The Baby Decision

by Merle Bombardieri

  In all these types of domestic adoption, you often receive a placement shortly after the baby’s birth.

  International adoption, in which your local, in-state agency either has its own relationships with foreign agencies or orphanages, or connects you with an out-of-state agency that arranges the foreign adoption. Depending on the country, you may or may not travel to the child’s country of origin. In some situations, you will go the country twice, once to meet your child/choose a placement, and then a few months later when all paperwork and legal steps are completed. Sometimes you are asked to spend a few weeks in the country.

  Foreign independent adoption, in which you make direct contact with a lawyer, orphanage or adoption agency in that country. If you follow this option, you will work with a lawyer who knows the laws of your state and with a lawyer in the country of origin.

  If you’re considering adopting a child of another race or culture, be sure you take full advantage of all the information available to you for decision-making and support. Your adoption agency, multicultural organizations, and the website Creating a Family, www.creatingafamily.org, are excellent resources for information, coping techniques and support.

  The adoption books and resources in the appendix will offer you questions to ask in evaluating all of these choices.

  It can also be helpful to talk to adoptive families who have worked with the agencies or lawyers you are considering using. You can also check with your state’s Office for Children to see if there have been any problems with the programs that you are considering.

  Open Adoption

  If you are doing domestic adoption, another consideration you need to weigh is whether you and/or the birth mother and birth father are interested in meeting or talking by phone or videoconferencing. The advantage of this “open adoption,” is that the adoptive parents may feel that they have conscientiously placed the child with you as opposed to just handing a baby to an agency. This gives them a chance to feel that they are making a responsible plan for the child. The advantage for you is that you will (if you’re like most parents who do this, even though the idea may have terrified you when you first heard about it) feel more empowered to raise your child, having a sense of the birth parents choosing you. In fact, many adoptive parents of two, whose first adoption was “closed” and whose second was “open,” wish their first child had the knowledge that the two sets of parents spoke to each other.

  Your adoption agency or consultant can help you decide whether or not you want to do this. (See The Open Adoption Experience by Lois Melina and Sharon Kaplan to learn more, including some variations on this practice.)

  Special Needs Adoption

  Another adoption option is to an adopt an older child (often six or older) or a child who is hard to place due to emotional problems or, sadly, their identity as a person of color. Such adoptions, whether through state offices for children or private agencies are often less expensive for a number of reasons. Children with physical, emotional or cognitive disabilities are also considered special needs. In the case of children of color, there are not enough families of color to place them all in matching homes. Older children and those with disabilities are harder to place because most parents-to-be are hoping to start out with a healthy young infant. For potential parents who are considering a special needs child, adoption may be less expensive because there are few, if any, costs involved in finding a child, and you will not have to provide medical or other expenses of birth mothers. The special needs children are readily available through public and private agencies. To learn more about special needs adoption, see the resources section or go to creatingafamily.org.

  Legal Risk Adoptions

  These are children for whom you become foster parents with the hope that the child will later be available to adopt. These children are in situations in which Children’s Services organizations are giving parents who have been neglectful or abusive a chance, through supervised visits and counseling, to regain custody of the child. They are called “legal risk” because of the possibility that you may have to relinquish the child. This risk may be considered “low,” “moderate,” or “high,” depending on the Department of Social Service’s estimate of the risk of your not getting to keep your child.

  Although this method could match you with a wonderful child you would eventually adopt, there are no guarantees. If you are currently childless and have been through the devastation of infertility or pregnancy loss, this option would likely be a poor choice for you. How much more grief could you stand? Of course, legal risk adoption carries emotional risk as well, both for you and the child if the placement isn’t permanent.

  In general, special needs and legal risk adoptions work best for families where one parent is home full-time with a blend of biological and adoptive or foster children. In many of these families, the other parent may work from home or be in the home a great deal. These families enjoy centering their lives around their children. These are couples or individuals who have devoted their lives to children who need a lot of attention. But if you work full-time and are hoping to start out fresh with a newborn, a special needs adoption is not likely to be your best match.

  Transracial or Multi-Cultural Adoption

  Your adoption worker, independent adoption consultant, and parents who have done such adoptions are great resources. If you are Caucasian and you were raised or now live in a multiracial/multicultural neighborhood, or if your own family is a blend of backgrounds, races, and cultures, you may be confident about such adoptions. You may even find such adoptions more interesting, more challenging in a good way, than adopting a child who looks like you. Adam Pertman, in Adoption Nation, writes about how many Americans are becoming more inclusive to people from other races, and cultures as international and transracial adoption have become more common. Nevertheless, our country still has a long way to go to become non-racist and more accepting of people from other countries and cultures. Your adoption worker can help you sort out what makes sense for you. The website, creatingafamily.org, offers advice and a bibliography on this topic. Reading books on international and transracial adoption listed in the bibliography can help you picture yourself in such families. Adoption agencies and cultural organizations offer education, support, and family activities that help parents and children adapt to their new family.

