Finalizing Rose's Adoption

We finalized Rose's adoption today!  It went really well and we had a great day in the Alameda County Court in Hayward.  The girls had a good morning and both went down for early naps (hallelujah!).  And Paul took off work early, which the girls were pretty pleased about. 

 

We had to bribe Clara with fruit snacks a couple of times (yes, we resort to bribes when necessary) because she was not impressed with the boring courtroom even though I had brought along a bag of books and coloring implements and other fun things that I thought would occupy her.  But mostly she was really good.  And Rose was just as smiley and happy and talkative as usual and was definitely the most boisterous person in the court, causing everybody in the room (there were two other families finalizing adoptions at the same time) to turn around and smile at her. 

We went back to the judge's chambers and had such a nice judge who went through the adoption paperwork with us and our commitment to raise and love Rose and support and encourage her in everything she does.  Then she announced her decision that we are fit parents and signed the final paperwork and that was that.  Her clerk came back in and took a couple, truly horrible photos (seriously - how can people be such terrible photographers?  have they never used a camera before?  the photo below was the only one that worked at all and even at that it is blurry and I had to crop the heck out of it to make it look okay) and then we went back to the courtroom to wait while some additional paperwork was processed.

Another adoptive mom graciously took a photo for us in the courtroom while we waited (and did a much better job of it, thank goodness).

 

And as we were walking back to our seats a little voice came on the speaker in the room.  Clara had noticed the microphone on the witness stand and decided to entertain the bored courtroom.  Everybody started chuckling and my initial instinct was to go get her and usher her back to my seat, I realized, "what the heck, she isn't hurting anybody and nothing was going on in the room" so we just let her keep going and grabbed the camera instead.  Eventually she started into the Pledge of Allegiance and recited almost the entire thing to everyone's delight, particularly when she put a feminist spin on it by adding the line "and to the Republic, and all the womens..."  It was awesome and when she finished she put both arms up in the air in a "touchdown" or mike drop pose and walked off grinning to the applause in the courtroom.  We love her so much. 

Next we went to the filing office to get certified copies of the adoption paperwork, which took quite a while.

But Rose had a plan for keeping everybody entertained.  After having watched her big sister's performance Rose decided to put on her own show by standing up against the glass window to the clerk's office and blowing raspberries and licking the heck out of that window to the amusement of the dozen or so clerks inside who all started smiling and pointing at her, which just encouraged Rose even more.

That little giraffe tongue - seriously it kills me.  As do her piggy tails and seeing her in her cute little polka dot dress with black polka dot tights.

And a couple more quick family photos, this time in front of the courthouse  (no luck getting Rose to look at the camera).

 

Rather than going home we decided to take the party to Fenton's in Oakland for a banana split to share.  For the record, we always get the Junior size, which is still WAY too big for any regular mortal and we knew there was no chance we were going to finish it.  But it was still delicious.  We asked for at least 3 cherries (you know, to avoid any fighting or tantrums) and the nice waitress brought a bowl full of maraschinos which Clara seemed to enjoy even more than the ice cream.  Although she definitely loved the strawberry ice cream with strawberry topping too.  And incidentally, we always sub out the vanilla ice cream for toasted almond and get marshmallow topping on the chocolate ice cream rather than pineapple topping.  Because that's how we roll.  Rose enjoyed some delicious sweet potatoes and apricots and then gnawed away at a pickle spear.  She also figured out how to suck from a straw and enjoyed some water along with a couple teeny bites of strawberry ice cream (second child perk - getting tastes of sweets way earlier than her older sister ever did).

 

 

On our way home we stopped by the Oakland temple and walked around the grounds for a little bit while I scheduled our temple sealing with the temple coordinator, which will be the Saturday after Thanksgiving (hooray!).  It was such a special day and we feel so lucky that Rose is finally officially a part of our family.

 

Adoption 101 - the financial aspect

We often get asked questions about various aspects of adoption.  And there is a LOT to learn when it comes to adopting a baby - about yourself, about the process, about creating an open adoption relationship, etc.  I have decided to write an occasional post on here that is sort of more specifically geared toward answering some of the questions we have had ourselves going through the process or that others have asked us.

