remaining tasks prior to beginning our homestudy:

1. E-mail Katie a copy of our Adoptive Family Info Form (already prepared)
2. Send another check to OA&FS
3. Send Katie drafts of our ~4 page autobiographies
4. Send out requests for 5 recommendation letters
• 1 from family, 4 from non-family

We're thrilled that 3 of these are really easy steps.  However, the autobiographies are really hard as it takes a lot of effort to pump out the story of your life.  Not only does it have to be coherent, but it should be well-written and interesting to a potential birth family.  Andy has already thrown together a preliminary draft on his end and I have... two paragraphs.  Apparently I'd better get moving so we can get our homestudy started!

Pre-Adoption Seminar, Day 2: Brian's Take

After wrapping up our last day of the pre-adoption seminar, everything is feeling a lot more real now that we've completed what is listed as the first major step of the adoption process with our agency.   We covered lots of important topics and met some adoptive parents which has been a great experience.

To start out the morning, we met a new member from OA&FS, Maria.  Depending on our counselor assignment, she could actually become our counselor which made it exciting to meet her in person.  For the last half of the day, another counselor (Courtney) took over.  In the end, we met two of our three possible counselors.  (We'll know which counselor gets assigned to us once we send in/they receive and process our application.)

So back to the seminar, we spent the morning talking about the back half of the adoption process that begins once adoptive parents are chosen by a birthmother/birthfamily.  In the afternoon, we had a discussion with an attorney, reviewed transracial adoption, and walked through the steps we have remaining until we can join the pool of waiting families!

Since it's been a rather busy day, I'll keep this post a short one as Andy has already posted his perspective on Day 2.  Over the next few days, we'll be posting some more exciting updates about our adoption journey.  Of course, I won't leave you hanging without any fun nuts and bolts-y details.  Here's a set of intriguing highlights that I scribbled down in my notes during the seminar.  I hope you find them interesting!

• Most people in the waiting family pool are in their 40's
• Birthparents have a lot less preparation about open adoption and the entire adoption process than adoptive parents (Ex: All adoptive parents take a pre-adoption seminar!)
• It's common for birthmoms not to find out/accept they're pregnant until later in the pregnancy.  I hadn't thought about this, but it makes sense as most adoption cases are not the result of planned pregnancies.
• Average ages of involved parties
• Birthmoms - 22 years
• Birthfathers - 24 years
• Adoptive parents - 40 years
• If we get a last minute placement (chosen from the maternity ward in the hospital), Andy and I would get a call and may only have 1 hour to decide if that is a good match for us.  Low stress!
• All adopted children technically have 2 birth certificates.  The birthmom/birthfamily name the baby and a birth certificate is created.  When placement goes through with the courts, a second birth certificate is created and the first birth certificate is sealed.  Depending on the preferences of the birth and adoptive parties, the birth certificates could have the same name or different names.

Pre-Adoption Seminar, Day 2: Andy's Take

What a day! If yesterday was all about Emotions!, Emotions!, Emotions!, then today was Logistics!, Logistics!, Logistics! We spent a full 8 hours talking through every step of the adoption process, and I'm dealing with major information overload right now. It was a great seminar all in all - I just think I need a bit of time to process it all!

First off, the view from the conference room:

"This is what adoption looks like." - Brian

A Seattle law firm donates one of their conference rooms to the agency for the seminar, so we were treated to fantastic views from the 28th floor yesterday and today. If nothing else, it made for great views of the Sound whenever my mind was wandering a bit!

The first part of the morning was spent talking about how the agency does outreach and counseling to pregnant women. They were very adamant that they provide "options counseling" to pregnant women, which means they help them explore all the options available to them in the course of their pregnancy. In practice, that includes helping them choose among three options: to parent the child themselves, to have an abortion, or to place the child for adoption. Even though the agency has "adoption" in its name, adoption is actually only chosen by about 20% of the women that they counsel.

