Our First Adoption Meeting

We had our first adoption meeting today. We got to meet Paula, all three of us clicked from the moment we met each other.

She had received our packet and read through it before our meeting. The meeting started out with introductions. Then she said so many people have questions about adoption so she wanted to go through the different ways.

• Word of Mouth Adoption (this is the option we are choosing) - tell everyone you know that you are looking for a match. That way they can tell everyone they know and so on and so forth
• She gave us the name of a local lawyer that gets the calls from the local hospitals when a woman comes in to give birth and is unable to take them home
• Agency Adoption - Very expensive, we would be spending between $20,000 - $25,000. American adoptions is the most known place. They have an office in Rogers, AR.
• An advantage to this is that the mother is taken care of by the agency
• Private Lawyers - This is also very expensive, most places cost about $30,000. She gave us some names of some highly recommended lawyers

In the state of Arkansas the window before the actual adoption can take place is 5 days. So, from the day the baby is born they have 5 days to change their mind. This is one of the things that scares both of us the most. Receiving a child and then getting it taken away from us. However, you miss 100% of the chances that you don't take and we are willing to take this chance.

She also talked to us about the adoption tax credit, you get this back the year that you have placement of a child.

We scheduled our home study for Wednesday November 5th  Thursday November 13th. She will come to our house and check everything out to make sure that we have room for a child. She will also interview us individually at that time, this is part of the whole process.

We discussed timing, she said based on our preferences it could happen as soon as the home study is done, or it could take months. You just never know. 

We are hoping for the best, that our home study passes. I am not that worried about this, she told us that our paperwork was all great and that there were no red flags. 

Our next plan is to get in touch with the lawyer that is local and get put on her list. 

We are so excited and feel like this is all happening very quickly now!

So excited to become parents!