Ways and means.

Let me preface this with the following disclaimer: I am not an expert on adoption. Far, far from it, in fact. The process is long and complicated and this post is not intended to be an all-inclusive synopsis of the myriad ways in which to welcome a child in to your home. These are just the three main ways we are investigating.

First: International adoption.
Adoption in general can be a highly emotionally charged subject, and international adoption is no exception. The Hague Convention is the international legal standard which covers adoption, and countries can be signatory to, or not signatory to, that law. The U.S. is signatory to the Hague, and adoptive parents (and children) have more protection, legally speaking, under Hague than they do outside it. The State Department is the governing body for International adoptions in the U.S. and they maintain a database of who is signatory to the Hague, who is in compliance and whether countries are open or closed for International adoption.

When discussing International adoption, there is a lot of "but there are kids that need parents right here in the U.S. Why would you go to another country when American kids need help?" My feelings on the matter are that you can't get in to a game of "who needs the most help". Every child needs and deserves a home and good parents. Every child. We can't go in to this trying to save anyone. First, it won't work. There are too many that need help and we have limited resources. Second, we are trying to grow our family and starting with the premise that there are kids who need homes is a good one, but ultimately, we aren't trying to "save" anyone. We want a child, not a permanent charity case. I don't know if I'm making my point effectively, but what I'm trying to say is that we are looking at our new child as our new child, not as someone we "rescued".

Having said all of this, International adoption is not at the top of our list. That may change, depending on our circumstances, but for now it's not something we're investigating heavily. There are many reasons, but length of time to complete the process and expense are two major factors. It can take two plus years (easily) to complete an International adoption, sometimes requiring several trips to the adoptive country. Though we have the financial resources to accomplish this, I'm not sure we have the emotional resources. To be perfectly frank, I don't know if I can handle multiple trips to foreign orphanages. It's heartbreaking to even think of all the children out there waiting for new homes and new parents, and I  think that seeing their faces and not being able to give each of them that love and stability would be emotionally crippling. For me, maintaining an emotional distance is difficult, so I have to mitigate that tendency. Having said that, if an International adoption "fell into our laps" (so to speak), we'd go for it in a heartbeat. We have no preconceived ideas about the gender or race of our child.

Second: Domestic (agency) adoption.
Domestic adoption falls into two categories, as far as I can tell. There is local adoption and interstate adoption. Adoption laws vary from state to state (as does everything else...), so there can be different requirements in terms of fees, length of time needed to terminate parental rights, expenses paid by the adoptive parents to cover the birth parents medical/housing/food expenses, length of time your home study is valid, etc., etc., ad nauseum. When I discuss "domestic adoption", I mean adoption through an accredited agency. This means that the birth parent(s) have contacted and agency about help placing their child in a home. The basic flow is that we (the potential adoptive parents) apply with an agency, complete a home study with that agency and create a profile book (or website in some cases) to keep on record with that agency. There is a pool of potential adoptive families on record that the birth parent(s) can choose from for placement. I'll get into the details of home studies and profile books when we start those processes, but how quickly you are chosen to adopt is a function of a million different variables, including requirements or restrictions that we can choose ourselves. We could say we wanted a specific gender or a specific racial profile, but those things aren't important to us, and not specifying makes the likelihood of being chosen by birth parents much higher.

Third: Private adoption.
Private adoption is handled outside of an agency. An example of private adoption would be your neighbor's teenage daughter accidentally gets pregnant and decides to place the baby for adoption. Your neighbor knows you are looking to adopt and approaches you about the possibility. Private adoption is handled between the birth and adoptive parents and their lawyers. Many of the rules are the same as for an agency adoption - you still need a home study and those kinds of formalities - but the parties generally know each other, or know people in common, beforehand. It is also required that each party be represented by an attorney, rather than one attorney handling both sides, presumably to insure that no one is taken advantage of in the process. It is required (I believe) that the adoptive parents cover the legal expenses for both parties.

Right now we are tending towards private and/or domestic adoption. We are planning (for now) to go on record at an agency, but we are also prepared and definitely willing to go with private adoption as well. We are in the process of choosing an adoption agency and will meet with an adoption lawyer in the next few weeks to discuss the requirements of private adoption as well. We basically want to cover all of our bases so as to make this as fast and painless a process as possible. You can only (generally) be in the "pool" at one agency, so choosing one that is going to fit our needs is pretty important. Each agency has different methods for placing children, or different "pool" sizes, or different fees, or a million other small things. Choosing the "right" one is a pretty important task, but ultimately, they are all in the business of finding homes for children. So we're going down the same path, regardless of the vehicle we choose to take us.

I want to point out that this overview is like the Cliff Notes version of adoption. There are many more subtleties that we don't know yet or haven't discussed here. More (much more) to come!