The agency's philosophy seems to really put pregnant women first here, and I like that about it. The counseling provided to women who are going through unplanned pregnancies is provided free of charge, so they are able to fully explore all avenues available to them whatever their particular financial/insurance/economic situation. As it turns out, this is where much of the fees we'll have to pay go - even though Open Adopt is a non-profit that does its own fundraising, adoptive family fees pay for much of the expectant mother outreach. And I'm glad we're working with an agency that operates this way. On the side of the pregnant women, it really seems like they'll get the attention they need to make a fully informed decision, regardless of what that decision is. And on our side, it benefits us in that very few of the expectant parents who choose adoption during their pregnancy end up changing their mind at the time of the birth, since they've been given the opportunity to look at all the options.

Next up, we got to meet some adoptive families who had worked with the agency in the past. Both families brought along their little ones (one toddler, and one who was only six months), and it was great to see a couple "success stories". It seems that at every meeting we've been too, there's always a birth mother, adoptive parent, or some other person there to provide a personal story - but that never gets old for me! In the midst of all the paperwork and process we see looming ahead, it's nice to be reminded every now and then why we're doing this.

Together, those two topics took up the entire morning session. We had a great lunch with Andrew and Angela, a couple who's traveled all the way from Milwaukee to work with OA&FS. They actually have a daughter already who's almost 3, so they're now working on their second child. It was really nice to share experiences with other people who are going through this process with us but are coming from a very different place in life. Of course, they have more work ahead of them tomorrow: since they're from out of town, they're spending another day tomorrow doing a lot of the interviews and other work that we'll have spread out over the next few weeks and months.

The afternoon mainly consisted of a session with an adoption lawyer (spelling out a lot of the legal aspects of adoption) and a further in depth explanation of all the application, interview, and homestudy work that is waiting for us before we go into the pool of waiting families. Both were really useful, if maybe a bit difficult to follow at times. The lawyer was really nice and one of the better speakers of the seminar, and did a good job of preparing us for some of the legal issues that are likely to surface for us. And while we'd heard before about what the homestudy would involve, we got a lot more detail and I feel like I know much more what to expect moving forward.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent on a number of other issues, many of which honestly weren't as memorable for me. (Maybe I was just running low on blood sugar!) We spent time talking about promoting healthy attachments to children as soon as possible after birth, transracial adoptions, prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, and general child development, among other things. All of these are important topics, yes, but we just skimmed through a lot of them. According to the facilitator, by spending a little bit of time now we were satisfying the state's educational requirement for adoptive parents; but I definitely felt like we barely scratched the surface on any of them, and so we'll need to do a lot more reading on our own in the next few months!

Over the course of both days, we had three counselors from the agency facilitate the seminar at various times. There's only one more counselor out of the Seattle office, which means we've most likely met the woman who we'll be working with throughout our application and homestudy! That seems a bit weird to me, especially since we don't know which one she'll be yet, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

Anyway, I guess I've rambled enough now - after all the information I got today, I feel like I just needed to throw out a bit of a brain dump here. Now, I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep, and then getting on with things as soon as we can!

Saturday Morning

Nothing says "Saturday morning" to me like pancakes, sausage, and filling out adoption homestudy forms!

A week and a half until the pre-adoption seminar, and it's our goal to have as many of these forms done as possible!

Picking Our Agency, Part 4: The Decision

See also:

Picking Our Agency, Part 1: The Adoption Fair

Picking Our Agency, Part 2: Amara Parenting

Picking Our Agency, Part 3: Open Adoption & Family Services

As soon as we left the meeting with OA&FS, both Brian and I knew that it was time to make a decision. We had been telling ourselves to wait to decide on anything until we'd gone to info sessions for both agencies; now that we'd been to both, the time had come.

