The Cost of Adoption

from our most recent invoice

We got an invoice from our adoption lawyer in the mail recently (see picture).  As you can see, we were charged for "receipt of family pictures; save to file".  Now, it does say "$25 no charge" an I'm not sure if that's what it's referring to, as we still incurred a charge on this bill.  But, remind me
not to send them cute pictures of our family any more!  They request them from time to time to stay current on our family, but I didn't realize we were getting charged for them to "save to file".  But, I am not complaining.  This lawyer has been great, and I know it's just the way it works these days.  But, it made me think about what it costs to adopt.  What it costs to give a home to a child who would otherwise not have one.  What it costs to provide a home for a child that would otherwise become a ward of the state and cost us, as a people, in tax money (and in so many other ways) to support.  Foster children have a much, much higher risk of needing social programs throughout their lives.  Did you know that 70% of people in prison in California were foster children at one point?  They are at much higher risk for needing all kinds of public assistance.  And I don't mean just as foster kids.  I mean way beyond into adulthood.  So, it just seems like it would help the whole situation if the whole adoption process was much less costly.  I have friends who became legal guardians to THEIR OWN grandchildren after their daughter passed away from cancer, and they had to do paperwork and pay $900!  I mean, it's a drop in the bucket compared to a regular adoption, but still ridiculous!

When I sat down to write about this, I thought about ALL the costs of adoption.  When all is done, S's adoption will wind up costing us about $10,000.  That includes social workers, a home study through the county (that costs $4500 alone!), lawyers, travel expenses back and forth to the hospital and little things here and there that nobody thinks about.  And $10,000 is getting off easy.  Most adoptions will cost much, much more, especially if you adopt internationally.  And there's the cost of the craziness it brings, the stress between spouses as you try to decide if this baby is for you, or if the situation is too risky and might result in a failed adoption, or the cost of the major life change it brings about, often with hardly any notice.  There is the cost of adding another child to your family and wondering how it's going to affect the child you already have.  There is the cost of having a child with a history and a family that you now need to figure out how to mesh with yours.  There is the cost of knowing that your child will always have a desire to know about his or her past and will most likely want some contact in some form with the birth parents or birth family, if possible.  There is the cost of your young child asking you why his parents didn't want him, or why they don't want to see him, or why was she so sick that she couldn't take care of me (because at four, we have chosen the word "sick" to describe her drug condition....we will tell him the truth later when he is able to understand what drugs are). There is the cost of those teenage years, when most adopted children go through a heightened identity crisis.  And I'm sure there are costs I don't even know about right now.

So, with so many costs, why adopt?  It's just like anything else you save up and pay a lot of money for.  Because it's absolutely worth it.  A new car, a European vacation, a new home....all those things have a cost attached, but what you get from it is so worth it.  Don't think I am comparing a child to a car or a vacation.  It's an analogy.  The experience you get on that vacation will last a lifetime.  You will make memories.  You will take pictures.  You will see and taste and touch things you never could have before.  And it will make the stress of saving that money and pinching pennies a very distant memory.  All you will remember is how amazing it was.  And that's how adopting is.  Every single one of those costs will never be more important than every single amazing moment of having a child, or of being a mom.  And not that every moment of being a mom is amazing....but you will look back and remember the good.  When my son, out of the blue says "Mom, I love you" or "am I your sweet baby?" or "come snuggle with me" or "will you read this to me?" or "will you play monster trucks with me?", the costs we incurred adopting him will just not matter.  In fact, S's adoption isn't even final yet, and it already doesn't matter, because I love these boys more than life itself, and you can't put a price on that.

Our Second Little Miracle

It’s been nine months since my last blog entry, and eight months since our little world changed again. I have been meaning to sit down and write the story of our second adoption, but the whirlwind and subsequent day to day life of raising two little boys has somehow prevented that from happening.  Until now.  I thought it was time to sit down and finally tell the story of this second little miracle.  I am going to try to keep it as brief as possible, and touch on other aspects of it down the road.  Today, I just want to tell you how it all came to be.  It is such a little miracle.

If you haven’t already read my last entry, written just weeks before this second baby came,  “ComeWhat May and Love It” was about accepting and embracing the fact that I might only ever have one child, and that I was okay with that.  Haha!  I think God has a way of waiting until you have truly given in, before giving you the thing you desired in the first place.  And, after years and years of fighting it, I had truly gotten to that place.  And then…..bam!

aby came into our lives, you should read it.

