Managing Details

Last week's post was an attempt to answer some of the most common questions we've gotten throughout this entire process, but especially now that we've become active with our agency. After reading through it several times, neither of us could think of many questions that we left out. After thinking about this all some more, though, I think we missed one. A big one. An important one. You see, we are asked fairly frequently why it costs so much to adopt a child. 

I understand the curiosity, I do. I especially understand it when it seems like every other day there are news stories of foster children sleeping in DCS offices across the country for lack of a home, or babies being abandoned (hopefully using their state's Safe Haven Laws), or babies and children being abused. The shortest, easiest answer I can provide is that those children will be adopted through the foster care system. When a family adopts a child through the foster care system, they should not face financial expenses. Of course, we have seen families go far above and beyond the stipend provided for fostering a child, thus incurring expenses that they "choose" to incur. Case in point, paying for a foster child to play soccer on their high school team may be beyond the monthly allowance that a couple receives for taking that child into their home. We've seen friends pay for this (and more) for their foster kids, and are constantly in awe of the courage and grace that it takes to welcome a foster child into their home.

We are not adopting from foster care, however. We are pursuing a private domestic infant adoption, meaning that our birth mother will terminate her parental rights around 48 hours postpartum, the birth father will terminate his rights no more than 30 days postpartum (hopefully, he'll terminate while she's still pregnant), and we will take the baby home from the hospital. We'll be legal guardians for 4-5 months, until we go to court to finalize the adoption. We have many reasons for pursuing this type of adoption instead of foster-to-adopt, but that's a topic for another post. In this post, I want to give you all a glimpse of why we are happy to pay our agency for the incredible work they do. These women work hard for the babies, birth parents, and adoptive parents they see, and we are happy to pay for their services.

When we posted the blog last week, I mentioned in the Facebook post that we knew that our profile book was out to one birth mother. We were super excited to hear that, but that knowledge also brought with it a slew of anxiety. Every beep or buzz of our cells made us jump. What if that was “the call?” What if it was our Adoption Coordinator on the other end saying that this birth mom wanted to choose us? It’s now been a week, and our phones have only been buzzing with normal activity, so we’ve calmed down a lot, but it’s good to know that we’re being shown.

We’re allowed to check in with the agency once a month to see what our “activity” is. At first, we thought that meant they would be able to tell us how many times our profile book had been shown to different women. In reality, all we’ll be able to know how many women have copies of our profile book at the moment that we ask. It’s an incredibly complicated, but fascinating, process. The agency representative explains it like this:

We update our active birthmother list once a week. Within that week a lot can change! We add new women and take women off. We typically add about 3-7 women every week from new birthmother intakes. Women can get taken off the list due to placing their child for adoption, choosing to parent, birthfather risk has stopped the adoption, no phone minutes on her phone leading to extended period of no contact, or family steps in to save the day and help. These same women that we take off the list cold go back on due to losing her job so parenting is not a solid option any longer, birthfather is not so much a risk any longer (for many reasons), family broke promises again and aren't helping after all, or simply getting minutes back on her phone. Women that get taken off the list one week could be added back on the very next week or even several months down the line. So when you check in for an update I will only be able to let you know how many women you are out to in that given week. That will not mean that you have only ever gone out to 1 woman since activation, again, it is just this week. That doesn't mean that last week you were out to different women, it could have been all the same, or maybe 1 of the same, etc. This also doesn't account for when a coordinator is in the field and shows or shares your bio to a new woman that she was just popping in to say hello to.

I can't even begin to imagine the level of detail that her job entails with updating this list and all the varied reasons women jump on and off the list at any given time. That's what we're paying for when we fork over our checks to this agency. That, and so much more! We're paying for the social worker's time as she evaluates our home and paperwork to make sure that we're able to provide for this little one. We're paying for the director's time as she explains the process to us in our meetings and (13 hour!) home study class. We're paying for the Adoption Coordinators' time as they take calls from women at 3am in a crisis situation. Perhaps most importantly, we're paying for counseling and support for our birth mother, as she prepares to make a decision that takes a level of strength and courage that I cannot even fathom. It's so fascinating to me to get even a small glimpse into these women's lives. I hope that these little glimpses can help us to better empathize with whomever is on the other end of the line when we do get "the call."

FAQ Round 2

Well, we’ve been officially “active” in our agency for a month. That means that we’ve been up on their website for a month and that any birth mothers who are potential matches have been shown our profile book. We thought we’d take a minute and answer some FAQs that we’ve been getting over the last month, so that you all know what’s happening:

How much longer?