  An Overview of the Adoption Process

  Home study is a misnomer. Most meetings take place at the agency site, and an adoption worker doesn’t usually come to your home until she/the agency has already decided to pass you, and let you know that ahead of time. You will not be deprived of a child because of a dust bunny or a cobweb! The worker is meeting the needs of the state and perhaps also the adoption agency or country your child is coming from to insure that your house and neighborhood are safe and that your home is de-cluttered.

  A typical schedule of your involvement with the agency looks something like this:

  1.An informational meeting at the agency where you are not being scrutinized and the agency may not even know your name. You are not committing yet to working with the agency, and typically people visit a few agencies to decide which one they feel more comfortable with. People who have already adopted through the agency may briefly tell their stories. This may help you feel more hopeful. If you are a couple, your first meeting will be with both of you. You will get an overview of the home study process. If you decide to pursue adoption, you will fill out the agency’s paperwork, have a background check, and submit evidence of your health and financial security. You do not need to be well off. You just need to show that you can support your child.

  2.An individual meeting with you, regardless of whether you are single or a couple. You will talk about your interest in adoption and your upbringing. The worker will tell you more about adoption than you learned in your introductory informational meeting.

  3.If you have a partner, there will be a couples meeting. The adoption worker will want to get a sense of your relationship
and your interest in adoption. You will discuss how you came to the decision to adopt. If you have been through infertility, or are adopting due to a medical problem that precludes pregnancy, the worker will want to get a sense of how you are coming to terms with disappointment and loss. She wants to make sure you have processed this loss so that you will be able to enjoy the adopted child for who he or she actually is, and not a substitute for the biological child you are not going to have.

  4.A group meeting or class where you will learn more about adoption, meet other adoption workers besides your own, and be introduced to other individuals and couples involved in the process.

  5.Follow-up meetings to answer your questions and learn more about adoptive parenting.

  6.The home visit.

  After the home study is complete, there are typically once-a-month optional meetings to help you cope with waiting for your placement and offer further education and support.

  It’s normal to be apprehensive about the home study. You may be afraid you won’t be approved and will wind up childless. You may be furious that strangers can require you to participate in the process, when terrible people who can reproduce answer to nobody. Fortunately, home studies today are usually more focused on preparing you for adoption, helping you to consider whether adoption is for you.

  Please remember that reading the above information can’t provide you a sense of the warm, joyful feelings adoptive parents feel when they first bring their child home, or the satisfaction of raising the child.

  To get a fuller picture and to see the full scope of the home study and other logistics as necessary steps to adopting a child, talk to adoptive parents, read books, and explore the resources in the Appendix. I especially recommend the website creatingafamily.org and Lois Melina’s Raising Adopted Children. Although Melina’s book focuses on post-adoptive parenting, my decision-making clients have found it a useful tool for imagining themselves as adoptive parents.

  Simultaneous Trying

  You may consider pursuing pregnancy and adoption simultaneously, particularly if you are in your late thirties or early forties and are afraid 1. neither option may work, and you want to hedge your bets to wind up with at least one child, or 2. you are facing fertility limits/ biological clock for pregnancy and age cutoffs of adoption agencies.

  Suppose you want both the adoptive placement and the pregnancy. Some agencies will allow this; others will not. The best circumstances would be if you are at the tail end of fertility trying and your medical team is not encouraging, AND your agency is willing to work with you under these circumstances. They will not want to work with you if you have every reason to assume you will get pregnant on your own; for instance, if you haven’t yet started a fertility workup, or are newly diagnosed with a fairly treatable problem. While most adoption agencies don’t want to work with you if you are still trying for pregnancy, some are willing to do so if they know that you are making one or two last efforts at high-tech treatments that have failed so far. Their willingness will depend on their sense that you are psychologically ready to adopt. This means that even though you still have some hopes of pregnancy, you have grieved your fantasied biological child intensely enough that you would fully welcome and be ready to love your adopted child.

  If you have been going through fertility treatment for months or years, especially if you are in your late thirties and forties, adoption may start to look attractive. Although you think you are capable of loving and welcoming an adopted child, at this point, you are not yet ready to stop treatment. You may want to start the adoption process, so that you know at least one path will lead to parenthood. If you would like to have two children, you may feel that you would want your adoptive placement even if you had a successful pregnancy (see Chapter 10, “Solving Fertility Problems”).

  The advantage of double pursuit is that you have two ways to become parents. This may take some of the pressure off your disappointing treatments. It might even make it easier to decide to stop treatment. You may also want to pursue both paths if your adoption agency or others involved in your adoption—for instance, a foreign country—have age limits such as forty, which you are approaching.

