The 150th Step

I started this blog (and foolishly let it lapse right just as things got interesting) to document the journey that my wife and I had started as we sought to adopt a little girl. The blog was kicked off shortly after a friend asked about the adoption process. I started to explain all the things we were doing and still had to do before giving up and saying, "If the adoption process has 150 steps, we're on step 6."

Now, almost three years later, we've reached and completed step 150.

Today, the judge finalized the adoption of our baby girl, making us legally and forever a family. Over the last 6 months, she's captured such a huge part of my heart that I can't really remember what it was like before she dropped into our lives so suddenly. Actually, it's not that I can't remember. It's that I don't really care to. I can't imagine life without her, even the occasional barfing.

I'm actually having some difficulty processing that fact that the adoption is DONE. There will be no more paperwork, no more home visits, no more legal steps, at least not when it comes to ensuring that she is ours and we are hers. I fully expect paperwork and bills to keep coming for decades to come but that's the journey of parenthood and I honestly have no idea how many steps there are in that journey.

But I'm looking forward to finding out.

Welcome to the start of the journey

When my wife Jennifer informed me that, after 8 years of marriage and many hours of discussion, that she was ready to expand our family and pursue an adoption, the research began in earnest.

Books -- some purchased by us, others handed off by friends and family who had adopted children -- began to pile up on the kitchen table and nightstands. Websites were Googled and bookmarked. We began to have the first of many conversations with professionals in the field, adoptive parents, and friends who were adopted. Jennifer promptly ID'd multiple blogs written by moms about their experience either with adoptions or just as parents.

I tried to do the same thing but ran into an interesting little problem -- I couldn't find any blogs by prospective adoptive fathers.

Actually, that's not quite true. I found a number of adoption blogs written by guys but virtually all of them were (or are being) written by gay men about their quest to adopt children. I applaud their efforts and wholeheartedly believe that gay and lesbian couples should have every right to adopt but after reading some of these blogs, I was feeling a bit left out. Where were the hetero married guys who wanted to document their quest to adopt a child, grumble about the paperwork and bureaucratic hoops, and celebrate the addition to their family? Of course, that idea might simply fly in the face of the stereotypical hetero male concept, I suppose.

Something needed to be done.

I first wrote about the start of our adoption journey on my other blog, "Walks in the Marsh". However, it was a conversation with a friend, as she inquired how our adoption effort was going, that inspired "150 Steps." When asked about our progress, I started to explain all the things we were doing and still had to do before giving up and saying, "If the adoption process has 150 steps, we're on step 6." Since it's going to take some time to walk those additional steps, I thought I'd keep a record of our progress so our hoped-for "Plus One" will know how hard we worked to bring her into our family.

Here it is.

Eenie meenie miny moe...

This post was originally published on "Walks in the Marsh" on June 14, 2009

How do you figure out which adoption agency is the one you want to work with?

When we were thinking about an international adoption, it seemed pretty straightforward -- we knew a number of people who had successfully adopted children from different countries. Plus, certain agencies specialize in certain countries. Therefore, we just needed to figure out the country we'd be interested in, talk to the people we knew who might have dealt with agencies supporting that country, and then interview a few agencies to decide who we wanted to work with to find a child for our family.

It got a bit more complicated when we shifted our view toward a domestic adoption. We only know one couple who adopted domestically (twice and very successfully) and they spoke very highly of their experience with their agency. However, my call to the agency revealed that we weren't going to be a good fit due to the agency's Board of Directors-mandated mission to place children in Christian households. With a non-practicing Jew and a never-practicing Catholic/Protestant/Unitarian/Episcopalian/who-knows-what making up our loving household, I think we'd have trouble qualifying. But hey, that's cool and no hard feelings. There are plenty of other agencies out there.

And there are. And that's the challenge. Because we simply need a Rhode Island-licensed agency to conduct the home study and help with paper work, we have the option to work with any agency in any state for the actual placement. However, a simple Google search for "domestic adoption agencies" reveals 2,200+ hits. Using one of the general adoption resource sites, we find 399 domestic agencies. How on earth do we choose? Part of me just wants to print out the list and just start throwing darts to see which ones I hit. I've held off on doing this as I'm not very good at darts so I might miss them all, which would bring our adoption journey to a confused halt.

We've started to talk to a few and it's been an eye-opening experience. Jennifer highlighted one such call in a recent "In the present moment mom" blog entry. Eventually we'll figure out which one to work with but while there will hopefully be some level of comfort and confidence in the agency, part of me feels like it will simply be the result of a wild-assed guess. Of course, while WAGs are fine from time to time, it's not exactly my preferred basis for adding a child to our family.

Plus One

This post was originally published on "Walks in the Marsh" on June 6, 2009

Things may be changing in our lives at some point in the future. My wife, Jennifer and I have decided to upgrade to Family Plus One by starting the journey toward adopting a baby. Over the course of our 8-year (and counting) marriage, family has occasionally been a topic of discussion but it always came down to two differing opinions -- I hoped to have one, Jenn leaned more toward the "nope, not gonna happen" side of the spectrum. As a result, it was something of a shock when, as my birthday gift, she told me that she was ready to consider it. Wow, things really do change when you hit 40!

Since that particular barrier fell, she has thrown herself into the process wholeheartedly, debating baby names, coming home with baby user manuals, and launching her own blog to record the journey. It's quite a change and in all honesty, one that I'd given up expecting to ever see.

Now the research into the adoption process is well underway, initial inquiries have been made, interviews have been had with a few agencies, and the smelling salts are always at hand to help rouse me to consciousness when the dollars start getting discussed. At times I feel like Steve Martin in "Father of the Bride" as, under stress from the costs of his daughter's wedding, he stands in the supermarket tearing bags of hot dog buns apart so he can buy just the number he needs. Want to specify a particular gender? Certainly we can do that for you, sir! It will just be another $5,800. Would you care to look at the menu of options one more time? Thank you and come again.

Unlike hot dog buns, of course, setting out to add that long-hoped-for Plus One is not the time to pinch pennies. Instead, it's a time for long, serious discussions about what we hope our family will be, how we will raise our child, and what it means for our future. We look ahead toward our jobs, our goals for the years ahead, our plans for the house, and everything now revolves around someone we don't know yet, like a player to be named later but in diapers, and it's extraordinary.

When I told my father our plans, he replied "It will be most important thing you'll ever do." I expect he's right, which raises all sorts of pressure to get it right. Like any parents, I'm sure there will be plenty of times that we don't but hopefully, the times we do get it right will matter far more in the long run. After all, I want my child to think his parents are pretty cool, just like I do my folks. That seems like a worthwhile goal to shoot for.