Open Adopt's session ended at 8:30pm, so it was still relatively early. I knew that if we went home it would be easy to be distracted by any number of things and procrastinate the decision, so I suggested we go to the nearby Caffe Ladro instead. Once there, I decreed that we had to make a decision between the two agencies before leaving.

In true Brian/Andy fashion, neither one of us wanted to state our preference without first knowing what the other wanted. (This makes going out to dinner a huge production: "Where do you want to go eat?" is always followed by "I don't care, where do you want to go eat?") After some initial back and forth, though, Brian indicated that he liked Open Adopt better than Amara, mainly because with Open Adopt we would be guaranteed an infant placement. Surprisingly (to me, at least), Brian seemed pretty solid in this decision, despite his initial equivocation.

Open Adopt and Amara are similar agencies in many ways, and so I tried to focus on what made them different. Both agencies facilitate infant adoptions, but Amara only does so after the prospective adoptive families are already in their foster-to-adopt program. Because of that, the majority of Amara's adoption placements end up coming from the foster system, not from their relinquished infant program. The other major difference is financial. The cost for an infant placement with either agency is roughly comparable; for foster placements, however, the fees are significantly less.

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So, it's time for a little tangent here. Brian and I very much want to adopt an infant, especially as our first child. We've never been parents before, obviously, and we want to experience parenting in the fullest way that we possibly can. And like any new parents, we want to have a happy and healthy baby. Is that selfish? Probably. But who wouldn't want that for their child?

Children in the foster system are there for a reason: abuse and/or neglect must be significant enough for the state to begin termination of the birth parents' rights. That is not a low bar. Many children in this system have significant issues to work through. Additionally, due to the time it takes for the state to go through all the available options before removing children, foster children are often significantly older than infants or toddlers by the time they are "legally free" (that's agency/legal speak for "available to be adopted").

It's very easy in this process to want to save the world. There are many children languishing in foster care who need permanent homes. By saying that we want to adopt an infant whose birth parents voluntarily decided to place their child for adoption, it feels like we're rejecting those children who are in foster care. And I guess when it comes down to it, we are. There's a weird amount of guilt associated with stating that so baldly. I have to keep reminding myself that our goal here is to create our own family, not to singlehandedly rescue all of Washington state's foster children, and that it's okay for us to have that goal. I have a feeling that this tension is going to be a recurring theme for me.

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Anyway, back to our agency decision. As you can probably guess from that sidebar, I was coming down on the side of Open Adopt as well. Going with Open Adopt would ensure that we were placed with an infant, and at the end of the day the financial difference is well worth it to us. Brian got there a little faster than I did, but in the end we separately came to that same conclusion.

So, what next? Now that we had decided to work with Open Adopt, we knew that the first step in their intake process is for us to attend their Pre-Adoption Seminar. Just that evening at their informational session, we learned that they hold the seminar monthly in Portland, but only once every two months in Seattle; and the next seminar in Seattle only had one spot left!

Signing up for the Pre-Adoption Seminar

As soon as we decided to go with Open Adopt, Brian wanted to call right away to claim that single remaining spot. Never mind that it was long after their office was closed - he wasn't going to risk that spot going to any of those other couples we had just met! He called and got their 24-hour answering service (which mainly exists for any birth mothers who are calling in with a crisis), so he left a message asking to register for the Seattle seminar.

(I have to laugh at how anxious Brian got about getting that last spot. The next morning, when they hadn't called him back by 9am, he was already on the phone again to make sure they had got our message! They had. Brian's normally the more relaxed and easy-going out of the two of us, so this was fun for me to watch.)

I was nervous going into Caffe Ladro, but once we made the actual decision I got a little giddy. I went up to the counter to get coffee and a croissant, and the conversation went like this:

Barista: So how's your evening going?
Andy: Great, we're adopting a baby!
Barista: Oh! Umm... congratulations?

He was very nice and seemed genuinely happy for us -- just probably didn't expect that news at 9:00pm on a Tuesday from a total stranger!