I think the timeline is kind of funny, so I will share it with you.  My friend, who adopted three children from the same birth mother, messaged me Facebook.  Here is how the conversation went:

May 13

MY FRIEND: Hi Susan. I know u haven't heard from me for a long time, but would u mind giving me your number so I can call you?

ME:  Sure!

MY FRIEND: Hi Susan. I'll call u at around 2pm. If you're not available then, I'll try again later. Not to be mysterious or anything. Just want to talk to you about adoption.

We had a phone conversation, in which she told me that the birth mother of her three children was expecting any day now, and they just couldn’t take a fifth child and would we be interested.  Now, let me tell you that a lot of people might have been super excited.  But, I honestly had no idea that this would really go through.  I mean, the birth mother didn’t even know us.  And, considering our past experience with a failed adoption, and knowing that people had approached us before about “a sure thing” and we had never heard from them again, I did not even think twice about it.  I said yes, we would be interested, and then I thought I would cross that bridge when a paper had been signed.  The mother didn’t have a due date since there had been no prenatal doctor visits since very early on in the pregnancy. 

A week passed and I got this message on Facebook:

May 20th

MY FRIEND:  Hi Susan. Just wanted to update u. I still haven't heard anything from ####, the Birth mom. I spoke to ####'s mom this morning and she hasn't heard anything as well. Sorry for the delay of information. Hope all is well for you.

ME:  No problem. Like I said before, we are used to things not coming through so we aren't holding our breath! But, thanks for thinking of us. I talked to our adoption social worker and she said it would be a private adoption, so we would have to figure out how to pay for it. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Thanks!

Just as I suspected.  It wasn’t going to pan out.  Glad I didn’t spend any time looking at baby clothes!

Four days later, on Friday afternoon, May 24^th, I was at the park with D and I got a call from my friend.  She said the birth mom had spoken to the social worker and had given her our names.  Okay, now it was a little more serious, but still…..call me when someone has signed a piece of paper and when a baby has been born!  I hung up the phone a little more anxious, but still not getting my hopes up.  I thought about the whole possibility for a few minutes, when the phone rang again.  It was 4:30 in the afternoon.  This time it was the social worker, Christine.  She told me that the birth parents had spoken with her and given her our names and they were sure they wanted to place the baby with us.  Okay…this was even more serious.  But, she hadn’t been able to get a meeting with them to get papers signed.  It was Memorial Day weekend, and she said she would try to get it all in place this weekend and update me next week.  I hung up and started thinking that this really could happen.  However, still….call me when someone has signed a dang piece of paper!  I went home and told John and we chatted about it for a minute, but knew nothing was set in stone, so off to bed we went.

Saturday morning, May 25^th, 8:00 a.m.  I was getting dressed for work when the phone rang.  It was Christine.  The birth mom was in labor and on her way to the hospital.  Long story short, she had to get an adoption plan in place and signed by them before the baby was born.  They suspected the baby would be born positive for drugs, and the county would take it away if an adoption plan wasn’t already in place.  If the county took the baby, the birth parents wouldn’t have a say in where it was placed.  But, we also had to have a lawyer’s signature.  God steps in on these little miracles, I know He does.  Christine just happened to be in the process of adopting a baby herself, and because of the circumstances, even though she was a social worker, she needed an adoption attorney.  She said “the only lawyer I have in my phone that will answer my call at 8:30 on a Saturday morning is the one we are using.”  I said I trust that an adoption social worker knows how to hire a good adoptions attorney and that I trusted her judgment.  She said the only other hang up could be if the county social worker decided this adoption plan hadn’t been put in place soon enough, then she would have the right to take the baby, if and when it was born positive for drugs.  She called back thirty minutes later and said everything was in place.   The lawyer was on board and the county social worker said she was fine with the plan and had no intention of disrupting it.  One hour later, he was born.

 

I didn’t know about him until 12:30 that afternoon.  I was at work with butterflies in my stomach.  I was texting and calling family and friends and the lawyer and the social worker and my friend.  At 12:30, Christine called and said the father had called her and said he had been born at 9:33 a.m., 22 inches long, 12 pounds and ready for school!  Haha!  He was huge!

