Family to Family Adoptions Inc, Adoptive Families, Birth Mothers

Our History and Adoption Statistics Page has been updated with our most recent number of placements and average wait and placement times for active adoptive families. Since our inception, we have placed 293 babies and toddlers and had the pleasure of working with so many wonderful birthmothers and adoptive families. We continue to place children because of the love that both birthmothers and adoptive parents have for a child.

If you would like more information about Family to Family and the adoption process, please feel free to contact us. A list of dates for our conferences can be found on our Events and Schedules page. We also offer private consults in our office just give us a call to schedule one. We look forward to many more adoptive placements and to working with you to help you create your family.

Anyone can tell by looking at our family that Jonah is adopted and I believe that makes it easy for interested people to ask me questions about how we came to be a family.   I have made new friends and reconnected with friends with whom I’ve been long out of contact through my willingness to discuss Jonah’s adoption.  It’s such a joyful fact of my life that I’m thrilled for the opportunity to talk about it.  Little did I know before Jonah was born, many women around me are going through infertility issues or are interested in growing their families through adoption for one reason or another.  The process seems mysterious and intimidating to someone who hasn’t gone through it before and I’m so happy to encourage would-be parents to learn more about the process.  Our lives are vastly richer because we are Jonah’s parents and I am more than happy to help other families find their riches too. 

Every conversation I’ve had with women interested in adoption has been different because everyone’s circumstances are different.  However, there has been some overlap on some basic themes – I’ll go through some of them below:

How old was Jonah when you adopted him?

Jonah has been our baby since his very first breath.  His birth-mom allowed me to be in the operating room holding her hand when he was delivered via C-section.  The nurse took him out of the womb, wrapped him in a towel, and placed him in my arms.  He left the hospital with us when he and his birth-mom were discharged three days later and he has always been ours.  We finalized the adoption when he was seven months old.

Was there a lot of paperwork?

You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork:   forms, questionnaires, medical records, financial records, diagrams of your home, fingerprints for background checks, life history, family tree…there is no aspect of your life that will remain private if you choose to go through an adoption home study.   The sheer volume of paperwork can be overwhelming and it took us a long time to work up the nerve to get started.  The only way to do it, though, is to just start filling it out, one page at a time. 

I would do it all over again in an instant and I believe that the next time (if there is a next time) it won’t take us as long to complete the paperwork just because we won’t be intimidated by it.

Did the process take a long time?

It felt like an eternity because of how badly we wanted a baby and because we’d already been dealing with infertility for over two years, plus another five months of infertility treatments.  And it took us a long time to get our home study started because, like I said above, the amount of paperwork scared us.

However, once we got started in real time, it took us about a month to complete the home study and about fifteen months later, we had Jonah.  The key for us was finding the right adoption agency:  we started with one adoption agency that didn’t care for very many birth-moms each year and we never got a match with that agency.  Once we signed on with Family to Family, it had been only five months when Jonah’s birth-mom contacted us and Jonah was born just three months after that.

How did you get started?  Did you work with an agency?

The first thing that you have to do is to complete an adoption home study.  We contacted an agency local to us that provides home studies, but that does not actually place children with families.  A licensed social worker conducted the home study, interviewed my husband and me together and then separately, and interviewed some of our friends to complete the picture.  She also guided us through options available to us and helped us determine what was right for us in the process.  She is the person who helped us find both of the child placement agencies with which we worked.

 Do you keep in touch with his birth-mom?

Jonah’s birth-mom told us before Jonah was even born that she would not want photos or updates from us.  She has three children older than Jonah and placing him for adoption was the only way that she could see to be able to care for those kids.  It was a very painful decision for her but one that she never backed away from.  She told me that it would be too difficult for her to see and hear about Jonah and that she felt that she needed to look to the future with her kids.  She told me that she might be open to meeting him one day, many years from now.

