Help me if you can && any advice is appreciated?

Question

We are a young married couple. Due to some genetic blood clotting problems, the doctor recommends that I do not have biological children. We are researching adoption and surrogacy. Anyone that's had experience with any of these have any agency suggestions or advice? Weve been looking at several different places but i'd like to hear some experiences of your all's with them.

Answer 1

We used Adoptions From the Heart and highly recommend them.  They helped us through a very difficult adoption process of a special needs child.  Friends of ours have used the same agency for international adoptions also and they recommend the agency as well.  You can find more at www.adoptionsfromtheheart.org.

Good luck to you.  Feel free to email me through my profile if I can offer any more assistance.

Answer 2

I am the mom of two adopted boys. We used a non-profit Christian agency in CA, but I do believe they accept adoptive families from other states. They are called International Christian Adoptions www.4achild.com they do both international and domestic adoptions. Our sons were both born less than 30 miles from where we live which I hear is unusual. The paperwork process took about 4 months, but if you are super motivated I'm sure you can do it faster, we just didn't want to get overwhelmed. Once we were approved we were chosen within 6 weeks and our first son was born two weeks later. I was the lucky enough to be in the OR with his birthmom and I was the first one to hold him. We had some birthfather issues so it took 10 months to finalize (it's a minimum of 6 mos in CA ) and we had more legal fees than expected but it's was worth it and he's ours.

We used the same agency with our 2nd son only he was a complete surprise. They actually called us and told us we had been chosen two days after he was born.....but we weren't even waiting. The agency new that we were starting to update our files to get ready for #2 but we were in no hurry. In this case both birthparents signed off on the adoption, so far we haven't incurred any legal fees and we should be able to finalize on schedule in about 2 months!!!

Oh and btw....our first son's adoption was about $30K after the legal fees and our second should be less than $15K (agency fees only). Our agency is small and usually only works with about a half a dozen adoptive families at a time so that increases your odds. If I can give you one bit if advise, if you go with an agency make sure that your family profile is AWESOME so that you stand out among the other adoptive families. I have to admit that ours was exceptional compared to the others and I do think that helped. Get creative!!!

As far as surrogacy goes, I hear its between $30K and $50K or at least it is in our state. Unless you know a friend or relative who is willing to lend you their womb!

Also if you adopt you will qualify for a tax CREDIT of over $10K if you and your hubby have a MAGI of less than $195K.

Answer 3

We have adopted through Family to Family Adoption Inc.  We started with private adoption...posting ads and calling hospitals and lawyers letting them know who we were and if they had any birthmothers come to them that were wanting to place their child, we would love to be their family.  That only costs time, money, and heartache!

We then moved to an adoption facilitator because the cost was much less expensive than an agency...THE BIGGEST MISTAKE WE HAVE MADE!  A facilitator works by having you pay the full cost up front...in our case around $7000 and then "working" for you for a certain amount of time.  Very familiar time is either one or two years....our contract happened to be two years.  After being "matched" 22 times in the first year and something always happening to the baby, birthmom, or us just not being the right family after all....we cancelled our contract (only half way through) due to not wanitng to go through that rollercoaster any more.  The clencher was when I asked what would happen if we didn't have a baby before the two years was up, well we would continue working for you with a contract renewal at a deducted price.  MORE MONEY!!!

After all of that we had almost given up, but then we met a family tha has adopted 9 times and they had friends that have 17 bio & adopted children!!!  They both had worked through this Family to Family Adoptoins Inc before and had amazing stories at how smooth the adoptions went.  We decided to contact the agency and they were all very nice!  We decided to sign on with them and within a week were in Texas at the hospital meeting our newborn daughter!  Now I know that is an extreme story but it just so happened that we were matched the next day and our birthmother had an emergency C-Section the day after that!  Our beautiful baby girl is now almost 11 months old.  We will be contacting them again when she is two to adopt again.

We did have the opportunity to use a surrogate.  We actually had 3 people offer to be our surrogates, but we just didn't like the idea of having some one we know carrying our child and then not knowing how the pregnancy was going to go.  We didn't like putting our money into it and putting our baby and our sister/cousin/friend's life in danger.  

That is why we chose adoption.  We are in the upper midwest and Fam2Fam is in Texas.  It was worth the drive!

fam2fam.org

281-342-4042

Answer 4

I adopted a child out of foster care...........I think it is an awesome thing.  I got my little boy when he was an infant and adopted him at a year and a half.  He is a joy to our family and as much of a blessing as my two biological children.  Adopting this way waved all fees, we paid nothing but a minimal fee to get a new birth certificate.  There are a lot of children in foster care that are good kids and they need homes desperately!  I wish you all the best..........adoption is a great thing!

Answer 5

If you attend church, I would start there. A lot of church have connections that give special treatment to members of the same faith. I went out of state but the agency was run by the church I attend. I went out of state because it was cheaper. I was allowed to bring the baby back with me before they had all the papers signed. It was called an at risk placement and was kind of scary. The birth mother had signed off conditional to the birth father signing off. If he did not the baby would go back to her. It work out, he signed off and I have my baby boy, now 4 years old. It took me 11 months from the waiting list till I got a baby but they tell me that is very unusual. I also had 2 other birth mothers choose me only to change their minds later. The 3rd birth mother was in her 20's and the other two early teens. They say they younger they are the more likely they are to keep the baby. Good luck