Just a little note, we adopted our son from Guatemala about 2 1/2 years ago. If you are considering Guatemala, I would definetely talk to the people at HAPS - widely considered the very best and trustworthy agency. We had a very difficult experience with Reaching Out in NJ with our adoption, because we didn't want to wait for the waiting list at HAPS. We could say it wasn't worth it at all in the end because of all the trauma, but then again we wouldn't have our little man either....
Thanks - we certainly are considering a foreign adoption. I have Haiti and Guatemala at the top of that list. We are also looking into adopting an African American or multiracial baby in the US. I can't wait for whomever it is that joins our family. Basically, we'll be trying to figure this stuff for a few weeks, then we'll start the paperwork.
We started out looking into domestic infant adoption, now we are pursuing Chinese adoption. Both my husband and I really felt called to China.
We have finished our homestudy visits, and our caseworker is writing up the homestudy now. We are still working on our dossier, and hope to be done with that by the end of January.
I wanted badly to adopt from Haiti and then most of the agencies stopped because of what was going on in the country!
My best friend is adopting from Guatemala now.
I want to adopt siblings and I have been looking into domestic adoption. We too, are also interested in adopting african-amer kids!!
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Nanci
wife to Chris (10/90)
mama to Izzi (11/95)
and Griffin (12/98)
I do a couple contract jobs a year, doing homestudies & post-placement work with families in Southern NM. I LOVE it! Dh & I have always thought about adoption, but here very recently he told me that he was just seriously thinking about it the other day. At one time I really wanted to adopt from China, but now we are considering Africa. We'll probably wait a couple years from now.
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Tina
Crispy Christian, HS'ing Mama to Cristian & Bella. Lucky wife to my soldier, Ron.
Good luck! My best advice would be to research THOROUGHLY any agency you may go through. If you choose to adopt an AA child or children, you may not have to go thru an agency as they are harder to place sadly. You can get a private homestudy and then get the word out through various means. There are lots of adoption yahoogroups and other sites for instance. Agencies often have AA infants in private foster care just waiting for homestudy families! We may go that route if we adopt an infant again.
I am not 100% on this, but I am not sure things are going well with adoptions in Haiti right now. I know of a recent scandel and that usually snowballs.
Also the state is free to adopt from, although there may be some headaches. Our first adoption was private and although I wouldn't change a thing b/c that is how we got our daughter, I would NEVER EVER recommend the agency we used. They treated us awful and I have a feeling they were not much better to the birthmoms. That is one requirement on my list is how birthmothers get treated. That's huge! Anyway, contact Hana is you decide to go thru an agency. She knows of a good one for AA infants.
We are currently getting a state study done and we are hoping to adopt a toddler boy, any race. If it doesn't happen in a year or so, we'll go private. My sister is adopting two brothers right now through a private agency. I am not sure if you want an infant adoption, or an older adoption. Most older children are thru the state, but hers happens to be private (and that does happen too - usually at the request of the bmom rather than their rights being terminated iykwim).
Good luck and keep us posted! I love to hear about adoptions!
We have friends that do foster care for infants. They are constantly getting calls to see if they can take more babies. It's really sad, there aren't enough families to foster the babies, much less have them adopted. So I'd suggest you check with your county or state for adoption info.
We have friends that do foster care for infants. They are constantly getting calls to see if they can take more babies. It's really sad, there aren't enough families to foster the babies, much less have them adopted. So I'd suggest you check with your county or state for adoption info.
I'd ditto this and also they may tell you that you can't adopt infants or toddlers but it simply isn't true. Of course the infants and toddlers need homes too - there is just more people willing to take them than older kids. but I know of lots of harder to place toddlers and even infants. We recently missed out on a newborn AA baby boy - fresh from the hospital - because our homestudy was not done. Our social worker wanted to place him with us, but couldn't since we were not finished. He went to an African American home though so I was thrilled.
How did you ever decide where, etc? I am leaning toward using the agency Hana posted about in a long-ago thread. I have their info packet on my desk - sent away for it after reading her posts. I believe Atlanta is a great area for an African American child. DH has always wanted to do an Asian adoption. I think adopted kids are Asian to him, since his cousins are. But he says that he's not set on any place in particular, really.
