Behind Door Number #2

When I got married, I thought I was done with dating, figuring out what I wanted, and seeing who I clicked with. I mean, I already had found the one, the next steps are simple right? Buy a house, get a dog (or in our case 2), have a family. That's where we hit the little hiccup. Thanks to my awesome anatomy, we get to date all over again. Only this dating comes with a ton of pressure, and me being well, awkward, stressed out, and sweaty. I cannot stress enough how challenging it is to hunt for the right agency to work with when considering adoption. The sad part is, that's only the first step. There will be a lot more stress and sweaty palms in our future. This leads us to agency B.

After we met with the first agency, we knew a little more of what we wanted, we liked the idea of the agency being small, and more of a family feel. We also knew we wanted an agency that focused more on domestic. Finally, we knew we needed an agency that was more customizable, meaning, we could find a place that can handle our needs and fears as a couple. Okay, we needed an agency that could handle my high anxiety worry wort personality. With that being said, we didn't have high hopes when going to agency B. 

Agency B is a huge, well established agency. They work with over 85 couples a year, and place that many infants. They are also a far commute for us, so on a sunny Saturday, we drove the hour and a half to see the "New York Yankees" of agencies. B first noticed that they did not have cookies, I noticed they did not have coffee, since we aren't morning people, this wasn't a good start. We sat through another PowerPoint, however, they provided us a copy to take notes on (nerd win!). Although their success rate and reputation was impressive, they were very intimidating. 

Full disclosure, they really focus on birth parents. I understand that birth parents are the key to adoption, and who ever our birth mom and dad are will hold a special place in my heart forever, but what about us? I mean B and I are scared, uninformed, and confused about this whole process. When you go to an information meeting about adoption, you would think they would talk more about....well the adoptive parents. The plus of agency B is that they have an education based program, so you are well prepared when you take the baby home, but before that, we didn't feel like we could get the attention and comfort that we would need. 

B's main concern was that once you were matched with a birth mother that was it. You couldn't turn back. All adoption agencies have you fill out a preference sheet, which brings up intense discussions, and I will dedicate several posts to that. From there your profile is only shown to families who meet your preferences. In the case of agency B, if a baby was born with something not on our sheet, we would have to handle it. Other agencies allow you to pass on an infant that you don't feel you could care for. That is not to say that we wouldn't consider a child with some difficulties, in fact, we have had discussions about adoption a child with a heart problem, but there are just some things we as a couple couldn't handle, and we wouldn't want to place a baby in a home where we would struggle to provide the best for it. Some people can handle some things that I can't, and I can handle things other people can't, it's just the way of the world. 

As we drove through construction to get back home, we realized what a pain it would be to get to the agency in the winter, and had a long talk about what we thought. Agency B didn't meet what we needed for our family, but we still had two more agencies on our list. Time to see what is behind doors 3 and 4.