Anyway, now we're signed up and ready to go with Open Adoption & Family Services! Our next step with them of course is to go to their seminar, which is at the end of February. We've been warned that the home study following the seminar will require tons of paperwork, and I wish we could get started early. Since that's not possible, I'll be filling my time reading whatever I can get my hands on regarding adoption, open adoption, parenting, and the like.

Picking Our Agency, Part 3: Open Adoption & Family Services

See also:

Picking Our Agency, Part 1: The Adoption Fair

Picking Our Agency, Part 2: Amara Parenting

Hey everyone!  Brian here and I'm finally making my first post on the blog.  Andy's been doing a great job so far.  We both hope that all of our posts are not only fun and interesting to read but also provide a good window into the process of adoption!

Taking another step forward in our process, it's time to review our next milestone: the info session at Open Adoption & Family Services.  This info session took place on Jan 10th in their Seattle office and was led by Lisa who is the Office Manager & Outreach Coordinator.

It was great to be able to learn more about another agency that was much different from Amara.  While Amara focuses primarily on foster-to-adopt, Open Adopt does infant adoptions.  During the info session, we learned a lot of things about Open Adopt.  Here are a few the highlights:

• Started in 1985
• Located in Oregon and Washington
• Provide support for pregnant mothers and adoptive families both short-term and long-term
• Place 38-60 infants every year (Over 1,200 since 1985)
• Similar adoption timeline to Amara (6 months of preparations + Avg 14 months of waiting)

While many elements of the process are similar for both Open Adopt and Amara, there were some unique differences due to Open Adopt being a different agency and their focus on infants. For Open Adopt, the birthparents are automatically involved from the start and select the adoptive parents.  Selecting the adoptive parents usually occurs when the birthmother is in her third trimester.

Overall, both Andy and I really enjoyed this info session.  We had already heard some of the basic information about Open Adopt from several sources, and  Lisa did a great job answering all of the questions that we had.  She was an adoptive mom herself which also provided some great personal perspectives.  As we left the office that night, we knew we had a pretty big decision to make. 

Coming Soon: The Decision!

Picking Our Agency, Part 2: Amara Parenting

See also: Picking Our Agency, Part 1: The Adoption Fair

After we narrowed down our search to two agencies, it was time to get more information. It's really important to find an agency that's a good fit, since they're involved every step along the way and facilitate the entire process. Both of the agencies had free informational sessions coming up, so we signed up to attend each of them.

Amara Parenting was the first agency we visited. It was a cold Saturday morning, and it was earlier than either Brian or I really wanted to be up. I drove us to their location in east Seattle (Madrona), and we ended up about 15 minutes early sitting in the car in the parking lot.

"Do you want to go in, or should we wait in the car another 10 minutes?", one of us asked. The reply: "Let's wait."

I won't speak for Brian, but I was terrified! Even though we weren't making any commitments, going into the building felt like a big step to me at the time. I didn't know what to say, who would be there, or really anything at all about what to expect. So we waited for a few more minutes, I took a few deep breaths, and eventually we walked on in.

We ended up in a room with maybe 20 people. I think a lot of them were in the same place as us - excited, apprehensive, and just kinda waiting to see what would happen next. It was pretty quiet overall, but there was a nervous energy that I could feel pervading the room. Or maybe I was just projecting my own emotions on everyone else.

A woman named Megan eventually came in and started her presentation. We found out a lot more about this particular agency: their history (operating in Seattle since 1921), their size (10 full-time staff members), their mission (most of their work is with Washington state's foster system). All of their prospective adoptive families enroll in the foster-to-adopt program, and then can optionally participate in the relinquished infants program as well (in which case they wait for whichever placement comes first). As Megan worked through all the details of her agency, the mood in the room gradually relaxed - people started asking more questions, getting more into it, and a lot of my initial nervousness wore off.