I can say that we'd have loads of cultural support if we chose to do an Indian adoption, since our neighborhood has many Indian families, including the next door neighbors with whom we have play dates. And DH works at an Indian-owned company, where he's in the minority.
Oh, and as for Guatemala, I speak fair Spanish, and there's certainly a great hispanic community right here, too.
and then I have this soft spot for Haiti...
I hate this part. I guess we need to have more family talks around here, eh?
How did you ever decide where, etc? I am leaning toward using the agency Hana posted about in a long-ago thread. I have their info packet on my desk - sent away for it after reading her posts. I believe Atlanta is a great area for an African American child. DH has always wanted to do an Asian adoption. I think adopted kids are Asian to him, since his cousins are. But he says that he's not set on any place in particular, really.
I can say that we'd have loads of cultural support if we chose to do an Indian adoption, since our neighborhood has many Indian families, including the next door neighbors with whom we have play dates. And DH works at an Indian-owned company, where he's in the minority.
Oh, and as for Guatemala, I speak fair Spanish, and there's certainly a great hispanic community right here, too.
and then I have this soft spot for Haiti...
I hate this part. I guess we need to have more family talks around here, eh?
Deciding where is one of the hardest parts. For us, we were still in the thinking process. We were trying to decide if we wanted to go to a specialist and TTC again or if we wanted to adopt, and if so, where. I had called a few agencies a few months before just to get info. One of them asked for my name and number but we never filled out an application or anything. They called us out of the blue asking if we would adopt an African American baby girl and they told us about three different birthmoms they could match us with. The orignal adoption fell thru, as well as the next one, but I believe it was b/c Melody is the one that is supposed to be in our family. I hated the agency but without them, we wouldn't have our daughter.
We're doing a state study now for several reasons. We know it is a difficult road and that we may not get a child through the state, and if not, we'll go private again. But we have a relationship with the workers since we fostered. We're still young enough that we have a slight advantage, and we are now a multiracial family. Both of those things make it slightly easier. Also, there is no (financial) cost involved as we're still reeling from the first adoption financially. We also prefer a toddler and the majority of non-infant adoptions take place in the state systems or overseas. I don't know enough about overseas adoptions to pursue that route at this point and my husband can't get the kind of time off it takes to travel. Plus we are ready for another child as soon as we can bring him home, and it's quicker in the U.S. for non-caucasian kids to be placed.
Good luck! Feel free to PM me anytime with questions. I know it's a daunting task. But OH SO WORTH IT!
BTW, you should check out adoption websites if you have not. adopt.com, fosterparents.com (they have adoption boards), fertilethoughts.com. Even check out various yahoo groups for specific types of adoptions. They are a WEALTH of info. and even available children are posted on these a lot of times. My sister is adopting AA brothers (ages 6 and 2) and she learned about them from me forwarding her a link from one of my yahoo groups! I'm just thrilled.
a big deciding factor for us would have been travel requirements.. one parent, both parents, one trip, two trips, length of stay, etc. Some just wouldn't have been possible since Eric needed to work, kwim?
If you ever need someone to talk to about it, lmk.. we were in the process of deciding where when I found out we were finally pregnant.
a big deciding factor for us would have been travel requirements.. one parent, both parents, one trip, two trips, length of stay, etc. Some just wouldn't have been possible since Eric needed to work, kwim?
If you ever need someone to talk to about it, lmk.. we were in the process of deciding where when I found out we were finally pregnant.
Ditto! This has been part of our issue with adopting internationally. With the kids so young, and dh not being able to get off work for that long... we went domestic.
We have a passion for stateside kids. right now we're trying to decide if we go with a private agency for foster care, or the state (though the kids in the private agency are 'state' kids, too, just have social workers with the private agency). There are certainly many options.
We also feel most led to AA adoption. We'll see what happens.
And I cannot believe Melody is 11 months old!! She is so adorable.
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Heather
Birthday boy eating birthday pancakes. Happy 7th to Erik! My blog
Tamar
Monie 
Our first adoption was private and although I wouldn't change a thing b/c that is how we got our daughter, I would NEVER EVER recommend the agency we used. They treated us awful and I have a feeling they were not much better to the birthmoms. 
That is one requirement on my list is how birthmothers get treated. That's huge! Anyway, contact Hana is you decide to go thru an agency. She knows of a good one for AA infants.
I'm just thrilled.
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