Hi Melanie,

I just read Karen's reply to your message. Yes, my hubby & I adopted
through our state, WV. When we started the process we specified that we
were only interested in children that were free for adoption. We had
battled infertility for 15 years & my heart could not take them taking a
child from me that I had grown to love. We were told that would be fine
but if we wanted a white baby then we most likely would not get it, but if
we wanted a bi-racial or black baby it would happen pretty quick. At that
point we really didn't want a baby, that a little older child (3 or older)
would be fine with us. There are just so many older children out there
that need someone to love them. We ended up with a 6 yr. old boy & his 4
year old sister. We fell in love the minute we met them. Our adoption was
finalized Aug. 17, 2006. Didn't cost us a penny, state paid for
everything. Let me know if you have any questions, I love talking about
it. I know in WV there are a lot of babies in foster care, it's a matter
of waiting.

Tammy H




"Karen
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[OASIS-Adopt] Melanie.....

11/10/2006 07:32
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I was told in my state (MO) it isnt a straight foster adopt but the first
plan is reunification with the bios. Sometimes I
think I can handle it until we have one we can keep -
and sometimes I wonder if I can.



Every state is that way. The first plan is to take them from the bios and
put into fostercare and reunify them with the parents and if that fails for
whatever reasons then they are up for adoption and the foster parents get
first refusal. That is one big downfall!


Infants aren't available for even fostering as they have a long
waiting list already. Which is okay (I guess).

Don't buy into that one. We got a newborn as our first placement. Once
you are liscenced they will ask what ages you want and you can state and
they will try to match you with that age, however they will also try to get
you to take other ages, just stand your ground and it could take a few
years but it may just happen!


My dh
is also worried about the cost of international
adoption. I'm nost sure what specific questions to ask
you! Sometimes they get judgmental on the lists about
people who want to adopt rather than *just* foster.

I found a lot of people on the lists are professional parents. They either
have adopted a few or none and just do fostercare as a job basically. I
found there are three types of people that do fostercare
1. Infertiles that want a family
2. People that do it for a living
3. Older persons that need to supplement their retirmeent income

That is my experience anyway around here, Maine.

I won't dive into too much but my husband and I are in the adoption phase
now with our daughter who we got as a newborn, 2 days old. She is now 27
months old. We woudl go to the end of the planet for her however for an
unknown child, never again. We came too close to losing her to her bio a
few times and then when bio had rights terminated we had a horrible case
worker who thought that people with more money than us and a bigger house
etc should raise our daughter and he moved her. We had no legal grounds.
I fought with all we had and we got her home in 10 days but those were the
worst 10 days of my life and I will NEVER go through this again, EVER.
Once our adoption is done I will be more than happy to share all the gory
details as I have pages and pages of notes and conversations that were lies
etc. It was just horrific.

One thing you can do and I know Tammy H did this was just do adoption. You
get liscencsed the same way as fostering however instead of doing
fostercare first you just sign up to adopt. Children that are cleared for
adoption then are the ones that you would meet and visit with and
potentially go from there for adoption. I would recommend this route but
also ask questions like why are the fosterparents not adopting this child?
Go in eyes wide open and you can come out a great family. We were just too
nieve to believe the system could be as bad as it is this day in age and it
about killed us in the process.

Hugs
Karen