The short answer to this is: we have no idea, but we hope not long. The longer answer is much more complicated. One key piece of paperwork in the mountain of forms that we filled out was what I’ve been affectionately describing as something similar to an online dating profile. We listed out different things we were open to, in regards to how open this adoption will be, levels of alcohol/tobacco/drug use during pregnancy, and various health issues that we’re able to accept. When a birth mother comes to the agency, she’ll fill out similar paperwork. The agency staff matches her needs to our needs, and she’s shows profile books of hopeful parents who may be a good fit. On average, she’ll see 3-5 books. She can then ask to meet any of those people who she wants to get to know further. Once that happens, you hope to build a relationship with her spanning the remainder of her pregnancy, and ideally, beyond birth.

So, our wait time is really twofold: we wait until we have a good lead on a birth mother, and then we’ll wait out the remainder of her pregnancy. Some of the women come to the agency after their first positive pregnancy test, some come later during their pregnancy, and others wait to call the agency until they have given birth. All of these are distinct possibilities that we have to prepare for. On average, we can expect to wait 9 months from date of activation to date of birth. Our agency’s goal is 12 months maximum, but a lot of that depends on how many birth mothers walk through the door. For those keeping count, we activated in April, so 9 months puts us around a January birthday. Of course, nothing is guaranteed!

So, you’re just…waiting?

Well, yes and no. We’re waiting for a good lead and a match with a birth mother, and then we’ll wait out whatever remains of her pregnancy. But we’re not just sitting idly by. The first few months of working with the agency were so filled with activity and movement that it’s hard to imagine just sitting still now. We have a list of baby prep things to keep us busy while we wait. There are pediatricians to interview, daycare options to tour, grants to apply for, wills to set up, parenting books to read, and many other things. We’re slowly crossing things off that list.

We are also still living our lives! We can’t put our entire lives on hold while we wait. We went on vacation earlier this month, and we’ll be spending a LOT of time in Michigan this summer with our families. We get to celebrate a bridal shower, wedding, and two graduation parties this year. We have concert and baseball game tickets for this summer, plans with friends, and weekends to go to the farmer’s market with the dogs. It’s hard to plan around an unknown time frame, so we’ll just make plans as best we can for the time being.

Where will the baby be from? How old will your child be?

Our agency is based in Indiana and works with women mostly from Indiana. They get a few birth mothers from towns on the border of other states, but that’s pretty rare. It’s also a lot harder in those cases, because you have to balance the laws between Indiana and whatever neighboring state you’re working with. Yes, each of the 50 states has different laws surrounding adoption.

Our agency also works almost exclusively with expectant mothers, meaning that we will more than likely take our child home from the hospital a few days after they are born. Sometimes the agency will get sibling groups, and even more rarely will they get an older child being placed, but these situations almost never happen, since most older children are placed for adoption through the foster care system, not through a private agency.

What will your relationship with the birth mother look like?

In an ideal world, we’ll share letters and photos pretty frequently with our child’s birth mother. We’d even visit a few times a year. I know this sounds scary. It took us a long time to really discover how we felt about this level of openness. When you think about it, though, it’s really what’s best for everyone in the long term. Our child will know where they come from, we’ll have access to as much medical and social history as possible, and our birth mother will get to see her biological child thriving and happy. Eliminating the mystery helps to reduce adolescent rebellion (“you’re not my REAL parents”) and keeping in touch helps her heal from her grief.

That said, it’s really up to her how much interaction we have with her after all the papers are signed. Some birth mothers send cards and letters monthly, others visit yearly, and still others fade away after a few years, especially if we or she moves out of Indiana. We will set limits based on our family’s needs, but we hope that she is an active part of our child’s life. After all, the more people loving this little kid, the better!

I think it’s so important to note here that openness in adoption is not the same thing as co-parenting. When I think of co-parenting, I think of a couple who has divorced or separated, but are working together to raise their children. Both parties in a co-parenting relationship have some level of say in the day-to-day lives of the kids. This is not at all what happens in open adoption. Once the papers are signed in the hospital (24-48 hours postpartum), the birth mother has no legal rights to the child. We will be our child’s parents in everything except DNA.

And last, but not least, the most common question we’ve been asked over the last month:

Are you getting a boy or a girl?

We don’t know! We don’t get to choose the baby’s sex (really, what parents do?), and we’re matched with a birth mother, not her baby. She is making the decision to place her child with us because she feels we are the best people to care for this child. Let that sink in for a minute, and experience just how humbling this whole process is for us!