I promised her that we will regularly send letters and photos to the agency and that if she ever changes her mind, she can check in there.  As far as I know, she has not done so.  I would love to hear from her and I want her to know how wonderful, amazing, brilliant, and handsome our boy is.  Hopefully she’ll be able to contact us some day.

Every adoptive family’s story is different and there’s even much more to our story than I’ve written here.  The topics above are what have come up most in my conversations with other people exploring adoption, though there are other issues too.   If you have any questions about our experiences, just email me (finkelstein.kate@gmail.com ) – I’ll be happy to talk with you.

Written by Kate Finkelstein, adoptive mother

If you are not already a fan of Family to Family on Facebook we hope you join us soon.  We are so close to reaching 100 fans that we have decided to give the 100th fan a $25 gift card to the restaurant of their choice.  We love our fans and supporters so much that we have also decided to sell our annual calendars for half off during the month of May. If you would like to purchase a calendar or get more details, please contact us or give us a call at 281-342-4042 or toll free at 1-800-385-6301. Thank you to all of our fans!!!

One important part of the adoption process is establishing a plan of contact after the baby is placed with the adoptive family. Both the biological family and the adoptive family agree on the amount of contact that both parties are comfortable with and an adoption plan is signed with the agency. Family to Family’s minimum required amount of contact of the adoptive family is to send pictures and letters of update to the biological family through our agency every 3 months for the first year and twice a year after that until the child is 18 years old. Some adoptive families and the biological family have a more open adoption and agree to more contact or have a different arrangement other than what is required of Family to Family.

The agency encourages biological families to send pictures and letters of update as well. This is also important for the adoptee.  The adoptive family should keep these photos and updates in a special place for the adopted child to give to them when the timing is right. However most biological families lose contact with the agency and the adoptive family after placement.

Losing contact with your child’s biological family can be sad not only for the child but also for the adoptive family. One of our previous adoptive mother’s recently wrote a blog about how she did not realize how affected she would be when they lost contact with their child’s family. She describes her feelings and her concerns over losing this contact.

It is also equally important for adoptive families to uphold their agreement and to send pictures and updates to the agency.  The biological family trusts you to do this when she chooses you as the adoptive parent of her child and she has made your desire of becoming a parent possible by making an adoption plan.  Sending these pictures and letters as agreed shows the biological mother how grateful you are as well as it ensures her that she made the right decision for her child not only by placing but by choosing you as the parents.

If the agency or you as the adoptive family lose contact with your child’s biological family, Family to Family encourages you to continue sending these updates and photos to us. We will keep them and send them to her when and if the biological family makes contact again.

When you opt for private infant adoption, your process may be a little different than if you were going through international placement or placement from foster care, but the emotional roll-a-coaster effect is still present. In foster care placement as well as international placement, after you have qualified, had your home study, processed all of the paperwork, then usually a child will be ‘referred’ to you for placement. Naturally, you have the right to refuse a referral, but the average person doesn’t. In private infant adoption, the birth mother and/or birth father choose the adoptive family.

Today, almost all birth mothers want a semi-open or open adoption rather than a closed adoption with the adoptive family. Because of today’s recommended best practices, almost all agencies allow the birth mother to choose the family she wants as parents for her baby. Studies by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in Washington D.C. have shown that the more open the adoption, the better it is for the adoptee, the birth family and the adoptive parents as well. That is a hard concept to get your mind around when you are rebounding from years of failed infertility treatments and you have watched too many ‘adoption stories’ on the Lifetime Channel. But it is true.

Most adoptions are completed without any problems and the adoptive family and birth family forge a real bond and a lifelong relationship. However, you don’t know how your process will proceed when you begin this challenging and emotional experience. I recommend that you opt for a semi-open adoption to begin with and leave the door open for a more open adoption if it is possible. A semi-open adoption is one in which you meet the birth family and are given an opportunity to develop a close bond and relationship with each other and attend the birth of your child. This type of relationship may include your extended family as well as the birth family’s extended family. The difference in this type of adoption and a fully open adoption is no identifying information is exchanged by the parties. I hope and pray that you will wind up with an open adoption in which you and the birth family have exchanged identifying information and are contacting each other directly and maybe even meeting periodically so your child and any siblings can learn about each other. But you don’t know if that is possible in the beginning of the relationship. The openness of your adoption can be increased as time goes on.

