How to Choose an Adoption Agency, Part I

Perhaps I'm jumping the gun by writing this post; after all, we are towards the beginning of our adoption journey. However, I have seen a number of blog posts recently which made my heart ache, because couples have been poorly served by their adoption agencies. No one deserves this, particularly infertiles who have already been repeatedly traumatized on their journeys to parenthood. So I've put together these posts in the hopes that future prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) can avoid further heartache and trauma.

1. Why use an adoption agency?

Many couples do not use an adoption agency at all. Instead, they network to find birthparents and then use lawyers to handle the legal transfer of parental rights. I do not recommend this. An honest and ethical agency can help you avoid minefields.

Case in point: I recently read the heartbreaking story of a couple who found an expectant mother, flew to her city for the birth, met the baby in the nursery, fed him, changed his diapers, took him back to where they were staying and parented him for two weeks. Then their lawyer called. The birthmom wanted her baby back.

But there's a catch here: The mother had never signed the TPR (Termination of Parental Rights) papers. The baby did not legally belong to the adoptive parents. Not only was there nothing they could do, but there's a word for taking a child with whom you have no legal relationship. It begins with a "k".

An ethical adoption agency would have both protected both the mother and the PAPs by insisting that the PAPs not cultivate a relationship with the baby before the papers had been signed. Perhaps there are adoption attorneys who would do the same thing, but an attorney's primary responsibility is to handle paperwork, not review best adoption practices with PAPs.

Another factor is cost. I was stunned to learn that adoption attorney's can charge as much as $30,000 per adoption! From what I've seen, many agencies charge less and give you more.

An ethical agency will also offer counseling and post-placement support to birthmothers (see #3 below).

2. Does the agency have a religious affiliation? Is the religious affiliation the same as yours?

If the agency has a religious affiliation that is not your own BEWARE. There are agencies which require all PAPs to sign a "statement of faith" which you may or may not share. (For example, a very large Christian organization here in the US requires PAPs to sign a statement of faith which Catholics cannot sign.)

If you are considering a religious agency, bring up your (different) religion in the first phone call. "We're _________. Do you work with ________ couples?" Also, make sure that the denomination of the adoption agency does not have a record of problems with your denomination. You do not want to encounter any discrimination from your adoption agency once you have signed up with them, as it could involve an extended wait.

I hate to point out particular denominations, but evangelical Christians have a reputation for thinking that no one is saved except fellow evangelicals. If you were evangelical, would you want to adopt children to parents who were bound for hell? No, you would not.

3. What support services does the agency have for mothers, both before and after placement?

Every time I hear a blogger complaining that an adoption agency "only cares about birthmothers," I roll my eyes. Keep in mind that as PAPs, you are the most powerful member in the adoption triad. I know you don't feel this way. I know that you feel that you are powerless because your body can't do what everyone else's body can. But you are the ones who have tens of thousands of dollars that you can spend on this adoption. You're the one who can provide a child a stable safe home and myriad educational and economic opportunities. Women who are even considering making an adoption plan have none of this. You are not the one who is facing the painful choice of either parenting a child without the financial or emotional resources to do so, or placing her in the care of complete strangers, where you may not ever see her again.

If an adoption agency can be trusted to be fair and just to the vulnerable women who are not paying them, then they are more likely to be fair and just to you. The reverse is also true.

If an agency doesn't have much support for birthmothers, especially post-placement counseling, I would think twice about signing up with them.

These women are entrusting us with the most precious thing in the world. The least we can do is make sure they have the support they need during the most difficult times of their lives.

4. What is the agency's reputation?

This is tricky, because it involves digging up dirt on agencies on-line. Most agencies have at least a few negative reviews. Read the content of the reviews and try to ascertain whether the complaints are 1) consistent with one another and 2) reasonable. Pay no attention if the reviewer is complaining, "They only care about birthmothers." Or "They didn't return my non-returnable applications materials." (Yes, this is an actual quote.)

But if review after review alleges that the agency mistreats birthmothers, be very, very careful about proceeding. If the agency pressures or coerces mothers into placing their babies, this is not the kind of agency you want involved with your family.

You can also post a query on on-line adoption forums. Many of these websites have a policy against gossiping about particular agencies, but you can ask that people who have used the agencies in question respond to you via private message or email. Again, take everything you learn with a grain of salt.