  The disadvantages of simultaneous pursuit of adoption and pregnancy include emotional, physical, and financial exhaustion, the difficulty of working full-time while balancing two “part-time jobs,” and couple conflict if one of you is more eager for this plan than the other. Also, you might get more out of your adoption agency meetings if you have stopped medical pursuits and can focus more fully on adoption. There is also the possibility of disappointment if your agency won’t give you a placement if you’re pregnant (see below).

  Before we talk about how to manage simultaneous pursuits, I want to acknowledge that you may believe that agency rules are unfair. After all the unfairness you have already been through with infertility, it seems as if you should be rewarded by having adoption be a lot easier.

  Although it’s hard when you’re frustrated about having to adopt and you’ve already waited months or years while pursuing pregnancy or trying unsuccessfully to carry to term, take a minute to briefly consider adoption from the point of view of the adoption agency and its mandate to serve your birth mother and your baby’s needs. The agency’s goal is to place babies as soon as possible. If you have accepted a placement and tell the agency, before the child comes home to you, that you don’t want the match because you are pregnant, you are lengthening the time that your “almost-adopted” child must wait before reaching her permanent home. Even if the agency has a long list of other applicants, they have lost time working with you and have a lot of paperwork and phone calls before this child can go home to other anxiously waiting parents. The worker is naturally disappointed for the child and also faced with extra work. Looking at this from the agency’s concerns about placing each child as quickly as possible, you may feel a little less disgruntled.

  You should also consider the possibility that if the agency takes your name off the list and you then miscarry, you could end up with neither child. A grim prospect! It’s also important not to burn bridges with your agency, since you might want to apply there in the future for a second child.

  Ground Rules for Pursuing Adoption and Pregnancy Simultaneously

  1.Choose an agency you can be honest with. Ask around or have a friend call the agency anonymously. Lying is stressful, and your home study will be a richer experience, a more focused preparation for adoptive parenthood if you’re not hiding your medical efforts.

  2. If you are a couple, make sure both of you are willing to pursue both options simultaneously and that if you got pregnant, you would both want to continue the adoption or both want to drop out. You should avoid at all costs the unpleasant discovery, if you haven’t talked about it, that one of you is heartbreakingly bonded with your potential or already matched child while the other wants to release the placement. Even if you never hold that child in your arms, you will feel enormous heartbreak. Women often liken the experience to a pregnancy loss when they lose a specific, hoped-for, and anticipated child.

  3. Carve out the time and energy you need to pursue both paths and still manage to work. Both adoption and medical visits are time-and energy-draining, emotionally demanding processes. Don’t volunteer for new projects at work. Scale back social plans and family and community activities.

  4. Arrange your adoption visits several days apart from doctor’s appointments so that when you are at the agency you can whole-heartedly focus on adoption. While this isn’t always possible, do your best, and be willing to reschedule to avoid confusion and conflict, i.e., going to an adoption meeting the same day you learned that a few eggs fertilized. Even if you are psychologically ready to adopt, of course your mind will turn to the possibility of pregnancy when you get such news.

  To find out more about adoption, see the Bibliography. For adoption referral, see the Resources section.

  The big moment has arrived. You’ve done all the exercises; you
’ve thought about all the issues; you’ve talked to your partner, your family, and your friends. Both you and your partner are pretty sure you know what you want, but you’re still scared. Why? Because when you make a change, any change, some last-minute panic is perfectly normal. So don’t assume that your sudden paralysis means that you’ve made the wrong decision. You probably haven’t.

  Try going back to Chapter 2, “Secret Doors,” to do a new “Chair Dialogue,” “Rocking Chair,” or “Diary” exercise. Doing these exercises again may reveal some unfinished business, which once addressed, will make the decision clear. If you jotted down some notes the first time you did the exercises, reading them may show you that you are farther along toward the decision than you realized.

  You can “try on” the decision for a week or two. Just imagine, along with your partner, that you have already decided to be childfree or have a child. How does that feel? What excites you? What scares you? What actions might you take to move forward such as going on childfree websites or making an appointment with a gynecologist. Are you and your partner feeling excited, feeling that the decision fits? The decision will probably feel more solid over the twoweek experiment. If not, read on below if you’re leaning toward parenthood, or see Chapter 13, “Embracing the Childfree Life” if you are leaning in the childfree direction.

  1. Before you throw away your contraceptives or schedule a vasectomy, read over the guidelines that follow. If after you’ve finished, you are still convinced that your choice is right, accept those lingering doubts as par for the course, and act on the decision. However, if your doubts intensify, that could be a sign that you haven’t done enough work on the decision. If so, give yourself some more time and consider seeking some professional help.