[lishop]

Well, we are now officially waiting for our third child, second through adoption. We have a 6 year old bio son, and almost 6 year old daughter from Liberia, and we are adopting an AA or biracial infant, boy or girl. We are being sent to two agencies that our agency here in Oregon works with, one in Atlanta and one in Miami. My question is that we are Jehovah's Witnesses and because of that already we can only go to 2 of the 6 agencies (the other 4 not considering us Christian enough). These two agencies don't have religious requirements. The other four agencies also don't accept LDS (Mormons), but we know of many Mormons who have adopted, one family three times through this program. Do you think our religion will play a huge role in an expectant mom's decision? Will she not choose us because of it? Our family profile is awesome, I would pick us...

Let me know what you guys think.

Melissa in Oregon
(Cade, 6 bio; Maya, 5 Liberia)

[lotsa_love_2give]

Hello!!!

Everyone has something that they worry about a potential bmom will not like. Some aparents may have pets in their home, have no religious preference, too many kids, and the list could go on. Our agency had a bmom who was stuck between a few different families, but something stuck out to her that made her choose her childs aparents. When asked she explained that she had never been to Disney Land and that particular family has pics of their recent visit there. That pushed them ahead of all the other families. It was a dream of hers that never came true to go and she knew that her child would get to.

I worried (still do) that some of the things about my family some potential bmoms won't like, but I still keep the faith and try to stay strong.

[Linny]

I think your religion will play a big part of who will choose you. I'm not trying to discourage you in any way; I'm being honest.
However, let me say too, that I've seen listings from agencies of situations needing to be 'matched'.....and some have said that the emom will only consider families who are JW.
You never know....but God does. Have faith and realize that if it's to be, it will happen---with all things working together to make it work--including your religious choice.

Sincerely,

Linny

[Shadowfaerie]

That was one thing I worried about a great deal. At the time we were working on our profile I was trying out different churches and my husband isn't religious, although raised Catholic.

I ended up saying I was Congregational (which is the church I was checking out at the time) and my husband had been "raised" Catholic because I thought being part of a religion would make us more attractive to the birthparents. As it turned out she was like us, basically Christian but didn't attend church, so in actuality I didn't have to torture myself by adding that we were religious at all honestly. She didn't even care. She cared that we liked animals.

If you're honest you'll find the best match, believe me everyone isn't looking for the same adoptive parents.

All the best~
Dawn

[jaenelle]

Does your agency ever get situations where the birthmom does NOT want to pick the adoptive family? I would bet that they do. How do they handle those situations? Some agencies will force a birthmom to choose a family whether she wants to or not. The agency we went through had a backup waiting list. If they got one of these situations where the birthmom did not want to choose, they would call the couple that had been waiting the longest with them. We had only been waiting two months when we got one of those calls -- that baby was our daughter. You might ask what happens in that situation. If you're really set on being "chosen" then this won't work for you, but for us it worked great. We were told by our homestudy agency that because of our age, finances, and some other things, that we were less likely to be chosen, so we researched and went for placement through an agency with the backup waiting list system. Saved us a lot of heartache, I think.

[lishop]

Thank you everyone for your replies!

Kati, our agency does their wait list like yours. Right now they're only working with about 10 couples, 2 of which are matched and waiting for the birth, so there are about 7 people ahead of us for the agency match list. They average placing about 2 babies a month, and only 2 or 3 a year are usually agency matched. But, I figure if all of the other couples are chosen before us, hopefully we would still make it to the top of that list in 4 or 5 months. Our social worker doesn't think religion will play much of an issue, but the program director is a little more concerned. Our sw said even families that our agency didn't think would be picked quickly have all had adoption processes shorter than a pregnancy.

Melissa in Oregon
(Cade, 6 bio; Maya, 5 Liberia)