Paper Pregnant

Well, it's been a long time coming, but I am so excited to announce that we are officially activated with Adoption Support Center! What does "activation" mean? It means that we are featured on their website and that when a birth mother chooses to work with ASC, if we match her needs and she matches ours, then the agency staff will show her our biography book. She'll have the opportunity to learn a little bit about us, our families, and our desire to be parents. She'll decide at that point if she would like to meet us in person and get to know us better, and maybe eventually place her child with us.

All in all, we had about 40 pages of paperwork to do, 5 background checks to pass (two of the checks we had to complete twice since it had been so long since we did them that the results expired), and about $12,000 to fork over. We had to have an additional $8,000 available in case we had an immediate placement.

We still have a ways go to on the fundraising side. Our final fees will total around $17,000 ($3,000 for birth mother living expenses, $4,000 for legal fees, and $10,000 for adoption agency fees). We have about half of that right now (the $8,000), and have a Dine & Donate with a local restaurant planned for next week. The plan for a big chunk of the rest of that is to apply for a few adoption grants. We are hopeful that we can bring in even just a couple thousand dollars in grant funding. 

What does this mean in terms of timing and next steps? It means that, other than fundraising, we have done everything within our power to move this process along. Our fate completely rests in other people's hands now. While that's a nerve-wracking thought on one hand, it's nice to know that we are truly at just a waiting game stage of this process.  Our agency's goal is 12 months from activation (where we are now) to placement (taking our baby home from the hospital). They average 9 months. So, we'll see. We'll wait. And while we wait, we'll hope!

Wrapping Up Frugal February

We've successfully completed our Frugal February, and, looking at the bank account, felt comfortable putting $750 into the baby's savings account as a result! (We also netted $750 from the Super Bowl Squares, so all in all, Little Laskey made BANK this month!) I was hoping for an even $1,000 from Frugal February, but neglected to take into account the fact that we had a month of double health insurance coverage. My Komen benefits kicked in February 1, and Brian's Target benefits don't end until March 31, so our insurance premium payments were higher than we normally see. 

I think I can accurately say that you learn a lot about your spending habits when you force yourself to NOT spend anything for a month. Our top 3 lessons learned include:

1. We eat out A LOT! Several times per week. This isn't a bad thing in itself, but it's certainly not conducive to saving money. I think our biggest reason for eating out is simply because we can. We're in the habit of it and, especially when we both work a long day, it's so much easier than trying to figure out dinner.

2. Meal planning has been absolutely essential to get through this month. Half the battle when we get home at night is figuring out what to cook for dinner. On the other hand, though, neither of us work well with super rigid plans for dinner pre-mapped for each day. We found a good balance of having a few options each night that could be prepped in just a few minutes. This gave us some flexibility but some structure at the same time. 

3. Keeping busy kept us from spending money. It's amazing how much more money we spend when we have nothing specific to do. We kill time by walking around Clay Terrace or something similar. If we have plans (particularly on weekends), we can save a lot of money. Even if the plans involve spending some money, it's spent more intentionally than if we just "wing it." We spent most of our free weekends painting the nursery, building furniture, and moving things from a storage unit we had rented to a garage in our complex. 

Special Bonus Lesson #4: It's easier to deal with the situation of your debit card being hacked if you know you're not spending money during a particular month. When we got a call asking us to authorize a purchase in New York for about $700, we were 1000% certain it was fraudulent!

With all that in mind, and wanting to not lose our momentum of saving for Little Laskey in March, we're going to continue the Frugal February streak into March...at least when it comes to dining out! I think we have to relax our spending rules in some areas (Brian is very excited to regain his Tuesday afternoon movie outings and we're both in dire need of haircuts!), but we plan on only going out to eat in March when we have a gift card to cover a portion of our bill. Luckily, our friends and family know us well, and we have several gift cards stocked up from Christmas presents, and one really nice one that was my going away gift from Social Health saved for a special occasion. 

Our Life in 11 Pages

We're halfway through Frugal February folks! We'll do a check-in at the end of the month and announce our plans for our own savings moving forward (Money-Saving March, perhaps?) In the meantime, we've been finding ways to keep ourselves busy at home that don't require spending money. Free movie passes were a great excuse for a freebie date night a few days ago, and the free, pre-planned dates that I gave Brian as my "something I made" Christmas gift are waiting for us to use whenever we have a night we need to get out of the house.

This week, we had a chore to do related to the adoption that took up what would have been a mindless evening watching TV. We got to read and sign our home study document! This is the paperwork compiled by the agency that will be presented to the judge to formally say that we are approved to adopt a child in the state of Indiana. It's essentially an 11-page summary of our life, based on the 45 pages of paperwork we completed, our letters of recommendation, and our total of about 24 hours interacting with the agency staff.