Next up: Wait Times, Fee Schedules, and Home Studies

Manifold Updates

My longest ever absence from this blog was born not out of sorrow or trauma, but out of simply being overwhelmed by all the adoption-related stuff. In addition, I have been doing a ton of writing at work lately. Most days, all I do is write all day long. This has completely sapped my writing energy. I rarely work on Sundays, but the very last thing I want to do on my one day off is MORE WRITING.

But my two loyal readers probably wouldn't mind an update, so here it is:

1) Homestudy: We are done with our part of the homestudy, but we are waiting for a police clearance from Washington, DC, which is about to run out of money due to the shut down. So basically, though we filled out the form two months ago, our homestudy has been delayed indefinitely due to forces beyond our control.

2) Adoption Profile: I have finished a draft of this. I need to send it to our neighbor the graphic designer for feedback, but I'm so depressed by the whole endeavor that I can't manage to. DH and I simply aren't picture people. We didn't even own a camera until we bought one specifically to take pictures for our profile. We have hardly any pictures of us, other than the ones we took specifically for the profile. There is nothing to be done about the fact that we have limited photos, but the reality depresses me and makes me self-conscious nonetheless.

And...things have been difficult in our marriage recently. Being married is a funny thing, isn't it. The moment you say your vows, bitching to your girlfriends about how your boyfriend is always late, talks too much, doesn't do enough housework, etc. becomes an act of disloyalty. So I end up feeling like mine is the only marriage with so much strife. Which is why I like complaining about this on my blog, because I KNOW ya'll don't have perfect marriages.

The Adoption Profile itself has been causing a lot of the fights, along with DH's continued underemployment. DH told me that he would take care of the profile, being unemployed and all. Plus, I am visually incompetent and the thought of choosing fonts and background colors makes me feel exhausted and overwhelmed.

But I ended up doing most of the work, because it turns out that DH isn't all that great with software and spent two weeks trying to create the profile on iStudio, the worst publishing software EVER. I switched the whole thing to MS Powerpoint and worked on it every night after coming home from work, which, I believe I've mentioned before, has been completely sapping my writing energy.

So, in the event that you were unemployed, dear reader, would you, after your dear wife came home exhausted on Friday evening, cooked you both dinner and then plunked herself down in front of the computer to finish the profile, repeatedly moan about having poor, low-quality photographers? When your dear wife, in tears, begged you--BEGGED you--not to keep repeating that because she found it demoralizing to finish the profile while you kept reminding her of the difficulty of the task, would you get angry, storm off, and NAP ON THE COUCH WHILE SHE FINISHED THE PROFILE HERSELF???? And then, after a night in which you found yourself with the bed to yourself, because your dear wife had taken refuge in the guest bedroom, would you then proceed to point out to her all the ways in which SHE mishandled the situation? 

In other news, for the second year in a row, I will be taking the cats to the vet because DH "forgot" to get their vaccinations updated, even though we must get this taken care of for our homestudy to remain valid. Did I mention that he's unemployed and that now I must take time off work to get the cats vaccinated?

I'm still sleeping in the guest bedroom, and will be for the foreseeable future.

TTC is a hard habit to break

Over the past two+ years, I've worried about the following things:

-Endometriosis
-High FSH
-Periods too long and heavy (pre-surgery)
-Periods too short and light (post-surgery)
-Late ovulation (Spring 2011)
-Early ovulation (2012)
-LUFS
-Blocked tubes pre-surgery
-Blocked tubes post-surgery
-Adhesions
-Pre-menstrual spotting (pre-surgery)
-Tail end brown bleeding (post-surgery)
-Asherman's Syndrome (post-surgery)
-Premature Menopause
-Poor quality eggs
-CM too watery
-CM too acidic
-CM too thick
-CM insufficient
-Insufficient endometrial lining
-DH's sperm count
-DH's sperm quality

The vast, vast majority of these conditions never affected me (endo, blocked tubes-pre-surgery) or came and went on the odd cycle (anything related to ovulation timing and CM). In other words, I spent hours--days even--Googling many conditions that I didn't have that I didn't need to worry about.

Now that we're fully committed to adoption, i.e. the big fat check has been mailed off, it no longer matters. It does not matter when or whether I ovulate. It does not matter if my uterus and pelvic cavity are scarred into oblivion.

But I can't seem to stop. I keep Googling, though it must just be out of habit. It's harder to let go of TTC, when it has consumed me for more than two years. I try to turn the page, but my mind keeps me on the TTC train. It's time to let go, but I don't know how.

