The first step of this journey is finding the right adoption agency to work with. There are so many agencies out there it was a bit overwhelming to even decide what agencies to interview! So we focused on agencies based here in the Northwest and were open to all kinds of families. That helped us narrow it down to four agencies to interview and thanks to our very organized friends we were armed with a litany of questions to help us find the best match.
Just in these first few weeks we know way more about what it means to grow a family through adoption, and we have just begun to dive below the surface. We are getting more familiar with the language and jargon and learning about the different approaches and philosophies employed by different agencies. We can now can talk about disruption rates (cases where a birthmother changes her mind about parenting her baby), last minute placements versus planned placements, and so much more. While the learning curve is steep we feel that we've already come a long way.
All the agencies we spoke with gave us information that is helping us in our decision. Let's just put it this way...we were able to eliminate one agency before we hung up with them - not a good match. But that is why we did the interviews. What it will really comes down to is who do we feel we will be most comfortable with. All of the agencies had experience, were legit and could get us a baby in the end, but we want to work with an agency that will participate in this experience with us.
Anyhow, we are pretty close to making our choice and hope to submit our initial application early next week to the chosen agency!
Did I mention that we are now on the fast-track, if there is such a thing, for our adoption? We found out in our adoption tax credit research that there is a chance the $12,000 tax credit could go away at the end of this year. Yikes! Please call your Congressperson today! So we decided we didn't want to take that chance and are trying to get through the paperwork and homestudy process as soon as we can. Wish us luck!
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