[silverowlfeather]

I saw this thread and thought I would reply.

I am happily married for five years to a wonderful dh who is a computer geek by trade. I am a farmer by trade and a stay at home mom to an incredibley sweet special needs son we adopted privately. He came to us almost exactly two years ago at the age of 7 and we finally got to finalize in October of 07! He is about to turn 9. Currently I homeschool him although we started out in regular school so he could have access to special services and more socialization. After a year and a half things were still going bad so went the homeschool route. Homeschooling is going pretty well but we are looking into a special school in the area where he could help with his problems and schooling at the same time. We believe every child is different and we just do our best to give ours what he needs.

I started looking around on adoption.com and the forums because the dh and I want another child and our ds misses having siblings terribly (we weren't given the chance to adopt any of the other kids the bps kept them, they ranged in age from 13 years to 6 months) otherwise we would have. I have PCOS and my dh has an unspecific but verified fertility problem so we have been debating between really pursueing fertility treatment or going for a traditional adoption and what kind.

Our experiences with adoption had led us to believe for awhile maybe fertility treatments might be better mostly because we are pagan (Theodish) and that has been a problem in our experience. 2 1/2 years ago we went through the foster-adopt program with our state. We graduated from the program but towards the end they asked us our religion and we told the truth. Within two weeks of telling what our religion is and after going through the graduation and getting our certificates we were kicked out supposedly because of unresolved issues I have with my father.....thats curious I was upfront and very clear about where my father and I stood on everything the whole way through it. He was against adoption and that was the main thing. Him and my mom just kept saying relax you'll get pregnant. HAH!

But in the end it all turned out okay but still with alot of twists. Within two days of being kicked out of the state program and being completely devestated an aquanitence contacts us because she knows someone who knows someone and they have talked about it and would like us to adopt her son! She said he had ADD in truth it was alot more than that which I won't go into here but from that moment we loved him and nothing has mattered since we just work very hard to get him all the help possible. So I hang up the phone with the birthmom and call my parents and lay it on the line. DH and I are adopting a little boy if you wish to be gps then here is your chance otherwise you won't be seeing us. :-) Suddenly when the child became a child and not a concept they loved him too and have been wonderful grandparents and dote on him more than I ever imagined. They are coming to his birthday party this weekend and consider it the best way to celebrate their 29th anniversary because nothing makes them happier than seeing him. Now they are pro adoption and I know will support us or my siblings if we decide to do it again.

So back to today, DH still have a current homestudy I THINK it was good for two years or for six months plus an update if we commit to another child and we are sort of debating going for it again sooner than later for several reasons. The first one being it was really expensive the first time around and if it could save money it would help. I would much rather spend the money on the child (or hopefully baby) than on getting the child. The second one being my siblings and I are all two years apart and I guess I understand why now I am just really having the urge that its time. And the third one is that because we didn't do a typical agency adoption it was really hard to find a good social worker and attourney on the fly last time and now we have people we have worked with and trust.

Our social worker is out of agency that does strictly Guatamalan adoptions generally but also takes special cases like ours was. So we have considered that but they also have a pretty much flat fee of 25K we paid less than 10K with our son so that is a really scary number. But its on the table too. We really would like to do another American adoption but of an infant this time because the thing that hurts about our son is that he had a great many experiences and was hurt by alot of people before he was part of our life. I know he hurts and seeing him hurt hurts us because we can't make it go away entirely no matter what we do. Although I know its unrealistic but if another child not baby fell out of the sky essentially again we would love them regardless too even though our goal is an infant this time.

Sorry I know that was long winded but in a nutsell I am a very proud mom to a lovely adopted boy who wants to add another child to our family and came here to try and sort out the how we are going to do it.

On that note does anyone know of any pagan friendly agencies that work domestically in Missouri?

Steph