[randj]

My husband and I have been waiting with LDSFS for nearly 13 months. We've been on parent profiles for almost 4 months. We've also told everyone we know to spread the word about our hope to adopt.
We are still hopeful, but have received no emails or phone calls from pbmoms. If anyone knows a good agency with low fees can you PM us? We live in Utah.

Wrote a poem last month:

To Our Baby

Baby you're meant to be
Part of our family.
We want you little one!
A daughter or a son,
To dry these tears we cry
each day that passes by.

We'll teach you wrong from right,
kiss you and hug you tight.
Then give you more and smile -
and think of her awhile,
the one who'll let you go
she loves you too, you know.

She wants what's best for you,
a mom and daddy too.
To help you learn and grow,
and teach you all we know.
Adoption is the key.
Baby you're meant to be.

[mom2khmertwins]

Are you open to international adoption or special needs adoption? I know of LOTS of very low cost ways to adopt either internationally or special needs. I have 6 children, 5 adopted internationally all with special needs.

Kelly

[mom2malia]

Kelly,
We're in the same situation as randj, I always thought adopting internationally would be more expensive not less. How can it be less? Where do I go to find more information about this?

Thanks,
Natalie

[mom2khmertwins]

Where do you live? If you live in Utah, I teach a class on adoption basics. There is tons of information on low cost adoptions. I do not work for an agency so it is very nonbiased.

There are several ways to adopt internationally for low cost.

Go to a less expensive country. If you adopt from the African countries for example, you should easily be able to adopt for less then 10K (not including travel and homestudy).

Adopt a child with special needs (special needs could be a birthmark, a surgically correctable condition, over the age of 3 or more serious things). WACAP (an adoption agency) for example, has an entire book (of over 100 children) waiting internationally that they will do the adoption of for FREE (not including travel and homestudy).

Adopt two children (or more) at the same time. The cost per child is much less, especially if you are adopting siblings.

Check out organizations that provide grants to children waiting to be adopted. Some good ones are Brittany's Hope Foundation :: Home, Home Page, and www.reecesrainbow.org

I have a ton of other great ways, but that will get you started. Feel free to email me privately. We are now adopting our 6th adopted child. We have never spent more then $12K per child (including homestudy and travel). I would be very hard pressed to do that most domestic routes unless it was through the foster care system.

Kelly

[HappyHopefulMommy]

randj - We started out with same agency, but we are in CA. After 2 years of waiting and 2 failed adoptions (both of which were matches from parent profiles), we ended up switching to fost-adopt. We have not been placed yet, but the wait is much shorter and there are pretty much no fees. It is a very different process though. It is very hard to wait for our children, I hope all geos well for you. Good luck.

[vegaschristina]

I'm a foster/adoptive mom, and while the process is very different, and there is a bigger risk to your heart, my adoption of my oldest cost me a total of $261 and I got reimbursed $250 of that. I'm in process now of adopting her younger siblings.

My kids are considered special needs by the definitions above, but are normal in almost every way. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

[randj]

To HappyHopefulMommy, I'm sorry you're having no luck as well with the same route we've been trying. Back in February mom2khmertwins recommended two Utah agencies to us and we've finally decided we're ready to apply with them. It's going to cost about 3 times more than LDSFS, but since we've waited for so long we were able to save up enough money. They tell us the wait is typically 6 months, so we'll see! They do accept families from other states too, so if you're interested I can send you the info, just let me know in a PM.

Thanks vegaschristina for joining us as well! I think once we've been placed with our first child it will be easier to consider doing foster care. Right now foster care doesn't feel right for us. We'll continue to consider though...

Good luck to mom2malia in finding children as well!

Thanks mom2khmertwins for all the help! It's nice to have an expert to ask questions about multiple agencies.