 

And the kicker?  He was born on my son’s birthday.  D and baby S share the same birthday.  Isn’t that amazing?  I had decided to have D’s birthday party the previous Wednesday, and I don’t know why.  His birthday was on a Saturday, and that would have been easy to do.  But, I had chosen not to.  And now I know why.  D was born at 7:33 a.m. four years earlier, and S was born that morning at 9:33 a.m.  It was, and continues to be a miracle.  I got to drive up to Anaheim that night with a friend, and see this little miracle ten hours after he had been born.  A baby I had no idea was going to actually come into my life just the day before, and I was sitting in the hospital nursery holding him.  He was beautiful and huge and precious and mine.  There is more to the rest of the story, but I will save that for another post.  Just know that I know that God knows each of us.  He knows us personally.  He answers our prayers, and sometimes that answer is “no.”  And sometimes the answer is “not right now.”  And sometimes the answer is “yes.”  And all the “no” answers and all the “not right now” answers make that “yes” answer just that much more precious.

 

Giving My Baby Back. The Worst Day of My Life.

I wrote a little bit about this in another post (see The One That Got Away:  Memories of a Failed Adoption for some of the background info I won't cover again here) almost a year ago, and in that post I said I would write more about the story later.   Well, today is the five year anniversary of that incredibly painful day when we had to hand over our little guy and I want to tell you a little bit more about that week.  I can't tell you everything.  I still have trouble writing about it.  But I will give you the highlights.

I will start with Monday, December 3, 2011.  I was at a retirement get-together at work.  It was a casual thing, so I had arranged to have Isaac with me.  The paternity test had finally been ordered and we were awaiting results.  Isaac was snuggled in his carrier on my chest.  It was mid-afternoon and I decided to leave, when I noticed a missed call on my phone.  My heart immediately began to pound as I recognized the social workers number.  I called voice mail as I walked to my car, hardly able to breathe.  I knew as soon as I heard her voice that she wasn't delivering good news.  The test was positive and our little Isaac was to returned to his father after almost five months of being our baby.  I was in shock.  I just kept saying "oh no, oh no, oh my gosh" as I walked to my car trying to keep it together.  I was physically shaking as I strapped him into his seat.  I don't know why the tears didn't come, as I'm usually pretty quick to cry.  I called the social worker back but she didn't answer.  I didn't call John because I wanted him to come home before he heard the news, as I knew he would be upset.  I called my friend, Genie, and told her, still unable to cry.  Somehow I made it home.  John is normally home like clockwork around 4:15, but wouldn't you know that today he decided to go buy new running shoes and didn't get home until almost 7:00.  I was dying.  Adrenaline was pumping for hours.  I wanted to be calm so I wouldn't freak Isaac out, but my world was crashing in.  So many years of trying to have a baby.  So many years of failed fertility treatments.  I had hoped and prayed so hard that the test would be negative.  It wasn't.  My stomach was in knots.  How was I going to break this to John.  I was feeding Isaac at the table when I heard his car pull up.  He walked up to the front door which was open and was upbeat as usual.  He stopped at the front door and noticed something was wrong.  "What's up?"  I said "The test was positive."  He said "Oh no!  Are you serious?!"  I said I was and he walked back into the yard and broke down.  And that's when my tears came.  And they didn't stop for four days, and even then, it was for short periods of time.  I am not exaggerating when I say I cried for four days straight.  I couldn't stop.  I didn't go to work.  I couldn't focus on anything.  I couldn't eat or sleep or pull myself together.  John went to work.  I think it helped him to keep a routine.  I couldn't gather myself enough to even get out of the house.  The dam had broken and there was too much force behind the rushing water to allow anything to even begin to fix it.  I prayed harder than ever, but I knew the answer was no.  I tracked down the biological father's e-mail and wrote him a long letter--a last plea that he might consider leaving him with us.  I knew it was probably in vain, but had to try.  We had an exchange of e-mails and I came to terms with the fact that it wasn't going to happen.  We did agree that he would do a transition over the weekend instead of just showing up and taking Isaac home.  I was grateful.  Friends and family fasted for us on Thursday (a practice in my religion of abstaining for food and water for two meals in order to focus on drawing closer to God, especially when there is a particular desire for help).  I think that is the only thing that got me through it.  I woke Friday morning December 7 (our own personal D-day) and was able to dry my eyes for the first time all week, and focus on the day ahead.  Isaac's father and grandmother would be arriving that evening.  This whole thing wasn't his fault and I didn't want to feel angry or show any harsh feelings towards them.  I didn't want to show how hurt I was.  I knew this was hard for him, too, and he had been robbed of these first few precious months with his son.  We were all victims.  I'm leaving out so many details, but to make a long story a little shorter, when they arrived and he walked in the living room and knelt down to see his son, I was so touched.  I even snapped a picture for him.  I could see the joy on his face and I felt the healing begin.  It would take years, but that is when it started.  We talked for two hours--Me, John, Isaac's father and grandmother.  We filled in all the gaps for each other on what had been going on and the lies that Isaac's mother had told.  It was a wonderful conversation.  We were still heartbroken over what would have to happen over the next 48 hours, and I still held out hopes that maybe he would change his mind, but we were beginning to accept it.  The next morning, they took Isaac for a few hours and then brought him back for a nap.  They took him again that afternoon, and brought him home for one last night with us.  My mother flew in that night to be with us, and I am so grateful for that.  I finished Isaac's scrapbook--got it all caught up with all the pictures we had taken and all the journaling, so his father could have a record of the months he had missed.  We packed up everything we had for Isaac--all the gifts given to us by friends at two different baby showers.  We gave them everything except three things.  One was the little onesie I had made for him that said "Superman was adopted."  I put it on a teddy bear my brother and his wife had sent us, and that bear still has it on today in my son's room.  The other thing was a little brown and cream striped sleeper he had worn.  I saw it in the box of stuff and took it out and tucked it away.  It smelled like Isaac and I wanted to keep it.  The funny thing was that John asked me later where that had gone because he wanted to save it.  I thought he might be upset that I was keeping it.  I smiled and told him I had already taken it and saved it.

