(This is a continuation of our detailed story. Begin with part one.)
We started our private adoption journey by attending a
seminar on this option. We retained an
adoption attorney, contacted a social worker to begin the homestudy process,
and started a support group for fellow waiting adoptive parents. We set
off to try to match with a birthmother directly by putting up fliers,
handing out business cards, setting up a profile with ParentProfile.com,
getting a toll-free phone number and a special email account specifically
designed to receive inquiries and weed out scammers. As it turned out, for every legitimate
inquiry, there were probably 50 scammers.
Apparently, people hoping to adopt are seen by some as an
easy target. The assumption is that they
are desperate for a child and willing to pay anything for the chance to have
one. We prided ourselves on being above
such gimmicks. We didn’t “waste” years
of infertility treatment before “finally settling” on adoption, the way I saw
most of the other hopeful parents had done.
We had a very clear idea of what we would and would not be willing to
pay for the various services that go into the legal transfer of parental rights
and custody. We turned down legitimate
matches from our attorney and support group if the associated fees were too
high. We were being “smart”.
It was quite a rollercoaster to communicate with people and
wonder if these were the mother, father, grandparent of our child-to-be. I read into everything, and saw every little
detail as “a sign”. One day we got an
email out of the blue from one of our fellow support groupers. She woke up that day having remembered a
match she and her husband passed on several months before. She felt compelled to share their contact
information with us. The birth father
was thought to have been Hispanic, and she knew we were looking to adopt a
Hispanic child. I emailed the
grandmother, not expecting to hear back.
After all, the baby was 5 months old by now, so surely he had already
been adopted.
When I read the prompt response email, I got
goosebumps. “This is our son” I
thought. How could he not be? Why else would he not have been adopted
yet? Grandma was very excited about us
reaching out, and we arranged a meeting.
Small problem – the grandmother doesn’t legally decide if a child gets
adopted or not. And in spite of her best
efforts, her daughter just didn’t want to part with her son. Yet she did part with her son, who was living
with his paternal grandmother at the time.
So the lady we were in contact with was optimistic that now was the time
to convince her daughter to place her son with us. I won’t go into all the dramatic details of
their family life, because the point is not to air other families’ dirty
laundry. It goes without saying that
placing a child with an adoptive family doesn’t take place in families without
drama.
But because social services had already gotten involved with
the case, and was monitoring the living arrangement of little Isaiah, we did
not feel comfortable trying to interfere with that process. We parted ways, but several months later, the
maternal grandmother contacted us again.
Social services was initiating termination of the mother’s parental
rights. Grandma thought it would be good
for her daughter to regain a little bit of control over her life by proactively
making an adoption plan for her son rather than having her rights terminated by
the court. We had a fall-through in the
meantime, and thought that this was a sign that Isaiah was meant to be our son.
In spite of the fact that it turned out the baby’s father
was not Hispanic after all, we felt serendipity had brought us together. So we met again, this time both of Isaiah’s
parents joined us. We talked for hours,
and in the end, they both felt comfortable with us. There was a match. Or was there?
The custodial grandmother was also on board. She was getting overwhelmed caring for him, so one way or another, Isaiah would be going to someone else's custody. I spoke with her on the phone about Isaiah’s
routine, his likes and dislikes. But then we found out that Isaiah was placed
in foster care. Another monkey
wrench. Apparently, a sign that we
better move on, so we did.
About 9 months later, and after another fall through on our
end, Isaiah’s maternal grandmother contacts us again. Legal proceedings are beginning, and she
wants the courts to consider us as parents for Isaiah instead of indefinite
foster care. Another sign, right? I accompany and assist her as she picks up
her daughter from jail (let’s not go there!) and meets with one of their
attorneys. The attorney and I exchange a
few words, I give him our contact info, and he expresses the opinion that the
birth family’s preferences ought to be taken into consideration when choosing
an adoptive family for Isaiah.
As we await news from the attorney regarding the possibility
of our adopting now 18-month-old Isaiah, I have an interesting phone
conversation with his maternal grandmother.
She decides that she ought to share with us information about his
medical history that was never mentioned before, since we may really be taking
him home now. We already knew about his
mother’s issues, though we didn’t really fully understand their
ramifications. Still, we were ok with
those. But now we’re being told that his
mother also has a condition that potentially comes with a shortened
lifespan! Since she needed to wait to be
tested in her 20s, the results weren’t in yet.
Once they were, we’d either know that Isaiah had not inherited this
disease (I do not remember what it was exactly), or we’d have to wait until
he’s in his 20s to test him to see if he developed it. I wish I remembered what the disease was, but
I don’t.
Initially, my response was that we never know what any child
will have, so we will love him no matter what.
But upon more reflection we realized that he wasn’t ours yet anyway, and
we had the moral option to let someone more equipped parent a child with this
set of special needs. So nearly a year and a half after first contacting
Isaiah’s grandmother, we were finally putting to rest the possibility of
adopting him. We stayed in touch with
the grandmother, and were happy to learn that he was adopted shortly afterwards
by his foster parents.
In retrospect, it was a good way to see first hand the sort of troubled situations that birth mothers often come from when making this difficult decision. And even though I still do not have a baby of my own in my arms, I believe the way this story ended was in the best interest of Isaiah.
(Part three to be continued...)
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