domestic adoption

[hanginginthere]

I am just curious if there are any domestic adoption parents out there? We adopted due to my health issues which made pregnancy dangerous and are now the proud parents of a beautiful 2 year old. We adopted at birth and she is our world. We are considering adopting again, possibly through foster care once residency is done...just thought I would see if there any families out there like ours?

[SoonerTexan]

I'm interested to hear too, though I think all the adoptive parents here adopted abroad.

My mother looked into domestic adoption a few years ago in Texas and found that to adopt a baby or really any child under two, becoming a foster parent and hoping the child came up for adoption was your best bet. Otherwise it is mostly older children, families to be adopted together, or children with mild to severe developmental or physical disabilities. This may not still be the case though. I bet DCJenn knows. Not that there is anything wrong with adopting an older or disabled child, I just know most people want a baby. I know two families that have adopted domestically though and are very happy. One adopted a 6-7 year old boy and another adopted two brothers under 10.

[moonlight]

Good luck! I hope someone on here with more info can post. if I remember right we have a few members on here that have close friends and family that have gone through the process.

[niener]

That's wonderful! So many domestic adoption stories I've heard have ended in heartbreak so it's always so nice to hear a happy one. A good friend of the family adopted a baby girl about 2 years ago. It took them nearly 10 years to get her and they had more than one foster child taken back from them. Needless to say their 2 year old is spoiled rotten!

[hanginginthere]

We totally lucked out- we were matched and had our daughter with us in less than 4 months from finishing our home studies. We were matched with an urgent situation and have a semi-open adoption. Our hands are full right now with our little princess (she started walking at 6.5 months and hasn't slowed down since ;p) but would like her to have a sibling or two later on....once residency is done and she is older...I love being a mommy.

[DCJenn]

What I've come to discover about domestic adoption is what I discovered about shoes and cars, too. You get what you pay for. We have so many acquaintances who had not a single problem with domestic adoption- my room-mate from college had one birthmother change her mind but they were expecting it. If you're willing and able to shell out for the resources and protection of a large organization, you likely won't have a problem. I've seen the biggest issues with the small mom and pop operations who don't have the legal and counseling resources to vet the birth familes.

The most successful domestic adoptions that we've seen have either been through private adoption attornies or through Gladney services in Fort Worth. I'm not saying that other places aren't good but 100% of the quick and easy domestic adoptions that we've been aware of have happened that way.

Now, foster to adopt is another way but again, fraught with potential disaster. We had one family we knew a decade ago who were foster to adopt families here in San Antonio and grandma showed up to try to stake her claim but thankfully the Judge went with the nice Mormon pediatrician and his stay at home wife rather than mother to the crack head who already had custody of other grandchildren.

Jenn

[samssugarmomma]

Our adoption was International (russia) but my best friend has completed 2 domestic adoptions. They used the same agency for both and were matched with the birth parents within 5 months of completing their homestudies. They have open adoptions and see the birth families every few months and send pics monthly.

[Anthonyraj]

We took in people from all over the world. The reason we did this was because we had a lot of good reasons to do it. First, we felt called to adopt people all over the world. There are a lot of poor people in the third world country that we adopted from, and it has gotten worse since we did. A poor state of his birth mother e his birth mother in such a poor state me, I have cerebral palsy. I thought it would be more difficult to get a birth parent to let me adopt a child than it would be for other people.