In our agency, a full 25% of our adoptive families and birth families have opened their adoption to include the exchange of last names and identifying information by the actual birth of the child. In most of those cases, the birth mother puts the name the adoptive family has chosen for the child as well as their last name on the baby’s birth certificate. In many cases, the adoptive family and their extended family members as well as the birth family and their extended family members are present at the birth and spend hours or days together making memories for the sake of the child they all love.

Even if they don’t have a fully open adoption from birth, another 20% of our adoptive families are able to grow their relationship with the birth family into a fully open relationship within the first two or three years. So our anecdotal experience is that roughly ½ of our placements are fully open eventually. This is not perfect, but we feel that it respects the needs and wishes of all parties involved.

If a mother matches with a family and is unable to make that attachment and bond with them for some reason, she may ask for a rematch. Also, we have families who for one reason or another have agreed to a match under circumstances in which they find impossible to continue and have asked for a rematch. Our agency believes that you and the birth mother are the only people who have a right to make decisions about what type of an adoption you want. Occasionally, a mismatch will happen. That is fine. We will be glad to rematch both parties, because this adoption is about them and the baby, not our agency or our time line constraints or our cash flow or our ego. It’s about you as the parents, both biological and adoptive, and most importantly the child.

The scenario I have described is a wonderful process to watch from the outside as well as to live from the inside. The only way to achieve this type of adoption is to take time with the decision making process. Don’t be rushed into a decision and don’t be afraid to voice concerns about the situation. My experience tells me that if you are having concerns about the birth mother and the openness of the adoption, then she is too. When both parties are participating in the type of adoption and placement that they need and want, then very little else can go wrong.

Discover the Benefits of Adoption and how you can provide your child with the American Dream and fulfill your goals too.  To help you learn more about the benefits of adoption we will send you our Unplanned Pregnancy packet.  You are under no obligation and you will learn the answers to your many questions, solutions to your unplanned pregnancy, information about financial assistance during this traumatic time in your life and give you access to our caring counselors.

 You choose the family as parents for your child from our waiting families who have been thoroughly screened for criminal and child abuse history and who have been recommended for adoption by a social worker.

We help you with the process of placing your child for adoption when you are sure that adoption is the right choice for you and your child.  We offer free birth mother services with independent housing while pregnant if needed.  In addition, we offer life time counseling and support after placement and help to find good pre-natal care during this unplanned pregnancy.

 We believe that placing your child for adoption when you are not able to provide for him is a heroic act of selflessness.  We understand how courageous you are for making an adoption plan for an unplanned pregnancy and respect your rights as a parent.  Call 1-800-385-6301 and let us help you today.

Family to Family Adoptions has been placing babies for ten years and has completed over 250 adoptions, both international and domestic. Each adoption placement is different but one thing that remains true is that the process can be emotional for both the adoptive parents and the birth parents. This past year, Family to Family implemented a required training class for all adoptive families signing on to adopt through our agency. These training courses are designed to guide adoptive families through the various stages of the adoption process and help ease some of the emotions. One of the topics we cover at this training is using positive adoption language throughout the process including before, during and after placement.

 Using positive adoption language will not only assist in making both the adoptive family and the birth family more comfortable but will also aid with many misconceptions that are related to adoption. For example, saying a birthparent is going to “terminate their parental rights” is considered a positive term whereas “giving up a child” is a negative term. Birth parents decide to make adoption plans for their child because they love their child and to say that they are giving a child away places judgment on a biological parent. Another way of saying this would be to “make an adoption plan” versus “give away”. On the flip side of that, a birthparent that changes their mind about placing a child decides “to parent” instead of she decides to “keep” the baby.  It is also more appropriate to say “birthparent” or “biological family” instead of saying they are the “real parent”.  If you would like a list of the terms we use in our training course, please contact Family to Family or you can find some listed at www.adoptivefamilies.com. You can also view more of these terms on this blog, Using Postive Adoption Language.