Today's topic:  How much does it cost to adopt? 

It largely depends on the agency and even then it depends on the specific adoption situation.  The normal range is between $25,000 and $35,000, although adoptions (and I am only referring to domestic adoption - babies born in the U.S. only and adopted by U.S. couples) can regularly be up around the $45,000 to $55,000 range.  Anything over that and from my perspective the agency or lawyer facilitating the adoption is probably unethical.  But I have heard of adoptions costing around $75,000 (but again, that has got to be with an unethical agency or lawyer).

I know my jaw dropped when I first learned just how much adoption costs.  Some adoptive couples take out loans to cover the fees or borrow from family.  There is an adoption tax credit that can help out some families who qualify.  Lots of adoptive families try to do fundraisers (Paul and I have done garage sales combined with bake sales, and I have done family photography where we earmark the money we've earned specifically for adoption.  I might have to do a post about other fundraiser ideas in the future.)  But the reality is that adoption is very expensive.

And that is just the cost of the agency/lawyer/adoption facilitator.  There are often costs associated with traveling to the birthmom's location and staying there for a week or two or three while waiting for ICPC clearance (government permission to move a child from one state to another after a birthmom signs relinquishment papers) goes through.  Plane tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, and lots of eating out don't come cheap, especially when those are usually last minute reservations based on when a baby decides to be born.

But none of the cost mentioned above goes to the child's birthmom.  It is illegal for a birthmom to receive any compensation for a child she places for adoption.  Sometimes a part of the adoption fees can be used by the agency or facilitator to pay for her housing, food, or medical care during the pregnancy, but that's pretty much it. 

Every agency breaks down adoption costs differently and it is hard to get a good grasp of exactly where the costs go, but it pays for homestudies, background checks, court costs, getting certified copies of all paperwork, marketing, post-placement supervision, birth parent counseling, etc.  But I think that a big part of the cost is typically just an agency fee (i.e., profit to the agency) because they facilitated the connection between a birthmom and an adoptive couple. 

The agency we used for Clara's adoption is largely subsidized by our church, which makes adoption much more financially feasible for couples who are hoping to adopt because they recognize that there are a lot of really great couples who have infertility issues that make pregnancy impossible but simply can't afford $25-50k for an adoption.  LDS Family Services (our agency) does a sliding scale approach based on the couple's gross income but the cost is between $4,000 and $10,000.  But due to the high number of couples who would like to adopt and the low number of babies placed for adoption, LDSFS has policies that only allow couples to use their services until they have two children, regardless of whether those children were adopted through LDSFS, some other agency, or the couple was able to have a child biologically.  So we can use them for our next adoption, but after that we will have to pursue other avenues for adoption if we want to try to adopt a third child.

There are a number of downsides to using LDSFS though.  Yes, the cost is much more manageable, but LDSFS doesn't "market" to birthmoms like a lot of private agencies do.  My understanding is that usually birthmoms who go through LDSFS are directed there by word of mouth or because they are also members of our church.  Another thing with LDSFS is that Paul and I don't move up a list of couples who get "priority" or anything like that whereas with some agencies, a couple essentially takes a place in line and knows that a match is likely to happen within a certain time-frame.  I recently emailed with another adoptive mom who told me that with their first adoption, their agency charged a $54,000 adoption fee and they were told that they could expect a 6-9 month wait for a child.  With LDSFS we could literally wait for years without ever having a successful adoption until we decide to pursue a different avenue. 

The two other main paths to adoption are foster care and international adoption.  I will probably do separate posts on each of them in the future because they are so different from domestic adoption, which is what we are familiar with.  But cost-wise, foster care is the most "economical" option because in many cases the financial cost to adopt is almost nothing.  And international adoption costs vary greatly depending not just on the agency used by also on the country of the adoption. 

Some people are shocked or outraged when they learn about how much it costs.  It is always mildly uncomfortable to talk about because we don't want to be perceived as "buying" a baby (because we certainly don't perceive it that way although there is a very large anti-adoption community online that does).  I hope this post de-mystifies some of the financial aspects of adoption.