Saturday night in the middle of the night, Isaac woke up screaming and was inconsolable.  It was the weirdest thing.  He had never done that before and it was upsetting to me.  It was as if he knew a big change was coming.  I held him and we stared out of our bedroom window at the moon together as I talked to him. He finally settled and we put him in bed with us--something we had never done--and he slept the rest of the night with us.

Sunday, December 9th was the day.  They were supposed to come get him at 10 a.m.  I tried to keep Isaac awake, but he was so tired.  I was sick to my stomach.  John was pacing waiting for them.  Isaac fell asleep right before they got there and I was worried about sending him off asleep and just having him wake up in a car on a five hour drive with two people he really didn't know.  One of the hardest things about this whole day was thinking that he would feel we had abandoned him.  As far as he knew, we were his parents, and then one day, we hand him over to someone else.  That bothered me for months, and actually, it still does.  They got there, and I lost it.  I felt the fear wash over my face as I knew the moment had come to say goodbye.  Isaac's father would tell me later that it was the worst day for him, knowing he had to take him away from us.  His mother cried and kept saying "I'm so sorry.  I'm so sorry."  I told her it was okay, that it wasn't her fault.  I said we would be fine.  She had a niece who had struggled with infertility, so she had some idea of what this meant to us.  I woke Isaac up, slid him into his carrier and kissed him goodbye and they left.  it was 10:30 in the morning and it was over.  I wasn't a mother any more.

I laid on the sofa in tears and shock for awhile.  A few friends stopped in to check on us, and by the afternoon, I felt like I was pulling myself together.  But grief is like the ocean.  It washes over you and then recedes for a time and then hits again, and sometimes the waves are lighter and sometimes it's like a Tsunami and you think you won't recover.  I cried every single day for months.  I couldn't sleep at night.  I worked and worked to the late hours hoping I would be so exhausted I would just crash.  No such luck.  I would lay in bed and hold that little bear with the onesie like it was my baby boy, and just cry.  Christmas was the worst.  I had been so close to my first Christmas with a child, and that had been ripped out of my hands.  John was just as bad as I was.  It was a tough time in our lives and a tough time in our marriage.  But we survived.

