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.

The Infertility Checklist.

Infertility.   I know it’s common.  I know thousands and thousands of women (and even men for that matter) deal with it every day.  But even so, it’s interesting how few conversations I’ve had about it over the years.  Maybe it’s because it’s a painful topic, or maybe because someone is always giving you advice as to what to try next or trying to figure out what you’re doing wrong, and even though you know it’s helpful, it is hard to have those discussions.  For me, the difficulty came because I seemed to be the only one who didn’t eventually get pregnant.  Even most of my friends who adopted had at least one biological child, and so even though we’d been through a lot of similar experiences, it just never seemed like anyone had as much or as long as a battle as I did.  I’ve been trying to get pregnant since I was twenty-one and we got D when I was thirty-eight, so that gives you a small idea of what we have been through.  When we headed into adoption, it was after a year-long experience with our last option--two rounds of invitro fertilization, during which my body reacted horribly and I became extremely sick.  When the second round failed, we were done, and with feelings still raw and tears still fairly fresh, we went to our first adoption seminar to look at our options.

I suppose we are the classic example of why the county makes people go through this checklist and take their “Adoption After Infertility” class.  One of the hardest things about the whole process is how personally invasive it is.  As couples, we have so many personal and intimate conversations about everything from children to our hopes and dreams to marital conflicts we need to resolve, and most of those are kept private.  With adoption, nothing is private.  I have a love-hate relationship with the whole thing, because I know that they are just protecting the children from going from the frying pan into the fire.  And yet, sometimes you feel like it’s just none of their business.  But, I guess it is if they want to, with a clear conscience, place these children in a homes that will be good for them.

I have included both pages of a checklist we were both required to fill out (click on them to see them larger).  During the class we were required to attend, most, if not all of these issues were discussed, and you are supposed to openly and honestly share where you are in coming to terms with each of these “tasks”.  Of course I green lighted everything, and honestly, I do think I was telling the truth.  But a few of them still made me a little sick to my stomach to think about.  As much as I think we were ready to move forward with adoption, I don’t know that grief ever has an end, as implied in #1.   In regards to #4, I wondered if that meant 51/49 was okay, or was it supposed to be 80/20?  Numbers 6-8….hmmm…sketchy, but I’m sure I dabbled here in there.  Number 9-10?  Well, I think it’s hard to answer a question like that when you aren’t in that situation yet.  We all like to think we would be so intelligent in our dialogue, but even with extensive education, it’s hard to know how to handle certain things when it involves your child whom you love dearly.  And #11-#12….am I the only one that sees these as contradictory?  Having had a child placed for us for adoption and losing him back to his birth-father makes me think #11 may need to be reworded.

I do think this checklist is a good starting point for some open and honest discussion with your social worker, your spouse, and most importantly yourself.  You do need to be sure you are ready, although give yourself a little slack and don’t require such a complete, rigid standard.  You might not be 100% on everything, and that’s okay.  I’m still not, and I’m loving our little adopted boy and we’re on the list to do it again!


***Also, if you have experienced infertility, whether you adopted as a result or not, you might enjoy my post Plan B:  It's a Good Thing  