If you've never had a home study completed, I'm not sure I can adequately describe to you what it's like to read one written about you. The best I can do is to say that it's an incredibly surreal experience. On the one hand, you get to read quotes from your closest friends on how awesome they think you are. (Note: we didn't get to know who wrote what, but wow! We have some amazingly thoughtful and eloquent friends in Cera, Mark, Macara, Lenny, Doreen, and Marti! You all made us cry!) 

On the other hand, you see all the skeletons you and every member of your family possess, out of the closet, right there on paper for everyone to see. By everyone, of course, I mean us, the social worker, and the judge. So not everyone, but still. It's humbling on so many levels. 

Then of course, there's the legal-ese language that the document uses. Never in my life would I think to describe Brian, myself, our family, or our home the way this document describes all of us. Apparently, we are "adequately educated" about the challenges of raising a child of a heritage different than ours, we were "internally motivated as children to not disappoint our parents," and we would like to "emulate the example set forth by our own parents regarding discipline." I agree with those ideas; I'm just not sure I would have put them in quite the same words!

We ended up having more edits to make to the document than I imagine the average family makes. Most of those edits were the result of my taking a new job right in the middle of this whole process. For example, the home study document has to reflect which of us is providing insurance. We just switched to my insurance coverage through Komen, so that will need to be updated in the document. Once those changes are made, our social worker will submit the document to the judge for approval. Once it is approved, we will have officially done everything in our power in this process. The agency can start to advertise us to birth mothers, and then it's just a waiting game to be matched with the right one.

Frugal February

So we've done a lot of fundraisers in the past year. We did #BeardforBaby, Santa Letters, and are currently in the middle of a Super Bowl Squares fundraiser. (By the way, if you're interested in purchasing squares and a chance to win up to $1,000, be sure to check out https://www.superbowlsquares.org/6z65s. Enter username "username" and password "password" to pick your squares. Also, the more people who play, the bigger the winnings, so please share the link with any friends who may be looking for some squares!)

We've also squirreled away our tax refunds, bonuses and raises, and some money from each paycheck over the last 14 months. Right now, we are only about $5,000 from the total amount we will need to fund the adoption. So, in addition to the Super Bowl Squares fundraiser, we would like to introduce you all to our personal contribution to our savings for the next month:

Frugal February. I got the idea from a Pinterest link called "No Spend November" which was designed to help people save for Christmas shopping.  We've agreed to spend  no money in February outside of necessities (you know, like rent, gas for our cars, etc.). We decided to keep our produce delivery every other week and that buying milk was acceptable, but we plan on making meals with what we have in the house. Other than that, though, no spending.  No dining out, no movies (good thing I organized 10 free date nights as per of Brian's Christmas gift!), no shopping for new clothes, nothing.

We aren't big spenders normally, but we usually don't think twice about going out to eat if we've both had a long day at work, or grabbing a nice sweater at Target if it's on sale, that kind of thing. It's going to be a challenging month; wish us luck!

February...

As the month of February approaches, Stephanie and I sat down and thought about what could we potentially do for our next fundraiser to help bring Little Laskey home.

We have seen a great idea called "Adopt a Block" where you have grid of boxes labeled 1-100 and each person picks a square and donates that amount of money. However, after talking, we both decided that you all have been INCREDIBLY generous so far with your support of our previous fundraisers and we wanted to switch things up a bit.

Well...being the quick thinker that I am, I decided to take the idea of "Adopt a Box", combine it with the time of year, the hype of PowerBall, and make things a little more fun. 

Introducing, "Little Laskey's Super Bowl Squares"! These are just like other Super Bowl squares but with a minor twist. Instead of doing payouts each quarter, or each half, we will do one payout at the end of the game. 50% of the pot will go to the winner, and 50% will stay with us to help bring Little Laskey home. If we fill out grid, that means $1000 to each!

The nice part is there is no paper to fill out! Everything is digital! 

To play, simply visit www.superbowlsquares.org/6z65s and when prompted for a username/password, enter username/password (secure right?). This will allow you to pick the number of squares you'd like.

The score numbers will be filled in 1 hour before the game (unless we haven't sold out, then they will be filled out at kickoff). 

Payment can be made to Stephanie or myself, or online through our GoFundMe www.gofundme.com/LittleLaskey and must be received 1 hour prior to kick off, or your squares will be removed. If you pay online, please put the number of squares you are buying in the comments section.

We really want to see this extend past our spheres, so please share this with all of your friends and family and help get the word out.

Thank you so much for your support and good luck!

Brian