Megan talked a lot about the general adoption process as well, and how it worked at Amara. First they would do the application and home study (which would take about 4-6 months); then they would match us with a family (on average 10-18 months); and finally their post-placement processes would last anywhere from 6-24 months after placement. Because they work with foster children who are wards of the state, the finalization process is significantly different than in a private adoption.

The highlight of the session by far was about an hour in, when one of Amara's "success stories" visited. In came a family that seemed tailor-made for us: two dads, and the most adorable little boys you've ever seen! First off, we knew that Amara worked with same sex couples, but it was very reassuring to see an example right there in front of us. And then the kids were seemingly perfect: very cute, and also extremely well-behaved. They were 5 and 3 years old, if I remember correctly, and were biological half-brothers; they had previously been fostered in separate families before eventually being adopted by their "forever family".

We had a chance to talk to the parents about their experiences adopting (especially as it related to Amara as an agency), and that was probably more valuable to me than anything else in the session. Being reminded of the end goal suddenly made me remember why we were signing ourselves up for what's sure to be a long and involved process.

After the session, Brian and I went and had a great brunch at the nearby Hi Spot Cafe. (Side note: if you're in Seattle, go there for brunch! It's amazing!) After getting so much information in such a short amount of time, I needed to decompress a bit and process everything we'd just heard. I liked Amara as an agency, and felt comfortable with the people we met who worked there. However, Brian and I had already discussed that we wanted to adopt an infant, and most of the children in foster-to-adopt were somewhat older. In the end, we concluded what we'd already known: that no decision would be made until we visited the other agency as well.

Next post: our visit to Open Adoption & Family Services!

See also:

Picking Our Agency, Part 3: Open Adoption & Family Services
Picking Our Agency, Part 4: The Decision

Picking Our Agency, Part 1: The Adoption Fair

The first big decision that we've had to make as prospective adoptive parents is which agency we're going to use. (Well, the real first big decision was actually to adopt, but I guess that goes without saying!) Before we started, I had no idea how many adoption agencies are out there. Let me tell you - there are a lot.

So where to begin? We were lucky, in that we found out about an annual adoption fair happening locally through Microsoft. It had some "Adoption 101" type sessions, and it had numerous representatives from all sorts of agencies that operate in Washington. So we thought, "great, let's go!" And next thing you know, there we were in November, with probably 20 different agencies staring us down as we walked into the conference room. It was more than a little intimidating for two first-time parents who still weren't quite sure what they were getting themselves into :)

As it turns out, we were able to narrow down our choices pretty quickly. As gay men, we decided that we wanted to do a domestic adoption; while international adoptions are probably possible, the legality of gay parents adopting from foreign countries introduces a whole host of problems that we'd rather avoid. So all those agencies that only do international adoptions: out. Additionally, we were able to nix any Christian agencies; many of them won't place with gay and lesbian parents, and even if they did it would likely still take longer for us to be picked by a birth family. Finally, we knew that we wanted an established agency that employed more than just a handful of people. After all that, we were left with two agencies: Amara Parenting and Open Adoption & Family Services.

After the fair, we did some more research on our own, but we kept coming back to these two agencies. We felt comfortable with both from what we knew of them, and either seemed like it could be a good fit for us. So all that remained was for us to call up the agencies and sign up for their individual informational sessions - finding out more would of course be essential in deciding which agency to use.

In retrospect, I think signing up for Amara's and Open Adoption's info sessions was really when everything started to feel real to me. Up until then, we had gone to a few meetings sponsored by the Microsoft adoption employee group, but we were mostly passive participants at best. Now, all of a sudden, we were taking concrete steps on our own to start moving forward. Even though signing up for the informational sessions was in no way a commitment, it still felt like a big first step.

Next up: our visit to Amara.

See also:
Picking Our Agency, Part 2: Amara Parenting
Picking Our Agency, Part 3: Open Adoption & Family Services
Picking Our Agency, Part 4: The Decision