The Adoption Wait

Once you’ve figured out your preferences in your adoption and finished your family profile, what is next? The dreaded adoption wait. If you’re working with an adoption advisor like Purl, you’re likely getting on the waitlist for many different attorneys and agencies. You might be including some adoption outreach, hoping to connect with an expectant family that way. You are then waiting for an expectant family to choose you or find you through your outreach.

The wait can be only a few days, weeks or months, or even a few years to be selected, but your chances are much better in a multi-faceted approach. Most of our Purl families match (and adopt) within a year of going active well ahead of the average of 2 years in the industry, but the impact of COVID, lower birth rates, and the good news of moms being empowered to parent has impacted wait times for some prospective adoptive parents. I have had Purl families be chosen as the adoptive parents the first time they presented (and the same day they presented), and I’ve had others not get chosen until their 35th presentation (some waiting weeks for an answer). Sometimes you might see many adoption opportunities in a week and have to choose between opportunities to present to, and other times there are month-long draughts of very few opportunities. There is no rhyme or reason, and no consistency. It can be so tough, I personally have experienced it in my own journey, and one of our longer waiting Purl Families wrote about her experience here (written shortly before they would get the call telling them their daughter had been born). The profile matters some, but more often than not it is just the right expectant family connecting with the right prospective adoptive couple at that time. We encourage families to spend however long they are waiting to learn more about adoption, listening to all members of the adoption triad, but particularly adoptees, to be better prepared when their child comes.

Each adoption professional does things a little differently, but if you are working through an attorney or agency, typically prospective adoptive parents are getting the opportunity to see a summary of an adoption opportunity. Prospective adoptive families then get to decide whether they want to “present” to that expectant family considering adoption. As I discussed in a previous post, it is awkward that you are basically saying yes or no to a child. We encourage families to consider these summaries carefully, and ensure you’re willing to honor what the expectant family is looking for in regards to contact post adoption, but knowing that can change over time.

If you decide to present to an expectant family considering adoption, your family profile is typically given to that expectant family when they decide they are ready to choose the adoptive parents for their child, likely when they are relatively comfortable with their adoption plan. After you’ve decided to present your profile, the wait to learn whether you have been selected can be a day up to even a few weeks, and that wait too can be excruciating. IF you are chosen by an expectant family, sometimes the expectant family confirms the match through a telephone call, but sometimes the match is purely made through the review of family profiles.

Once there is a match, typically some amount of adoption expenses are due to the agency or attorney making the match. If it is an agency that has made the match, it is often about half of the total cost of the adoption, it can be the total expectant costs if it is close to the birth, or we even work with agencies that don’t take any money until the expectant family signs consents to the adoption. Some agencies or attorneys have a lot of money at risk in the event the expectant family decides to parent, and others you lose little or even none at all. What is interesting is that every adoption professional works completely differently, so we help our Purl families navigate the different adoption professionals’ policies and practices, and determine both the financial and emotional risk of the adoption opportunity. But this is just the beginning of this phase of the adoption, just because you are chosen as adoptive parents for the child, it doesn’t mean that child is yours. I like to think of it as a “promise ring”, with no real commitment to get engaged or set a wedding date. Oftentimes a prospective adoptive family is walking alongside an expectant woman for half of her pregnancy, but no paperwork is effective or irrevocable until some period after the birth of the child. That woman could have every intent to place her child in the arms of another, but then can’t bring herself to do that once she’s birthed and held her child.

My husband Ray and I were chosen for the first adoption opportunity we presented to, the day after we found out we were home study approved. That match disrupted a little less than two months later after that child was born. Then, we presented to MANY adoption opportunities and heard MANY “no’s” before deciding to present to Cora’s birth mother. We first received the adoption opportunity describing Cora’s situation a few days before Thanksgiving, almost 6 years ago. I recall Ray and I immediately saying yes to the situation, without the fear and unease that I had had with the probably 10-15 situations we had reviewed or presented to after our disrupted adoption. Cora’s fist mama’s computer wasn’t working well, so she wasn’t able to download the adoption profiles that the agency sent her electronically. So, even though she was only due in a few weeks, she waited more than a week before selecting us as the adoptive parents she wanted for her child, and only after she got to see the hard copy profile books. During that week waiting, Ray and I hosted almost 25 people at our house for Thanksgiving. I think I smiled and laughed for the first time that weekend since our disrupted adoption. Little did I know, one of the happiest days of my life would come on December 3rd, the day after my 38th birthday, when I learned we had been chosen as adoptive parents for a baby girl due in a few weeks. A few days later I would find out I was pregnant with Raelyn, only to be told the next day by my fertility doctor that the pregnancy wouldn’t stick. He told me that it would likely result in an ectopic pregnancy so I should make sure to stay close to a hospital. Oddly enough, I stayed close to a hospital because Cora’s first mama went into labor on December 10th,  the day before we planned to meet her over dinner. I was so nervous walking into that hospital to meet the mother of a child that might end up being mine. But I felt that we instantly connected and my nerves went away instantly. Sometimes when I look at Cora I can remember looking at that same beautiful smile and Auburn hair looking back at me in that hospital bed.

The three days before Cora’s first mama signed consents were slow, but in a lot of ways also a blur. We got to know Cora’s first mama, and after each time we talked I wrote down everything I learned about her and her family in our discussions. I wanted to make sure I could remember and tell Cora everything I learned about her first mama when she was old enough, in case we got to be her parents through adoption but didn’t get the opportunity to talk or see her first mama again.

The day I learned that Cora was ours was one of the happiest days of my life, but I also had a rush of sadness as my heart also ached for a woman that I had just met a few days later, but I already loved. This began the strange dichotomy that comes with adoption….