Adoption Choices: Why Infant Adoption?
Following up on my posts last week on the key adoption choices we’ve made, the last significant adoption decision we had to make was:
Infant vs Older Child
For us, this was a relatively easy decision.
In fact, we didn’t even do any specific academic research on infant adoption.
First, we knew we wanted to do open adoption, and in almost all circumstances open adoption is of an infant.
Second, we knew we want to be part of our child’s life from day 1 (or as close to day one as humanly possible).
Third, we simply wanted an infant.
.
I think the biggest thing I’ve learned in our adoption process so far is that the decisions you have to make seem to never end.
We had to make decisions about:
- Infant vs. Older Child
- Open vs. Closed
- Domestic vs. International
- Race
- Substance Exposure
- How to prepare for the home study.
- Amount we are willing to spend on birth mother expenses.
- Which agency to work with locally and internationally.
- To hire a graphic designer for our profile book or not. And ultimately who to hire.
For us, every decision involved a lot of research and personal reflection. In addition to learning about the adoption process, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves. In many ways, the adoption process forces you to think through a lot of things including your family history, your current life and your future hopes. At times it can be a hard process, but it’s also an interesting process. And I’m adamant that it will be worth it in the end.
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I’m curious about the differences between domestic infant adoption in the US and in Canada. I should probably do some light internet research.
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You guys have done everything a couple should do when choosing adoption. If you don’t mind me asking were you and Mr MPB on the same page about all of those topics? I love that you did so much research to help make your decisions.
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You have made so many decisions I am ready for this phase to be over for you so badly!
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Of course it will all be worth it in the end!! I know you’re getting so impatient, and I hope your end comes for you soon. So many big decisions to make, and it seems like even the “small” ones are huge. It’s sad that some people can be so judgemental about your choices…hopefully you don’t have to deal with too much of that. I’m glad you’ve been sharing so much of your journey with us…good info to have, for anyone either going through it, or who may have to go down that road some day. Thinking of you and wishing you luck!
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We had to go through those questions as well, and we chose an age range of 3 months (the youngest) and 4 years old for our little girl from Ethiopia. For us it was wanting to be there for as many stages of the child’s life as possible, but that at the very least before she becomes of school age. We were originally talking to DHS about foster/adopt and they were a bureaucratic nightmare that would sadly ultimately guarantee no child permanently in our home, and external domestic adoptions of younger children were in the $30K range. We’re going through Adoption Avenues and they’ve been wonderful throughout the process, and are about 2/3 the cost of domestic adoption. If I could afford it I’d adopt a child from every country – we are already an international family with my husband Australian and myself American, so international adoption was very natural for us 🙂 We are also going through DE-IVF as well which we consider “adopting an egg” so who knows what the future holds….but we’re doing what’s right for us.
Sadly I see way too many adoption blogs referring to themselves in a holier-than-thou “savior-like” way where they think they’re “called” to it instead of adopting to purely be parents. We are not adopting to “rescue”, we are adopting to be parents.
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