Growing Our Family: Adoption

Part 2! After finding out that we couldn't have biological children, we started to research our options. As I mentioned in my past post, we regularly heard "at least you can adopt!" so of course that was one of the options that we looked into first. When you read blog posts, articles, adoption websites as a person who is infertile, you'll often see the sentiment that they don't want you to apply for adoption as a consolation prize. I really took that to heart, and didn't want to jump to adoption and be judged by an adoption worker that we weren't ready to pursue that path and hadn't properly mourned the baby we'd never birth. This made it hard to move forward with an adoption plan too quickly after our fertility journey ended. It makes you think questions that I don't know if you'd ever know the answer to, will I love an adopted child the same as a biological one? Will our families accept them the same way that they do their other grandchildren? How do we know what the right path is? 

Adoption Options is a private agency here in Winnipeg, and one of only a couple of adoption resources available for those in Manitoba. They offer a free information session for anyone looking into this path, and that was our first step. We took our time and as still our friends didn't have kids, we weren't in a rush to pursue an option until we felt peace and confidence moving forward. The information session walks you through the different international and domestic options, the costs, the time frames, and any other questions or concerns that those in the class had. It is a 2 hour evening session, and very helpful. 

Question 1: Why Domestic Adoption vs. International Adoption?
The choice between domestic or international adoption was one of the first choices that we had to make. In attending the information session, we learned that international adoption isn't as often an infant that would be adopted. At this point in our lives, we were fairly young, none of our friends had kids, and we felt more comfortable with an infant as amateur parents. Now I think I feel a little bit differently, but the decision we made then was the right one at the time. Some other reasons were the cost difference, and the ability to know medical and social history of birth parents and for the child to have a relationship with their birth parents should they both be open to that. 

Question 2: How does the application process work?
After the information session, you have an initial interview with someone to do your intake. There is a small fee and you fill in an initial adoption application that helps the provincial government track who has applied for which types of adoption and ensure that no one is applying for babies all over town. The second step is to go to an education seminar. It is a 2 day class going through the ins and outs of applying for an adoption and getting approved, as well as providing an opportunity to meet birth parents and adoptive parents and hear their stories. It was immensely helpful and we left feeling excited and at peace with our decision to continue pursuing adoption. After this, becomes the dreaded Home Study. I say dreaded because I think it's something a lot of us would fear, worrying what they'll think of us, will we pass? It was a wonderful experience. Don't be afraid of it! Our adoption worker was lovely, they aren't judging you at all, just getting an idea for who you are and what your life is like. It consisted of 5 in-person meetings, one of which took place at our home. It also includes a physical at your doctor's office, criminal record check, character references, and putting together all of your application paperwork. Once the home study was complete and application submitted, we were approved on July 10th, 2015. We had our initial interview on February 3rd, so in total it took about 5 months. 

To give a little bit more detail about the application, it is a doozy. You will answer questions that you have never thought of and that are very painful to consider. It's a good marriage exercise to consider what you would do if you adopted a child who has fill-in-the-blank health concern, or birth parents who consumed fill-in-the-blank drug. We have a copy of our application in a binder, and are open to reviewing it with anyone who is curious. Some example questions are would you adopt a child conceived from various criminal acts (prostitution, incest, rape), what percentage of different races would you be willing to accept, when does the birth mother need to know she is pregnant and how many drinks can she consume before she knows and how many after she knows? There is a lot to think about and consider. We had some heartbreaking conversations. We've been told on numerous occasions that our file is very open, which is all we can hope for as it is the part that we can control. It sounds like it wouldn't be that difficult, obviously we want a baby and if we were phoned and asked if we would accept something that we checked no to, we'd likely say yes (in fact that has happened once). However, they ask you to really consider and be closed to anything that if they called you would hesitate and not be excited. They don't want a birth parent to choose you and have you back out. 

