Adoption 101
Before jumping into other pieces of the process, CAC requires their families to read a 74 page info packet, that should be called adoption 101. It gives a small overview of the entire process starting with a home study and ending with a judge finalizing your adoption. After reading through the packet, adoptive parents get a 30 minute Q&A with their consultant. Working through step 1 resembled eating fudge; tasted sweet but it just sits with you kinda heavy. Below we share the key points that either took us by surprise or hit a little heavy.
The average wait for a domestic infant adoption once parents have the finances to be "ready" is 2-5 years, for CAC families it's 10-12 months due to using their multi-agency approach.
9 out of 10 birth moms today want an open adoption or a semi-open adoption. Very few agencies will take on adoptive parents who are only willing to consider closed adoptions.
Domestic infant adoption costs easily between $40,000-60,000 in the US.
We're aware there will continue to be a little heaviness and sadness mixed in with the joy and excitement. This process would be scarier if we didn't have such a rich history of God's goodness in our lives. We can look at former seasons of our lives and marriage and see God has been so faithful and so good to us. This will not be any different. It's so sweet to realize we're getting closer and closer to bringing a baby home. We're finding ourselves more freely thinking out loud about ideas of what we want to do as a family, how we're excited to watch each other do x,y, and z with our kids. We are experiencing a roller coaster of emotions, but there is a sweet hope and excitement amidst them all.
