[smooty]

hubby and i just returned from our first adoption seminar. it was with children's home and family services. we are currently considering the ethiopia program. at the seminar there were other people so i didn't want to get into too many personal questions. but i do want to be informed of what our obstacles may be before we hit our home-study.

my husband, who has been clean for almost 7 years, is a re-covering drug addict. as a result of his addiction, he has prior arrests for shoplifting. he also contracted Hep C during his personal 'war on drugs'. in your experience, will the social worker most likely be willing to work on this based on the fact that he is clean? or will this prove to be an obstacle?

another thing is that during my husband's drug addiction, he was homeless for a while. desperate to seek shelter and medication he would pretend to have suicidal tendencies, hear voices and be all around crazy so that he would be admitted into a hospital (on a cold winter night) fed, medicated and given a bed. he had no real mental problems. this is a common ploy drug addicts use to get a bed. will my husband have to prove lack of mental illness? anyone experience this before?

also, during the meeting, the social worker mentioned that pets were of a concern depending on the temperament of the pet (naturally), but also on the number. she mentioned that more then 3 pets in the home would be something she would want to discuss further. we currently have 2 dogs and 4 cats in our home. they all have a great temperament and are wonderful with children. what concerns may i have there? is there a limit or is it something that can be worked around?

any imput or shared experience would be great.

thanks!

[ess922]

No personal experience with addiction/arrests or mental health concerns but I do have a chronic medical problem. We looked into international adoption and found it far less understanding/favorable for us than domestic. Agencies we talked to were down right scared to deal with us on an international adoption b/c of my health problem. Their rationale was that it can be hard to translate such things effectively into another language. Plus other countries may have different culturally based ideas regarding drugs, legal or health problems, etc.

If you have a good social worker who can look realistically with you at your current situation, including what supports you would have in place if (worse case scenario) your husband has an addiction relapse, you might be able to get through the international process.

Otherwise, if you have not ruled out domestic/private adoption, that might be another option to explore. Both of our kids' birthparents are aware of my health problem and actually appreciate that we have our own frame of reference for things in life being less than peachy all the time (if that makes any sense). They know we have and can deal with the hard stuff when it comes our way and both have said that is a comfort to them in terms of placing their children with us...

Regarding pets, again, thats a country-specific issue from what I understand. I remember reading that certain countries in particular are really anti-pet (or anti-multiple pets). Your sw should be able to tell you Ethopia's view on pets...
HTH. Good luck on your adoption journey.

[jaenelle]

I guess just ask around. It certainly isn't going to make it any easier to get approved. However, I've found great variance in what different countries and even different agencies are comfortable working with, so you very well may find one that's willing to overlook your past. Just look into every agency you can find, and ask them what their policies are. I emailed our agency several different times with questions about things I worried might eliminate us (psychiatric treatment in mine and DH's past, for one).

What I can tell you of our experience:

My DH was institutionalized for about a month in high school for psychiatric problems, and had counseling for a couple of years after that. I also had counseling for a few months in my early 20's. We passed our homestudy just fine -- just had to explain why these things had happened. Since we haven't needed any treatment in several years, our social worker saw no problems with approving us. If we sailed through that easily, maybe your more serious issues will be only a smallish bump in the road for you.

We have two cats, and there was never even any questions about them. Our social worker saw both of them while she was here and didn't even ask about them -- she could tell they were friendly and healthy just by looking at them.

I do hope you find a program that meets your needs -- it's awful to worry that something might exclude you from being approved when you don't really feel it impacts the job you'd do as a parent.

[kelceesmom]

My husband is a recovering alcoholic and there wasn't a huge issue with this. He did have to get a couple of letters of recommendation that he is working a program and still sober. Our social worker was great and I think they have pretty much seen and heard it all. As far as pets go, when we were doing our homestudy we had 5 dogs, 1 cat, 4 horses and 2 goats. All we needed to do was show that the vaccines were current. She did ask what we thought the dogs would do once the baby was here. We had a domestic adoption. I have heard that things like this can be a little more difficult with international. Good luck in your journey.

[Gavin's Mom]

No personal experience with drug addiction but I will keep you on the (getting longer) list of people that I will send up a prayer for!

I rave often about the wonders of adoption but I was a little surprised to see the (odd) restrictions that some countries have for their programs. (we ended up doing domestic adoption) I am older than my DH by 5 years and I thought that would be a problem but it wasn't. As long as you are a stable loving union I think that the other things will be a small bump.

Rita

[frida_94601]

Hello, my suggestion is to be completely honest, I cant relate with your hubbys past issues but I can say this, I belive in second chances, it seems that your hubby is doing great...my fiancee had problems with the law when he was a youth, we solved this issues by clearing his record in front of a judge he granted our wishes, we stated that we wanted to adopt, we hsve letters of recomendation from family and friends....he also had to attend classes...he is also in the final stages of maap classes...I think in doing so, it showes are willingness to commit to a child...I will wish you the best..
Lillian