In addition to the application of what we'd be willing to accept for our adoption, we filled out a number of documents about ourselves for the birth parents to review. There is a 8 page questionnaire including questions like What goals and expectations do you have for your children? What do you feel are the strongest points in your relationship? If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be? How were children disciplined/punished in your family? We each had to fill out those 8 pages for ourselves. We also provided a 2 page letter to the birth parents, and 4 pages of photos giving a glimpse into our life. 

Even with these three paragraphs I've barely scratched the surface of the application process, so if you are considering this yourself, please feel free to reach out and we'd be happy to get together and show you our binder and answer any questions that we can. 

Question 3: How long is the wait?
In Manitoba through our agency the birth parents choose the adoptive parents. This means there really isn't a set wait time, the very first day you're approved someone could see your file and love you and choose you, or it might take longer. They say approximately 6 months - 6 years. We are of course around 4 years now, which is longer than we expected it would be, but adoption numbers have been significantly lower than they had been historically, with single digit numbers each year, so wait times have increased accordingly. Every year we have an update to our home study where our worker comes to our home and finds out about anything that has happened in our past year and updates our file, at that time she also tells us about activity with our file. We've had basically everyone who comes in look at our file each year. So we're definitely open enough which is great news. All of the couples waiting (I believe there are around 60) are equally deserving, and we can't all be chosen so it is what it is. We've always been encouraged to just be as honest about our life as we can, because you never know what the reason will be that you're chosen. Some of the things about us that a birth parent might think are great - our age, our faith, living in the neighbourhood we live in - could all be reasons why another birth parent might not want to choose us, so we just have to wait for the right birth parent to see our file and feel a connection to our letter and pictures.

Question 4: Wait, the birth parents choose - so is this an open adoption?
At our agency all of the adoptions are open adoptions. A lot of people are leery of this at first without all of the information so I thought I'd shed a bit of light on this. Openness can vary from a photo and update every year, to regularly scheduled visits, etc. Every situation is different depending on the adoptive and birth parents comfort levels and expectations. Our plan is to follow the birth parents lead on this one, from what we've learned lots of adoptive parents who don't have a lot of contact wish they had more, so we are hoping to be as open as possible and do as much as the birth mother/father are comfortable with. Hopefully this will also allow our kiddos to know where they come from, be able to find out medical information should they need it down the road, and have a healthy relationship with their birth parents if possible. Having more people love your kid and be part of their family seems like a great thing!

Question 5: What happens when you're matched?
When we are chosen by a birth mother, we will get a phone call from Adoption Options. That will be quite a day! Most times if I get a 204 call that I don't recognize I think it's them, which can be a roller coaster of feelings. We will have a match meeting where we meet the birth parents and get to know each other better. At this point the decision isn't final, both us and the birth parents will go home and take a few days to think about whether or not we want to proceed. After we've both decided to continue, we'll have another meeting where we go over details of the adoption. At this meeting we sign the initial legal documents, discuss naming the baby, openness agreements, provide a diaper bag for use at the hospital, and go over any medical or other concerns. 

Typically, this meeting would happen within weeks of the birth. We don't expect to have more than  few weeks notice, and could be as little as a few days. We'll have to quickly get ready, but know the possibility of our adoption being reversed (the birth parents changing their mind) so we won't buy a lot of things in case. 

48 hours after the birth, our adoption worker and the birth parents will bring the baby to our home. That will give them an opportunity to tell us anything about the birth, the baby, see our home and where the baby will stay, and continue getting to know each other. There is a 21 day period in which the birth parents can change their mind. During that time, the birth parents can visit the baby and it is recommended that they do so that they can get closure and be sure about their decision. Approximately 12% of birth parents change their mind in the hospital during the 48 hours, and 8% once the baby is placed at their new home. I pray that after this wait, we aren't in a situation where a reversal takes place. 

