Adopting Without Debt

We did it! We have officially hit the point in our adoption journey where we will be able to adopt without (long term) debt! This is such a huge accomplishment for us, and we are so excited! 

(Can you read my excitement from all the exclamation points in the paragraph above?)

One of the most common questions we get asked is "how much does adoption cost?" or "why does it cost so much?" or some other variation. So, I apologize ahead of time for those of you who don't like to talk about money, but here we go:

Our expenses for the adoption have been/will be the following:

$3,700 Registration fee, activation fee, and homestudy fee. This money signed us up and helped us get to a point where we were legally able to adopt a child in the state of Indiana.

$4,000 Advertising fee. This money pays for our profile book to be put together pays for the time that the agency spends doing outreach on our behalf to find our birth mother.

$2,500 Birth mother coordination fee. This money pays for the time that the women at our agency spend with the birth mothers, including some counseling for the birth mother.

$1,000 Assorted fees related to getting the homestudy final. This included copays at our doctors' offices for physicals, vaccines, and blood work; paying for finger prints and background checks; etc.

$10,000 Placement fee. Due 10 days before the baby is due (or immediately upon birth, in the case of a fall-in-your-lap placement), this money covers the cost for the agency to place the child in our home.

$3,000 Birth mother living expenses. This is money that our birth mother can use to help defray her cost of living pre-delivery and for up to 12 weeks postpartum.

$4,000 Estimated legal fees. Exactly what it sounds like, this is what we pay the attorney who will draft the paperwork for her to sign and for the attorney's time in court the day we finalize.

All told, just under $30,000. That's assuming our birth mother has health insurance or Medicaid. If she doesn't, we will have to pay the medical bills related to her pregnancy and birth.

To date, we've either paid or saved $24,000. The last $5,000 or so we're hoping to save before the baby comes, but even if we don't, we're counting on Target's $5,000 adoption reimbursement program to help us out. So, even if Little Laskey came tomorrow, we'd use a zero-interest bank loan for that amount until we were reimbursed. We have 3 adoption grants that are ready to be mailed out, and we're hoping something positive happens with at least one of them. We're also planning another no-spend month to ramp up our own savings one more time.

So how did we do it? How did we get to a point where we were able to afford this without incurring long term debt? The short answer is: YOU! There is no way we could have done this without each and every one of you helping us along the way. While we've pinched pennies, and socked away bonuses and raises, and sold some of our stuff to make extra money, it would never have been enough without all your support.

There is never anything we can do to repay all of you for your exceeding generosity, kindness, and support during this time. Please know that anyone who donated to keep that atrocious awesome beard, came to enjoy a meal at Brunchie's, ordered a Santa letter, or bought a football square has our undying gratitude. Everyone who donated items to the garage sale or shared a Facebook status is appreciated more than they know. And anyone who prayed, kept a good thought, or put out good juju for us during this time will always be in our thoughts and in our hearts.

More than anything, though, we want Little Laskey to know how many people came together to help bring our baby home. So, we're going to ask for your help one more time. We've contacted a local artist, and she's working with us to create a piece of wall art for the nursery, something similar to the picture above. Inside the heart, we'd like to include pictures of the families of everyone who has helped us along the way. So, if you're reading this and you've done anything to help us bring Litte Laskey home, please email a photo of your family to laskeyfam717@gmail.com so you can be sure to be included in this. We want our child to know how much we appreciate and love every one of you!

Nesting

Everyone tells you that waiting is the hardest part. To be fair, they're right, it is. I think the hardest part about the wait is that you don't know when the wait will end. We could have a baby tomorrow, or in a month, or in a year. We just don't know. It's hard to prepare for something when you don't have a timeline. So after everyone tells you that waiting is the hardest part, they tell you to not let the wait bother you, to keep busy, to live your life.

So we are.

It's a busy summer around here. It's a good summer to have to wait. There's a lot to keep us occupied: two graduation parties, a bridal shower, a wedding, a work trip, a baby shower. Not to mention those concert tickets that were a Christmas gift, and the Reds tickets that we won at a silent auction, and those other concert tickets that we bought on Groupon. Add on a visit from the in-laws, and don't forget the trip to Michigan for round 2 of what will surely go down in history as the world's largest garage sale.

That's just the list of "events" that we have going on. Then there's the never-ending to-do list to prepare for Little Laskey's arrival. We have a chalkboard on the side of the fridge where we keep track of what still needs to be done. See, the thing with adoption is that you spend the first few months rushing to get the paperwork done, the home visit scheduled, the house deep-cleaned. Then the paperwork is approved. And you just wait. So in an effort to not "just wait" we have The List. The List includes fun things like painting the nursery and assembling the furniture. (I'm not sure Brian would consider assembling the furniture fun, but we only had one small moment of tension in a whole day of work, so we'll go with that as a good description.) The List also includes practical things like arranging child care, finding a pediatrician, and arranging boarding for the dogs if we have to be away from home to pick up the baby. The List includes not-so-fun things like drafting our wills. Apparently, we need wills to protect a child we don't even have yet. There's a weird legal time between placement of the child in our home and finalization of the adoption (about 4 months) where, if anything were to happen to us, the guardianship of our child could be contested by several different parties and no one really knows where the baby would end up.

The thing is, though, that I have much less motivation to tackle The List than I have to clean the house from top to bottom and bottom to top again. I've been bitten by the nesting bug...bitten hard. I'm currently in the process of clearing out the office closet, which was home to our holiday decorations. I toss one Rubbermaid tub in the trunk of my car every day as I head out for work, stopping at our garage to unload it.  All so that I can move the few items (a graduation gown, a bridesmaid's dress, my wedding veil) that were being stored in the nursery closet out so that baby's closet is completely empty.

I'm working off a List that lives in my head, not on the chalkboard on the fridge. On some days, it seems to be an instinctual List. I never know when I wake up in the morning what cleaning or organizational project I'll tackle that day. Organize the wrapping paper. Clean out the cabinet under the sink in the half bath. Might as well tackle the under-the-sink cabinet in the guest bathroom while I'm at it. Those fabric bins in that 9-cube bookcase in the living room? Time to sort through them to see what we really use. That stack of mail that normally lives in the corner of the coffee table? Pay the bills, put the wedding and grad party invites on the fridge, trash the rest. 

I'm driving Brian crazy, I know I have to be. He tolerates it well, though. He doesn't even question me anymore when I announce on a Tuesday night that we HAVE to go to Target to get yet another plastic tote because the china dishes need to move out of the storage ottoman and into a closet. He didn't even bat an eye when, this Saturday morning, he woke up and found me sorting through and organizing the Christmas gifts that we have already purchased. (Yes, I have some already. I buy them on sale and store them until Christmas!)

Apparently adoption nesting is a real thing. Go on, Google it. And while you do, if you'll excuse me, the Tubberware cabinet needs a little attention...

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.