[gabsdot]

the advice you've been given is great. What worried me about your post was that you said you know nothing about adoption. Before you adopt, within the family or not you need to educate yourself about the issues surrounding adoption and parenting an adopted child. Where I live you have to do a course as part of your homestudy. You need to decide and agree on how open or closed it will be. Parenting an adopted child is mostly the same as parenting a bio child but there are issues that can arise about loss, grief, identity, etc and you need to be aware of them. Get some books and get reading. Talk to other adoptive parents. Prayer and advice from church leaders is important but so is the practical stuff.