[CradleKeeper]

Hi, I am Rae. I am new to this board and to this site as well. Last night it occured to me I might find earth-based support for our adoption somewhere. And Bamm! Here you are!

I am turning 39 in a few months. I practice Earth-Based Spirituality, as well as the pursuit of attending to my Heart. I am an artist and use that as a means of spiritual expression/connection. I sometimes attend the Unitarian Church here and plan to claim that on our HomeStudy.

Our Birth Mother (with whom we will be sharing a cooperative adoption) is a practicing Buddhist and has chosen us among other things because of our beliefs! Rock on!

Blessings to each of you on your journey.

Peace,
Rae

[BestLight]

Hi, Rae.

Nice meeting you!

Glad that you and your child's firstmother have found each other. Has the baby been born yet?

Peace to you, too.
Lori

[CradleKeeper]

Hi Lori,
The baby is due in a few months. I was able to see sonagram pictures last week. This website has been very helpful. I love having a spiritual support board.

How is your world?

Thanks for the interest.
Rae

[lahdh4]

Just saying a quick hi!!

I am a first mom in an OA.

[silverowlfeather]

I saw this thread and thought I would reply.

I am happily married for five years to a wonderful dh who is a computer geek by trade. I am a farmer by trade and a stay at home mom to an incredibley sweet special needs son we adopted privately. He came to us almost exactly two years ago at the age of 7 and we finally got to finalize in October of 07! He is about to turn 9. Currently I homeschool him although we started out in regular school so he could have access to special services and more socialization. After a year and a half things were still going bad so went the homeschool route. Homeschooling is going pretty well but we are looking into a special school in the area where he could help with his problems and schooling at the same time. We believe every child is different and we just do our best to give ours what he needs.

I started looking around on adoption.com and the forums because the dh and I want another child and our ds misses having siblings terribly (we weren't given the chance to adopt any of the other kids the bps kept them, they ranged in age from 13 years to 6 months) otherwise we would have. I have PCOS and my dh has an unspecific but verified fertility problem so we have been debating between really pursueing fertility treatment or going for a traditional adoption and what kind.

Our experiences with adoption had led us to believe for awhile maybe fertility treatments might be better mostly because we are pagan (Theodish) and that has been a problem in our experience. 2 1/2 years ago we went through the foster-adopt program with our state. We graduated from the program but towards the end they asked us our religion and we told the truth. Within two weeks of telling what our religion is and after going through the graduation and getting our certificates we were kicked out supposedly because of unresolved issues I have with my father.....thats curious I was upfront and very clear about where my father and I stood on everything the whole way through it. He was against adoption and that was the main thing. Him and my mom just kept saying relax you'll get pregnant. HAH!

But in the end it all turned out okay but still with alot of twists. Within two days of being kicked out of the state program and being completely devestated an aquanitence contacts us because she knows someone who knows someone and they have talked about it and would like us to adopt her son! She said he had ADD in truth it was alot more than that which I won't go into here but from that moment we loved him and nothing has mattered since we just work very hard to get him all the help possible. So I hang up the phone with the birthmom and call my parents and lay it on the line. DH and I are adopting a little boy if you wish to be gps then here is your chance otherwise you won't be seeing us. :-) Suddenly when the child became a child and not a concept they loved him too and have been wonderful grandparents and dote on him more than I ever imagined. They are coming to his birthday party this weekend and consider it the best way to celebrate their 29th anniversary because nothing makes them happier than seeing him. Now they are pro adoption and I know will support us or my siblings if we decide to do it again.

So back to today, DH still have a current homestudy I THINK it was good for two years or for six months plus an update if we commit to another child and we are sort of debating going for it again sooner than later for several reasons. The first one being it was really expensive the first time around and if it could save money it would help. I would much rather spend the money on the child (or hopefully baby) than on getting the child. The second one being my siblings and I are all two years apart and I guess I understand why now I am just really having the urge that its time. And the third one is that because we didn't do a typical agency adoption it was really hard to find a good social worker and attourney on the fly last time and now we have people we have worked with and trust.

Our social worker is out of agency that does strictly Guatamalan adoptions generally but also takes special cases like ours was. So we have considered that but they also have a pretty much flat fee of 25K we paid less than 10K with our son so that is a really scary number. But its on the table too. We really would like to do another American adoption but of an infant this time because the thing that hurts about our son is that he had a great many experiences and was hurt by alot of people before he was part of our life. I know he hurts and seeing him hurt hurts us because we can't make it go away entirely no matter what we do. Although I know its unrealistic but if another child not baby fell out of the sky essentially again we would love them regardless too even though our goal is an infant this time.

Sorry I know that was long winded but in a nutsell I am a very proud mom to a lovely adopted boy who wants to add another child to our family and came here to try and sort out the how we are going to do it.

On that note does anyone know of any pagan friendly agencies that work domestically in Missouri?

Steph

[sunflwrmoonbeam]

Hi! I'm Ashley and I just joined today.

I'm 24, and my husband will be 26 at the end of the month. After many miscarriages, we've decided we'd rather adopt than go through fertility treatments. Thus, I'm here.

I'm a member of ADF (www.adf.org) and consider myself a Celtic Pagan. More specifically, a Neo-Druid with Celtic Reconstructionist leanings, but that's way too long

We live in Illinois, so if any pagan adoptive families in that state or near there are reading this, I would love to hear about your experiences.

At this point we're in the research stage. We're planning to apply to a local agency in August or September, and hopefully be done with homestudy by January. We're going for domestic infant, by the way.

So, hi! I'm very new to all of this and any advice would be appreciated.

[CradleKeeper]

Hi Lori,
Thanks for the message. The birthmom has decided to parent her little one. I have been recovering...so to speak but am doing much better. Of course, it is always a possibility that this will happen. It is such a collaborative process with no real way of knowing the outcome until it happens.

Hope all is well in your world.

Peace,
Rae

[Weavingfire]

I'm Anne and our family consists of me, my husband, our 5 year old son and a welsh corgi (one of those little orange and white dogs with the tiny legs).

We had always planned on adopting our second child and complications from a cesarean section made that a firm reality for us.

So, here we are.

We are pretty "dyed in the wool" Pagans, I was very active in ADF (http://www.adf.org) for several years and only recently stepped back to pursue my *other* passion which is Doula work and (hopefully) Midwifery.

We are looking for a child under 3 years old (does not have to be an infant) and we don't care what race or nationality our child comes from. I always dreamed of having a little girl, but if the gods place a boy in our laps, well, at least we have the clothes for him already ;-).

We are currently going through the state but pretty frustrated with the "don't ask, don't tell" policy towards our religion. We are not ashamed of our beliefs and we will raise all our children to love nature and love one another.

[Weavingfire]

Hey Ashley!

It's Anne ;-)

[sunflwrmoonbeam]

Hi Anne! Am I talking to you on 3 websites now? I'm PMing with a mom from Oregon on MDC, wondering if that's you.

[lunaluvr]

Hi everyone! We want to expand our family through adoption. I went through 10 years of infertility due to PCOS, divorced & got remarried and had 2 accidental but VERY welcome & wanted babies. They are 9 & 7 now. I didn't want to deal with "older" pregnancies so we decided not to have anymore birth children but would love more children in the family. We are eclectic pagan and homeschool.

We haven't actually started any steps on the adoption path. I'm curious how our beliefs will be received, especially since we live in the buckle of the bible belt.
;-)

Any suggestions on how to go about finding pagan birth mothers?