It ain't over til it's over: The harsh reality of waiting to finalize

I once made a comment about how I might not have to go through nine months of pregnancy and the delivery and all that, but that I had my own frustrations with the adoption process.  A sympathetic friend of mine said something like, “yes, but at least when you birth a baby you know it’s yours.”  And let me just say, that is one of the wonderful benefits of physically birthing a child.  The image in this post is a document we had to sign the day we took D home (Sorry it’s a bad copy—I’ve transcribed it at the bottom of this post if you can’t read it—D’s birth name is blotted out for privacy purposes).  We sat across the table from our wonderful social worker, Ann, filled with excitement at the prospect of picking up our little baby from the transition center that day.  I have to say, signing this document put a slight damper on the event!  First, let me explain a little about D’s placement.  He was what is called “concurrent planning”.  That means that when a child is removed from his parent(s), and there is significant reason to believe he won’t be able to be reunified, then he is placed via concurrent planning into an adoptive home, bypassing traditional foster care.  Now, in California, a child has to be in your home for a minimum of six months before finalization can occur, no matter what the situation, so everyone who adopts is also licensed for foster care, because technically you are foster parents during that time.  However, there is a difference between people who go into it as foster parents, and those of us who are strictly in it to adopt.  I don’t take foster kids right now.  The only placement I will get is one we intend to adopt.  But, as a concurrent planning placement, it is a little riskier because you go into it knowing the parents haven’t relinquished rights, but because of past experiences (either they have lost other children to adoption because they wouldn’t complete the requirements to reunify, or they have a bad drug problem, or have not shown signs of complying, etc.).  I was told more than 80% of concurrent planning adoptions are adopted.  It is a little riskier, but it is also about the best chance of winding up with an infant.  My point is that we knew the risk, but we also went into this absolutely as an adoption—he was ours in my mind the moment I got the phone call.  The county saw us as his prospective adoptive parents.  However, when we had to sit down at the table and sign this document, my heart started pounding and a little of that fear I felt in losing our first placement, Isaac, began to inch up my throat.  John and I were required to read this out loud to Ann, like a couple of school children being disciplined for some crime we’d committed.  I know that it is just the state policy, but that’s how it felt.  If you want a little exercise in how it feels to not know what’s going to happen, read this document out loud and put your name and your child’s name(s) in the spaces and think about what that would mean—to know there is a chance (a one in five chance) you would have to give them back.  After we finished, we just sat there for a minute in the quiet, reminded that this process was far from over.  It would be 14 months before we could breathe a sigh of relief.  Raising kids is hard enough, no matter how much you want it.  Sometimes it’s hard to set aside the anxiety of not knowing what’s going to happen, and focus 100% on bonding with your child.  But when you pick that baby up and take him home, it becomes impossible to not throw caution to the wind and just go for it.  

(Click here to read about our previous failed adoption)

Concurrent Planning Agreement

I/We Martin John Scharpf and Susan Scharpf understand that (D—not his birth name) a dependent child of the Juvenile Court, has not been freed for adoption and is being placed in my/our home as a foster child.

At this time, I understand that I am a foster parent first and foremost.  I/we will cooperate fully and foremost with the reunification process.  Including facilitating visits with the birth parent(s).  Failure to facilitate reunification may result in removal of the child from my/our home.

If the Juvenile Court orders the child to be returned to the birth parents, I/we will assist in transitioning the child to the birth parent(s).

Based on the available information provided to me/us regarding this child’s health/social history, it is my/our intent to adopt this child if the child is freed for adoption through relinquishment by the birth parent(s) or termination of parental rights through the Juvenile Court,

Concurrent planning has been explained to me by San Diego Health and Human Services Agency and I/we accept the conditions listed above.

Here we go again.

It's been over a year since, in the glorious aftermath of finalization our long-awaited adoption, I set up this blog with the intent to document all those feelings and thoughts through writings and artwork.  But, I suppose motherhood took over, and between working and raising our sweet little boy, this just fell by the wayside.  However, I am recommitted, spurred on partly by receiving a phone call today from our local county adoptions social worker that we are officially back on the list to adopt a second child.  It only took a year from the time we began our paperwork--patience is a virtue, right??  Or so I hear.  Our little D is not so little any more.  He is fast approaching his third birthday in a few months, and I can't believe how fast the time has gone.  I so want to him to have a sibling, and wish he could be experiencing that right now.  But, God has other plans for us, and so we wait.  Like so many days before, we wait.  One of the cool things about adoption, that can also be the most frustrating, is not knowing.  You don't know when that call will come in.  It could be this afternoon, or a year from now.  And though that can be difficult at times, when it comes in, it's very exciting.  There is a whirlwind of emotions and a flurry of activity to get ready for a child that may be in your home within just a couple of days of even knowing they existed.  They say to consider yourself pregnant when your home study is complete, because you could get the call at any time.  But the thing about being pregnant, is you have a pretty good timeline of when that child is coming.  Yes, he or she might come early or late, but it's usually a difference of weeks, and you know you are getting a newborn.  With us, this child could be a newborn, or two or five.  It could be a boy or a girl.  It could be a sibling group of two with multiple possibilities of combinations of ages and sex and race.  How do you prepare for that?  How do you buy clothes or bedding or toys or anything ahead of time when so much is unknown.  And though it's a little crazy to think about that, personally, that is just one of the coolest, most exciting things about adoption.  In many ways, I love the unpredictable, unknown nature of it all.  And so, the waiting begins.  Or continues, really.  But in a more exciting way, knowing that the call could actually come in now that everything is complete.  As Shakespeare wrote in Richard II (albeit about a completely unrelated story!) "Heaven hath a hand in these events."  I truly believe that is the case, and it is that knowledge that allows me to let go, live my life with my precious son that I didn't know I would ever get the chance to raise, and wait for the child that God has chosen for us.  His or her road to our family might be a little less direct, but it is mapped out nonetheless.