Have you adopted? Looking for information

[Denine]

Congrats on your decision.

First, you need to decide how much money you want to spend. International is more expensive than domestic.

We adopted domestically.

We knew we wanted and infant. We thought about adopting a toddler, but found out they are seldom available. This may have changed since we started the process.

I called several agencies in our stated after finding a bunch of questions to ask in a book I purchased. We decided on a local religous based agency. I just liked them better.

Since we wanted the proverbial healthy, white infant, it took 4 years of waiting after we applied. But, 2 years ago, we brought home our sweet little angel.

There are a lot of good books out there. There is also a place that sells nothing but adoption books, called Tapestry. You can find them on the internet. They are sometimes little more expensive, but I buy from them to have that resource.

Good luck on your decision!

 

[Denine]

Our adoption is partly open. Our DD's birth mom has never seen her in person. We did take her to meet her birth grandma and great grandma 1 time. I do send letter and pictures to the birth parents.

 

[JulieM96]

We adopted our now 6 1/2 year old son in Russia when he was 10 months old. We had a great experience and he's been a joy. One thing that helped was getting as much information as possible. I think I started by just doing a search on the internet and starting to weed through everything. There are definitely pros and cons for all types of adoptions.

If you want to find out more about adoptions from the former Soviet Union area a good website is www.frua.org. It has all kinds of information, as well as a discussion board kind of like the DIS, that I found really helpful. I felt as prepared as I think is possible before we went to Russia.

Best of luck to you, wherever your journey takes you. Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions.

Julie