After the 21 days, the baby will be ours. There is still some legal proceedings to take place, but birth parents can't change their mind after that time period. During that time, it's recommended we keep the baby somewhat to ourselves and keep it on the down low. I'm not great at secrets, so we'll see what we end up doing, but we expect we'd just tell our parents and siblings and potentially some friends. 

Question 6: Are you doing anything else to speed up your chances or pursue any other options? 
The 3rd part of this series is going to be about our other options to consider and what we might do next. That will provide more details on fertility options, other adoption options, etc. The only update I do want to include here, is that this July we also applied for adoption through CFS (child and family services). We went to a free information session there and applied right away. We hadn't realized we were allowed to previously, as you can only have one adoption open at a time typically. For that reason we can't apply for international while our domestic adoption is open. It turns out we can have this CFS adoption open, so we're happy to have done our paperwork and had that submitted. With CFS, things work a little bit differently. With all adoption options, once you are approved, home studies need to be updated every year. As CFS does adoptions for free, and has limited resources, they don't want to do the home study every year so we will only be called to do a home study and have an approved file once we've reached the top of the list of waiting parents. They said that if you're looking for a small child - for example, under 5, they said we'd be waiting likely 3 years to get our home study. We've been waiting 6 months so we don't expect to hear anything from CFS any time soon. Hopefully we will hear from adoption options much before 3 years and have our family begin growing! 

Question 7: How much does this cost?
A domestic adoption at adoption options is around $10,000 with variable legal fees. Costs are distributed about half at the beginning and half after being matched. If an adoption is reversed, we don't get our money back as it has been spent on legal fees that still need to be paid, birth parent counselling, etc. With CFS, the adoption is free. International adoption is significantly more, ranging from $20,000-$60,000+.

Thanks for your patience reading this huge post! Please don't hesitate to let me know if I've missed answering a question you had!

Growing Our Family: Infertility

I've had this post on my mind for a while, and have been trying to figure out what to write/when to write it. It's one of those things when you've waited so long to share that it never feels like the right time. However, I want to share our story to help get the word out about adoption, and to be a resource for those of you who might be looking into adoption yourselves! Bear with me, as I'm an awful blogger and have included exactly zero photos. I just don't have photos of us waiting on an adoption and going to infertility appointments? It took a lot out of me to write these posts and I just didn't have it in me to then try to pretty them up with photos that I try to make sense of in here. Thank you for reading all of this with no pictures!

This post is going to be part of a 3 part series that I post over the next week. We've received a number of questions and I want to provide blog posts that you aren't longer than the novel on your nightstand. We'll cover discovering our infertility, applying for adoption, and the other options that we may consider in the future, among other things. 

So let's start at the beginning. Philip & I were married on August 6th, 2011. We'd always intended to have kids of our own (I'd hoped for 5!) but wanted to wait a couple of years and be just us for a little while. I don't remember exactly when this started, but I felt prompted by God that we should start trying earlier. This sounds a little woo-woo, and I can only think of twice in my life that this has happened. I remember feeling that I couldn't trust if it was God, or my own selfish ambitions, pushing Philip to pull the goalie and see what happens. After months of arguing about it and praying about it, I threw out my birth control on Mother's Day of 2012. At the time it seemed cute and symbolic (though fluke timing as it happened to be the day I would have started my next pill package), but as you can imagine hasn't made for the best Mother's Day's over 7 years that followed. 

We were very hopeful, and had no reason to be concerned. I've always had a very regular monthly schedule, and we weren't fretting very much at all as each month things didn't go our way. None of our friends had kids yet (which is crazy to think about as we now have almost 13 kiddos in our close-knit friend group, and 3 nephews born to our brothers and sisters who weren't even married at this time) so the pressure wasn't on as much as it was later.

When we started trying, we came to the conclusion that we would also move. I had quit my job as I was really not enjoying it, and since we were moving and trying for a baby I didn't find a new one. We decided to move from our condo and buy a home so that we could do some renos before kiddo came along, and get used to some of the maintenance required before we had our hands full with a new human to learn about. We moved in August 2012 into the home we're in now and have slowly been renovating over the past 7 years. I am happy to say that our home is fully renovated now and ready to welcome our baby whenever he or she decides to join us! 

