Q. Year you adopted/Name of child:
A. 2013: Reagan
Q. How did you decide to adopt?
A. It was a toss-up between surrogacy and adoption. Needless-to-say, cost was a huge factor, being that surrogacy is so expensive. And when it came down to it, there is something so special about adoption. Much, much more so than surrogacy and any other way a child is brought into the world. We believe this even more so now that we’ve been through the adoption process.
Q. What made you choose LifeLong Adoptions?
A. After interviewing many companies, we settled on Lifelong solely for 2 reasons. Firstly, their heavy presence on the internet. Secondly, they’re honest, friendly, down-to-earth, communicative staff members.
Q. What were some of the biggest challenges of the adoption process?
A. One of the biggest challenges was understanding the laws of adoption. Each state has different laws-the state that you live in as well as the state that you would be adopting in. So fully grasping each of those laws takes some time. Then of course there is gathering all the information needed to adopt-getting your physicals done/fingerprints, etc. Not that we would consider these items “challenges”. They are simply time consuming.
Q. What were you most nervous about?
A. The most anxious part about the whole process was not so much the anticipation of getting chosen by a birth mother. Waiting was something everyone has to do-People wait to get pregnant…wait to give birth. So waiting was something we knew we would go through. But the birth mother changing her mind after she had chosen us was something that truly petrified us. Especially after we had met our daughter after she was born.
Q. What were you most excited about?
A. To be honest, once we were chosen, we were really excited about getting to know the birth mother/father as well as the usual anticipation of becoming parents.
Q. How did your friends and family react to your decision to adopt?
A. They were all 100% supportive and excited.
Q. Did you choose an open or closed adoption - and how did you make that decision?
A. We chose a semi-open adoption. We didn’t feel it right to completely shut the birth mother out of our lives…especially after giving us such a gift. Nor did we want to fully open our home/life/decision making to another party. We wanted our “own” family after all, yet, we did want to assure the birth mother that her gift was well taken care of and loved. So we chose a little of both.
Q. What was it like meeting the birthmother?
A. Meeting any stranger whom you’re about to share intimate details with is always fueled with anxiety. This was no different. Nonetheless, as anxious as we were she was ten times more. In retrospect, it was an amazing experience. We cherished that time with her because we were able to listen to her voice, her laugh, look at her face, get to know her, hug her.
Q. Adopting a baby can be a lengthy process - how did you get through the wait?
A. Like any other person expecting a child. We were always cautious not to get ahead of ourselves. After all, just like a pregnancy, even in an adoption things can happen that would cause the adoption to not go through. I feel that we were very practical in the way we handled ourselves. We slowly purchased for our daughter, slowly got our nursery together. Read a ton of books, talked about the process with so many people (which truly helped).
Q. Describe receiving the call that your baby was being born and traveling to meet him/her
A. Exciting and surreal. The wait, the journey, the emotional roller coaster (while well worth it) was about to come to an end. It’s hard to explain…but its almost as if you can see the “light at the end of the tunnel” so to speak.
Q. Describe the feeling of finally meeting your baby.
. We were appreciative and lucky enough to be invited into the delivery room during the birth. I was able to cut the umbilical cord. It was an amazing experience. A bit uncomfortable at times because we were sharing that moment with the Birth Parents who had yet to sign the adoption paperwork. So here we were…watching this child be born, changing her, feeding her…and still have yet to know the outcome. Yet it was so beautiful and wonderful.
Q. What is your relationship like with the birthmother?
A. Currently, we at times send pictures and updates when requested by her.
Q. Would you adopt again?
A. Absolutely! 100%!
Q. What is something you would like to share with other adoptive parents?
A. We’ve met so many couples who spoke of the birth mothers/parents as if they were the “enemy” and not very respectfully. I feel a tremendous amount of respect, love and admiration goes a long way for people who do this for others and I feel by giving them that, in the end, your journey will work out as it is meant to. And you’ll have the child that is meant to be your child. Another piece of advice (just my opinion) is that we never posted on Facebook or any other social media that we were adopting. Everything is “out there” for the world to see and anything can happen throughout the adoption process. Things can fall through, etc. We never wanted to be in a position where we would have to explain ourselves to someone else. So we kept our situation private until the day the paperwork was signed…then shocked everyone on Facebook.
