[lakerlandy]

Wow..this may be a long one. My dh and I are looking for a little advice. Here is the short story. After many years of infertility/4 failed ivfs, we moved on. We adopted ds in 2004 @1yr of age. He was a miracle and all but fell in our laps. We did not join an agency or do any kind of networking. In fact, we were just discussing the adoption option when the situation became available and we jumped on it. I knew at the time that lightning would not strike twice...all though, it would be nice! Since our ds turned 3, we have actively been searching for #2. We were just getting ready to search heavily, join a website and an agency when another situation came along. This time, birthmom was only 5 mos along and chose us. After a while, she did ask for financial assistance, which went through our attorney and was all legal. All of her former children were currently in state care, and she knew this one would be taken also, so we thought we had a good chance. Well, basically, she had the baby w/out our knowledge, went into hiding until DCFS found the child and "confiscated" it. The baby is now in foster care and unavailable now to us. All this to say, that now, after 6 months of believing our adoption journey/family building was coming to a close and we could "move on" with life, we are now knocked back to SQUARE ONE . We are trying to explore our options. We obviously would like to get the best "bang" for our buck, as we are middle class folk. I would love to be like the celebrities and just go "choose" my kid from a line up and have it in like 3 days!!! Sorry, that drives me nuts though!! What is your best advice? We are looking at the parent profiles thing. Anyone had success with that? We have also talked about various agencies. Of course, the agencies who have the most success seem to also want my left arm and leg!! We live in Illinois. Any suggestions?? Thank you in advance for any advice!!!

[Whirled_Peas]

Sorry about your loss. Can you contact the state and see if they will place with you? Perhaps if parents designate they will terminate rights if you get to adopt it could work out.

To answer your question, we did parentprofiles. To avoid rules here about discussing agencies, I will not continue but you can pm me if you are interested.

We got matched with our baby by an obstetrician. I mailed out 112 letters and 5 days later we got our baby. The obstetrician said she gets lots of those letters and tends to ignore them as she finds it unethical to do the matching. However, she found our letter particularly touching. Then our birthmom came into the hospital without any specific adoption plan and wanted to leave right away so the dr. shared our information with her.

I got the ideas for the letters from someone on another forum. They were matched 6 weeks after mailing out letters.

Our letter was one page long. We focused on our parenting style. We included a photo collage.

[brooklyn_girl]

ugh, lakerlandy I'm soooo sorry to hear this. I can't imagine how frustrating that can be.

We didn't use ParentProfiles - for some reason they weren't allowing adoptive parents going the independent route in NY State to use the site for some reason...but I just wanted to send some hugs your way.

Whirled, I love that idea of sending letters to OB's. Nice!

[jp4ga]

We went with an adoption consultant. The consultant we used had a relationship with about 20 adoption agencies around the country. This put our profile out to many more situations than we could have done on our own. The consultants helped with our paperwork and did our family profile and helped pick pictures that would best tell our story. We signed up in August of 2007 and had placement in June 2008.

However, it cost around $30,000 in all.

[adoptionauthor]

I'm sorry to hear about your very frustrating situation. I can't even imagine how difficult this last few months has been for you.

We adopted our first son independently and are in the process of doing the same for baby #2. Our wait for our son was only 5 months total and we've been waiting 2 months so far and have already had several calls. Total cost for my also very middle class family, including advertising will come in around $3500 if we adopt in state, $4500 if out of state.

If your state allows it (check with a local adoption attorney) I would suggest the independent route as well. It's quite affordable. Create a website with the contents of your "profile" or birth mother letter and possibly do a bit of newspaper advertising.

I'm in the process of writing a book about using the internet in adoption so if you need any help or advice in creating a website feel free to PM me!

Best of luck.

[Fran27]

Sorry you went through that... It's one of the reasons we went with an agency, we wanted to make sure they had counseling and that we would not lose too much money if something fell through

Just wanted to say something about the comment about stars though... as far as I know, apart from Madonna, they all had to follow the normal process for their adoptions (if you're talking about BradGela).

[kellyjames]

Hi, Lakerlandy--

I know just what you mean about wanting to "move on" and be done with the family-building phase of life! Like you, we've been trying to adopt #2 for two years--we're actually matched now (she's due in about six weeks), but we've had a couple of failed matches so I'm trying not to lose my mind/go overboard in the meantime. We're in Illinois, too, though we work with an agency and attorney. I tried parentprofiles--PM for more on that or if you want any advice, etc. I also did some newspaper advertising. FWIW, I updated our letter last fall with new pics, etc and sent it to EVERYONE I could think of....and that's how we found our match this time around, through the coworker of a friend of a friend. So I do think networking works. I also sent my letter to OB/GYNs that I know or that my friends know, though that hasn't panned out. Yet I know from talking with my OB/GYN that they're more likely to pass a letter along if it's from someone one of their patients know (which makes sense).

Feel free to PM me if I can help you in any way, and I'm sorry for your loss. I know how it feels to get so excited (and think "we're done!") and then have it fall apart.