P.S. My TEBB (tail-end brown bleeding) has mysteriously vanished, just when I had planned to ask my pelvic pain specialist about it. Perhaps it was just that my uterus hadn't fully healed from the surgery until now.

Afraid of the Dark

Thanks to all who replied to my questions about TEBB. I think I'm going to schedule a visit with my pelvic pain specialist when I'm having the weird clotting black spotting and make him do some cultures. If nothing odd turns up, perhaps I'll revisit after we adopt. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure that it's a good idea to throw antibiotics at every case of TEBB, especially in the absence of positive cultures. Antibiotics wipe out good bacteria, not only in the digestive tract, but in the sinus cavities, ear canal, vagina, etc., and it can take a long time to rebuild.

But for now I need to be done with TTC for my own mental health.

We went to our adoption orientation, and it was fantastic. The agency seems to be a good fit with our values and ethos, the other couples were lovely, and best of all, they were very reassuring that they only accept as many couples as they anticipate placing within a year, and they only accept couples whom they feel are a good match for their birthmothers!

Despite all this reassurance, I'm struggling a bit.

The first issue is that we need to send in our big fat check. Once we do this, it's irrevocable. The money is gone, and it's a lot of money. DH and I have been discerning adoption for years now, and we had agreed that this is our best bet for becoming parents. We asked ourselves whether we could really pursue open adoption, and decided that not only could we do it, we didn't want any other kind of adoption. But now that we are on the verge of mailing the big fat check, I'm hesitating.

I want the safety and security of what is known: our current childless life. I'm like a child afraid of the dark. I'm afraid of where this path will lead. I'm afraid of the heartache that adoption, and parenthood, will inevitably bring. I'm afraid of the unknown and the unseen.

I Need the 411 on TEBB

Since my surgery, my cycles end with 2 days of brown bleeding, followed by another two days of black, spotted discharge. I would describe it almost like a scab that's flaking off inside off me. (It's great that there's no such thing as TMI in the infertile world.)

I've read enough bloggers who are using NaPro physicians to know that this could signal something VERY bad that could require 10+ days of intravenous antibiotics. But I also know that such regimens often don't work. 

At this point, I'm pretty much done with TTC. In a few weeks, we leave for our orientation weekend with our adoption agency. My mind is occupied by the homestudy and adoption profile. Once we make the payment to the agency, it really is best if I do not get pregnant. (Not that I can be bothered to avoid pregnancy.) We didn't even try this month because during my fertile time, we were out of town for my sister's wedding, sleeping in my old bedroom with ten other people in the house.

Still, I'm curious about this TEBB:

-Is there any problem with doing nothing? If I do have an infection, is it fine to just let my uterus be infected?

-Why would this have suddenly popped up after my surgery?

-Is there any chance it could be anything other than an infection? What?

-Did you have any other evidence of infection besides the TEBB? (e.g. foul-smelling discharge, etc, abdominal tenderness?)

-Did antibiotics clear up your TEBB? Have you conceived in the time since?

-Are there any non-NaPro physicians (besides Dr. Toth) who buy that TEBB is the result of infection?

-Should I go to my pelvic pain specialist about this? Or would he just laugh at me?

Any and all opinions, experience, anecdotes, and data are most welcome!

Help, Thanks, WOW!!!!!*

Thank you all for your prayers! We got word today that we have passed the next round of screening by the adoption agency! This means that we are all but approved, pending police clearance and home study.


*More liberal borrowing from Anne Lamott.

In which I cut my heart out, put it in an envelope, and mail it away

DH and I finally finished the monster application for the agency, complete with 100 supporting documents (slight exaggeration) and 10 pages of essay questions (no exaggeration).

DH is back in school and had a midterm yesterday, so even though I have a terrible cold/flu, it was up to me to feverishly (literally) run from home to work to UPS and back. By the time I got home, my whole body ached, my head throbbed, and my unrelenting cough had returned. I fell into bed and slept for three hours.

And now we wait.

I'm trying not to read up on reasons that an adoption agency would reject an applicant. In our case, I feel like if we were turned down, it would be because of debt and DH's unreliable employment situation. On the other hand, many people turn to adoption after they have maxed out their credit cards from IVF treatments and then they have to borrow against their home equity to finance the adoption. Luckily, DH and I are not in this situation, but we do have some credit card debt, medical debt (from my surgery) and DH has a debt from a mistake he made years ago that we only recently found out about. But it makes us look bad.

Now that the application is finally off our desks, I'm trying to get back to work, stay away from the Google, and not think about it much.

Pray for us!