After a year had passed, we decided to go for routine checkups just to make sure everything was ok. That August, I went to my doctor who did blood tests and sent me for a pelvic ultrasound. The worst part of my ordeal was having to pee on command which anyone who knows me knows I can't do. I also remember the ultrasound tech being super harsh with us and telling Philip he wasn't allowed to come in. I don't totally understand why, isn't it kind of up to me if I'm comfortable with him being in this very private appointment or not? Philip went to his doctor, went to the Dynacare to provide his sample (which if anyone is wondering is done in a room that Philip says looks like a bathroom, but with a recliner instead of a toilet....if chairs could talk). To provide a bit of a look into that (which I'm sure you all want lol), you have 30 mins to get your sample to the clinic which is about 30 mins away from our house, so he elected to do it there. You do have the option of delivering it rather than using the creepy room though if this is something you're embarking on and it helps to have an idea of the ins and outs. 

Eventually we ended up going to see an Endocrinologist about Philip's hormone levels. We learned that he had a zero sperm count, so things weren't looking good for us. We experienced numerous delays during that time, the clinic losing our requisitions and blood results, having to redo tests only after calling dozens of times to ask if things were ready, all in all this delayed us learning any diagnosis for about a year. After the endocrinologist did all that he could do, we were referred to Heartland Fertility Clinic here in Winnipeg to see a urologist about a potential biopsy. The idea being, that if they can find a sample through a surgical biopsy, we could use it for IVF. Philip went to the urologist appointment and they basically laughed him out of the room and told us it would be a waste of money. It is still something that we could pursue, but at that point we had been poked and prodded for a year or two and felt like we wanted to take a break from that and move on to something more hopeful. Even if a biopsy was successful which they made us think it wouldn't be, we'd still be looking at a ton of doctor's appointments and procedures with the slim chance of a biological child. The biopsy is about $3000 if I remember correctly, and while the money isn't the only factor, we decided to put a pin in that at the time. 

At this point, we had to look into other options. For anyone going through infertility, I just want you to know that I know how hard it is to make these choices. Often during this time we were told, "at least you can adopt!" "what a wonderful thing to do for a child!" "have you tried this herbal remedy?" "so-and-so had this same thing happen and then got pregnant!" etc. etc. Everyone means well, but choosing to adopt rather than have a biological child is not an easy decision. There are tons of factors to consider, and you want to know that you're excited about it and have mourned the loss of being a parent to a kid that looks like you and your husband. When I think back now at being told "at least you can adopt!" I think, well that's easier said than done because we've been waiting years and years. It isn't as easy as that, and no one will understand the emotions that you're feeling. Even I, who has been through it, I'm sure feels things differently than you will. 

I often count my blessings in this whole thing. First of all, we started trying earlier than we planned, so we got on an adoption list earlier than we otherwise would have. We're definitely one of the younger couples waiting for an adoption. Secondly, we haven't experienced miscarriage. We've had our own heartbreaks over our infertility, but we've never lost a baby and for that I am forever grateful. 

In addition to counting blessings, I fall apart once in a while. I actually hold it together pretty well most of the time, but just last week had an 8 hour crying session about the fact that we just might never have kids. It's ok to be sad, things aren't going our way and it's hard to know what to do next. Writing out these posts will hopefully give our circle an idea of what we're going through and the decisions we're making, as well as provide a glimpse into how all of this works for anyone going through it. If you are going through this, feel free to reach out and ask questions too. No question is too personal, I am an open book and may not think of every question for these posts. 

Next up I'll write about applying for and being approved for adoption, as well as the stats/timeframe/etc. to answer questions that have come through. Thanks for your patience with these long posts, and thank you for your continued prayers as we wait to grow our family.