Oh, there is so much more to tell, but I will end this story here for now.  December 9th hasn't come and gone since then without revisiting that weekend.  And although life is good now, and I love my little guy, nothing will ever take the place of my first child.  I think about him every day.  I keep in touch here and there with his father and I see pictures of him and he is handsome and perfect.  I don't know why we had to experience that horrible event, but we did.  I understand grief and loss now more than I ever did before and that has made me more compassionate and kind, so I suppose that's the silver lining.  Isaac's father gave him a new first name, but kept Isaac as his middle name, which I thought was a beautiful gesture.  His middle name had been John, but that allowed me to give D that middle name instead, so it worked out.  Five years, though, and I can feel that pain as if it had happened this morning, at 10:30 a.m.

The One That Got Away: Memories of a Failed Adoption

NOTE:  This was originally posted in January of 2012.  I wanted to reference it and noticed it was gone from my blog, so am re-posting it.

 My little Isaac has been on my mind a lot lately.  I don’t know why.  It’s been just over four years since we lost him.  It’s not the anniversary of anything—not his birthday, or the day we took him home, or the day we lost him back to his biological father.  Maybe it’s because we have finally gotten back on the list to adopt our second child in the last couple of weeks.  Whatever it is, I’ve been thinking about him a lot more than normal.  Sometimes when people hear about our failed adoption, they make comments about how it’s good that we’d only had him five months or else it would have been even more difficult.  But the thing is, I always saw him as my child.  I bonded with him the first moment I heard about him over the phone, and by the time I held him for the first time at the foster mom’s house, I was done.  He was mine.  He was a low risk adoption—99% guaranteed to go through.  His mother relinquished rights and hand-picked us out of the pool of waiting couples.  She told us she didn’t know who the father was, and that she’d hidden her pregnancy from everyone, so nobody knew about this precious baby boy except herself and the social workers, and of course, us.  After years of failed fertility treatments, including two very difficult and unsuccessful runs at invitro, and then more than a year and a half getting through the process to get on the list for adoption, this amazing boy was ours.  I was elated.  I finally got to be the one at the baby shower on the receiving end, holding the cute little baby and telling my story.  It was a most wonderful time.  And then, the hammer fell.  To keep the story short, the birth mother had lied about everything, and after placing him with us, called the birth father to tell him he had a son, but that he couldn't have him because he’d been placed for adoption.  She looked us in the eye and told us she didn’t know who the father was and that she hadn’t told him, but she had.  It took a while for him to get the paternity test, and a few weeks before Christmas, he came to take his son.  That is all a story for another blog entry, but I just wanted to say that it didn’t matter that it was “only five months” (and it is still very painful to hear that comment from people).  We were devastated.  We had lost our long-awaited child.  We had a deep bond with him, and he had become a precious part of our lives.  I still have a hard time talking about it, and this is the first time I’ve written about it since just after it happened.  We still miss him.  I think about him every day, and I still shed tears every now and then when I look at photos and think of that difficult day when I put him in the car seat and kissed him good-bye, so afraid that he would feel I had abandoned him.  He is doing well now.  These pictures were taken two days before his father took him home.  I had been crying all week, and praying for strength.  I asked my friend to take some pictures of us so I could have some final shots of us together.  And in an answer to that prayer (although not the answer I REALLY wanted!) I woke up that Friday morning calm, and more prepared to face the impending weekend events.  
The strange thing was that I could not get him to smile, and that was very unusual.  I tried playing with him, as you can see in the photos, but no smile.  It was as if he knew a traumatic change was coming and he just wasn’t his normal self.  But, I’m happy with the way they turned out, and glad we were able to capture a sweet moment with him before he went away.I still consider him my first son, even though when people ask, I say that Dylan is the first.  In my mind, Dylan is our second, but I keep Isaac tucked in a special spot deep in my heart that I can only pull out in private.  Dylan will never take his place, although he did fill a deep void when he came to us a year and a half later.  If you know someone who had a failed adoption, I hope you never say "well at least he was only ____ months old", and I hope you never assume the next child will ever take his place.  You would never think that if you lost a biological child.  It is such a painful experience, and it doesn't ever go away.  I know he is with his father who wanted him so deeply, and I know that’s where he needs to be, but my sweet little Isaac will always be the one that got away. 

***You can read more details about this in my latest post "Giving My Baby Back.  The Worst Day of My Life"