 There are many other terms and phrases related to the adoption process but I hope that this just gives you a place to start thinking about how you will use positive adoption language in your adoption process. I also encourage you to discuss the idea of using positive language with your extended family and friends as well as your child. This is very important to ensure that your child sees their adoption story in a constructive light as well as it can help alleviate the common misconceptions of adoption and spread a more optimistic view on adoption in general. If you have questions about positive versus negative terms please contact us.  I also encourage you to share, by leaving a comment to this post, some terms that you use in your family or used during your adoption process as well as please feel free to list any negative terms or phrases that you have heard people say about adoption. Keep an eye on this blog for how to address negative terms and phrases and misconceptions on the adoption process.

From time to time, we come across references to our services on the web where people are talking about us. We recently found a post on another blog, in response to a question on that blog, that referred to our services. Here is the response, just as posted on the site:

“My husband and I have a daughter that we adopted through an adoption agency calledFamily To Family Adoptions Inc. they were wonderful to work through.

We had already completed our homestudy through an independant agent. With a homestudy they do background checks, ask you and your spouse lots of questions, make sure your house meets safety standards.

Once we called the agency we filled out an application, and they then presented out to expecting mothers. Once one of the mothers picked us, we were and waited for our daughter to be born. However, we only waited a week, because her birthmother was at the end of her pregnancy.

With the profile, it will consist of a letter you write to the birthmother, it is called the Dear Birthmother. There will also be pictures of you and your family, maybe your house, pets, etc.  This profile needs to help the birthmother know you just by reading it.

In some cases the birthmother will want to meet before the birth, sometimes birthmother will never want to meet you.

FOSTER CARE

To become foster parents you need to take a course provided by the state to receive a liscense. In many states this course is called PRIDE Classes. Parents Resources for Information, Development, and Education. There will be between 30-35 hours of class time plus homework. The state will then have a homestudy done for you the same way you would for the adoption agency.

Once everything is cleared they will send you your liscense and you will be able to start fostering. With the time your case worker is with you you will have figured out how many children you can care for and what ages you would like to work with.

Adoptions prices can be $ 17000 to $ 30000

There will almost always be an aplication fee but NEVER pay more that $ 500 for that fee.

Our adoption cost was about $ 17000 to the agency, then about $ 700 for lawyer fees to finalize the adoption.

Foster care just cost the time you invest in it. We are also starting the adoption process through foster care and that is just going to cost lawyer fees for finalization.

Our adoption agency is Family To Family Adoptions Inc and their website is fam2fam.org or phone number 281-342-4042

Good Luck!”

This is the unedited posting. We chose to re-post it because it is one of several responses to the question and is a little hard to find on the other blog.

Once you are approved to adopt a child the next step is to create your adoption family profile. There are usually lots of questions on how to do this and what should be included.  Whether you choose to create your family profile on paper or use some scrapbooking software or online photoshop, we have added an article to our website filled with tips and ideas on topics that are commonly used and areas of interest for birthmothers.  You can follow these tips and guidelines to creating your profile or complete it the way you prefer.  Use our checklist as a guide, but be yourself and have fun doing this, remembering that one day you will share this profile with your adopted child.

For any families that adopt or have adopted a child after September 1, 2010, there are new post placement requirements for your family if you plan to finalize your adoption in the State of Texas. We are now required to have five face to face visits before the consent to adopt can be signed. One of these visits must be in your home and at least three of these have to have all family members present. Families that adopted before September 1, 2010, please contact your social worker to schedule these visits and discuss any questions you may have regarding the change. A new payment scale has been implemented for home study and post placement visits through our agency. Please email Jennifer at jennifer@fam2fam.org with any concerns or questions regarding the new post placement requirements.