Adoption How-To

Recently I realized that I guess I haven't said enough about how adoption actually works. Well, if you are lucky enough to be the woman shown above, then all you have to do is throw your name around and people start dropping their babies at your feet. But, for the rest of us it is not that simple. In fact, for most of us it is very complicated. Now, I'm really not trying to talk anyone out of adopting. I just want others to understand what it's like.
We started our process about two and half years ago. We had a few choices for agencies. We made our choice based on process of elimination. Most agencies want an application fee. We weren't going to pay anyone anything until we were able to meet with a social worker first, so that narrowed it down a lot. Our first meeting with the worker from the one we are with - one of the first things she told us was that their average wait for domestic infant adoption was 1 year. Then she said that we were "a young couple" compared to most of the families that they work with and she was sure we wouldn't have to even wait that long. Meaning our youth was to our advantage. Now I wonder - if she had said that we would be waiting 2+ years - would I have been so sure I still wanted to adopt. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. The "average wait" depends on the agency and basically on life. I suspect every agency has their dry spells. Meaning that they don't have many birthmom's contacting them which means they aren't having many placements. We met with her in Feb. 08 and she said that they had already had two placements that year and a dozen the year before. So, that seemed to us like pretty good odds. At the time, "the list" (the number of couples waiting for a placement) was in the single digits (I forget the exact number). Again, that sounded really good to us. She said that they made a point to keep the number low so that none of their families had to wait very long. When we first started officially waiting in Aug. 08 we were #10 I believe. Now we are one of 23 couples waiting. Am I saying that we were mislead? Well, I guess I do sort of feel that way yes. But, I also understand that nothing she said was iron clad. They were just statistics and suggestions etc. Now- I understand that. I was asked the other day, "Isn't two years the average wait for domestic infant adoption?". I can tell you that was not my deduction when we first started all of this. And I'm not sure that is the case at all. Everyday I read about other bloggers who only had to wait a few weeks or a few months or at the most a year, but I (and several of the other women that are waiting on the same list as I am) am the only one that I know of that has had to wait over two years for a placement.
I will write more about the process tomorrow.

Disclamer: I am not saying that our agency is at fault for anything in anyway!