[HopefulMom07]

Hi! I have been reading a lot of your posts, but this is the first time I have posted. My husband and I are seriously considering international adoption and Ethiopia is high on our list. I have a few questions related to our current situation.

My husband is in school and will be graduating in May. He works part-time and I work full-time. However, we are in the process of starting our own business with his brother and sister-in-law. The plan is for my husband to start working full-time with his current company, or with another company, this summer. I will quit my job and focus on our new business in August. When we adopt I will be able to stay home with our child, with a family member caring for him/her for a few hours a week. We will have to move to a nearby town sometime next fall, as this is where we are starting our business.

My question is, is it going to be hard to get approved with my husband only working part-time right now and then our job situation changing, not to mention needing to move?

Sorry it is so long……

[Yash]

The job situation depends on how accomadating your homestudy agency is and your international agency. Some agencies will work with you to show that you do have the money to care for your future child, regardless of the hours your husband works.

Will you have health insurance even if your husband works part-time? I'm sure that will be a concern.

Other agencies only want to deal with easy situations where everything is very straightforward ie my husband has a full-time job with benefits as do I.

If you have to move while in the process that means you will have to update your homestudy.


Best of luck,

Yash

[Max'smom]

Look around for the right agency. Ours did not mind that my husband was only working part time and was in the midst of a major career change, but on the other hand, my job was stable and we had already put aside all the money we needed for the adoption and had not debts other than our mortgage.

[momraine]

I would wait until after you move. Use this time to do some research, maybe take a parenting class, or read some books and save up money. If you move in the middle of the process you are supposed to get an update to your homestudy, which can be easy and free, or expensive and messy. They will look at things like insurance and savings and debt. It would be better if one of you has a full time job.

[sak9645]

You are in the midst of a lot of big changes, and changes are stressful.

Your husband will be making the big change from school to fulltime work, and he may have to change employers if his current one can't give him the hours or benefits he needs.

You will be leaving a fairly stable work situation to work in a startup -- and startup businesses take a huge amount of effort and mental energy. You then plan to go from intense work in the new business to being an at-home Mom, and many women who have worked full time find the change to at-home status difficult.

You also plan to move out of your current home and city, where you know people, local stores, local activities, etc.

Your relationship with your brother and sister-in-law will change, when you assume partial responsibility for the new business success. Your relationship with other family members may also change, if they take on some child care duties.

Your income will fluctuate a good bit, too. And while you are involved with the new business startup, you may make little money, since it often takes a while till a new business turns a profit.

As a result of changes in employment, you will quite possibly have changes in insurance. If you have a managed care plan, this may cause you to have to change doctors.

All in all, your life is going to be a bit of a zoo over the next year or so, even without starting the adoption process. All the changes may make you worried and tense at times, to the point where you and your husband may occasionally snap at each other.

And since you will be intensely involved with your relatives because of your new business, you will feel it very acutely if one of them isn't totally on board with the idea of adoption, or with the idea of transracial, international adoption. It is not uncommon for relatives to voice fears like, "What if the child has a disease?" or "Don't you think that he'll have a hard time fitting in at school?" or "Are you sure that your agency is honest with you?" They care about you, and their concern is natural. But if you have to hear this stuff endlessly, especially during the long wait, it could strain relationships that should remain strong if you have to work with them every day.

Adoption is an extremely stressful process. There is the homestudy, with a lot of intrusive questions and meetings with the social worker. There is the paperchase, where you must collect a variety of documents to satisfy the homestudy agency, the placement agency, and the foreign country, and then get them certified and authenticated appropriately.

There is also the long wait, where you will scan every newspaper article about your country of choice and worry that the events could cause a shutdown of adoption, and where everyone who knows you are adopting will ask, "Haven't you heard anything yet?"

And, of course, there is new parenthood. Even becoming a parent of a homegrown child is stressful. It's even more stressful, when you adopt a child who may come to you with the minor bugs that internationally adopted kids invariably having, who may come to you with grief at losing his/her birthparents or favorite caregivers, and who will come to you with a whole lot of unknowns.

My advice to you is to wait to start the adoption process until the rest of your life is a little more stable. Give your husband a year to adjust to his fulltime job. Give yourself a year to help your relatives in their business, so it's off to a good start. Give yourself a year to settle into a new community. And give yourself a year to see the impact of all the changes you are making on your ability to avoid debt and save money.

Even if you can find an agency that does not require you to be in a stable job or home situation, you owe it to yourself to begin the adoption process with as few stresses as possible. The process, and parenthood, will provide all the stress you need!

Sharon

[momraine]

I hate to say it, but I agree with Sharon. Adoption can be very stressful. Plus with a new job, your dh may not have any vacation time till he has been there at least a year. He may have to take time off for some of the parts of the adoption. Mine had to take a day off for fingerprinting for our immigration paperwork because it was done in another city. The time for all the physicals and bloodwork often must be during business hours. Our social worker was able to do interviews on weekends, but some don't. Some adoption programs require travel and even escorted kids are escorted only to the US, to the airport that the agency uses, you must get to that airport to get your new child, and that airport could be across the US from you, that is more time off from a new job. The social worker who interviews you will be looking for stability. For the first few weeks, you will want to be with the child full time, not even leaving them with relatives for a few hours a week, because you are trying to bond. Of course there are all the fun doctors visits, it's not unusual for kids to come home sick or with parasites. The new daddy will want to take some time off to bond and get to know the new little one as well. I think this will be a great time for you to prepare. You can do some things like begin to gather paperwork for your dossier, birth certificates, marriage liscence, etc and start a folder for adoption. Read some books and keep a list so you can tell the social worker what you have done to prepare. This is such an exciting time in your life, you are so on the verge of everything. You sound like you will be awesome!

[bluedaisy]

Sometimes, though, when you feel like the time is right, you go for it. I started the adoption process during my last year of job school, in the midst of a national job search, a major house renovation, and after having just displaced my household to move a few hours across the state for grad school.

It ended up working out really well. I had some schedule flexibility while in school (even though I was also working) which allowed me to paperchase with much more ease. And, it turned out that we finished the major stuff in the house a week or two before we left to get our son, the same weekend as my graduation. I had time to spend at home with my son between grad school and my new job, which was in the same area and didn't require a move.

So it was the best decision we made. Some people deal better with lots of changes at once. I won't speak to your situation, as only you know your tolerance for craziness. But rest assured that there's never a "perfect" time to bring a child into your household. Let me restate that: if we had waited for the perfect time, it still would not have come.

[CLR]

Bluedaisy, those are words well spoken.

Hopefulmom07-It sounds like you have a lot of sound advice on this board. Explore your options...pros and cons, etc. If adoption is in your heart, it will either grow fonder with time or it will affirm your desire to move forward now. I hope the best for you.