Adoption Can Be Expensive!

After about 8 or 9 years of trying to conceive without any luck, my husband and I decided to start looking into adoption.  It isn't impossible to have children with PCOS, but it can be more challenging.  Many women with PCOS don't ovulate (myself included).  There are fertility drugs, like Clomid, that can be taken, but most doctors won't give it to you until you are closer to a healthy body weight.  I have had a very difficult time trying to lose weight.  I've tried many diet and exercise programs without much success.  I will usually lose about 25 pounds in the first couple of months, then my body figures out that I've made a change and I start gaining weight again.

I did Weight Watchers a few years back.  I followed the program.  I counted my points, measured and weighed my foods, made sure I got plenty of exercise, and drank lots of water.  In the first couple of months I lost 24 pounds.  I was so excited.  I was really hopeful that it would work.  About 3 months in, I just stopped losing weight.  It is normal to reach a plateau when dieting.  You are just supposed to stick with the program and eventually you will start losing weight again.  The plateau may last a month or two.  I waited 6 months and didn't lose any more weight.  I finally gave up on Weight Watchers.  I've found that what works best for me is to eat very little.  I would probably benefit from weight-loss surgery, but my insurance won't cover it.  I guess they would rather pay long-term for all of the illnesses related to obesity (diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, etc.) than pay out one time for weight-loss surgery.  Makes sense, right?

Since I've not had much luck losing weight, fertility drugs weren't really an option for me.  We started looking into private and international adoption.  International adoption can cost over $30,000.  Private adoption can cost over $10,000.  My husband and I just didn't have those kind of financial resources at the time.  We figured we would have to save for a few years before we could adopt. 

My best friend's brother-in-law and his wife adopted two little girls.  They adopted them through foster care.  They said that they adoption fees are usually less than $1000 if you foster-to-adopt.  The down side is that there are no guarantees.  But there are no guarantees with any adoption arrangement.

I worked with someone who paid for a private adoption through a Catholic Church.  A young, teen-aged couple was having a baby that they felt they couldn't keep.  The parents picked my co-worker and his wife to adopt their child.  Everything went well, initially.  The baby was born, the adoptive family took the child home, everything was fine.  They had agreed to give the biological parents updates on the child as part of the adoption.  About two weeks after the baby was with the adoptive couple, his temperature dropped one evening.  They took the baby to the children's hospital.  After being monitored over night, the doctors said he was fine and sent him home.  The biological parents were notified when the baby went to the hospital.  That week, the biological parents decided they wanted to have a meeting with the adoptive parents.  It was during that meeting that these teenagers told this couple they wanted their baby back.  The adoption wasn't final yet.  They had to give this baby that they had helped pay to be born, loved and cared for, back to these teenagers.  Can you imagine the heartbreak?

Cameron and I decided the Foster-to-Adopt program was probably our best chance at having children.  We weren't getting any younger, that's for sure.  In October, 2009, we started doing the paperwork and taking training classes to become Foster Parents.

In May, 2010, I started having some issues with anxiety.  Initially, I thought I was going to have a heart attack, but after many expensive tests, I learned there is nothing wrong with my heart.  We delayed the Foster Care process until I got my anxiety under control.

In the beginning of 2012, we started the Foster Care process again.  It takes 6 to 12 months to complete the training and get approved.  In Kentucky, you have to take 30 hours of training, you have to complete LOTS of paperwork, and you have to have a couple of home studies before you can be approved to Foster.

I am incredibly impatient when I'm waiting for something to happen.  So, this was almost torture for me.

On August 30, 2012, something miraculous happened!  I was at work and my cell phone rang.  It was my social worker.  She told me she was signing the paperwork right at that moment to approve our home for Foster Care.  She said she had some "kids" for us.

When we started the process, we decided we really wanted to adopt a baby or a toddler.  We live in a small, 3 bedroom, 1 bath, ranch-style home.  One of the bedrooms was being used as a den.  We had converted the other bedroom into a child's room.  The only thing we had was a baby bed that I bought from my sister when my niece outgrew it.  We didn't know if we would get an infant or a toddler.  But, we had only planned on 1 child.

I replied, "What do you mean by kids?"

She said, "We have 3 siblings.  They are all little.  The oldest is almost 3, there is a little girl who is 19 months, and the baby is 8 months."

I replied, "We only have one spare room."

She said, "They are all so little they can sleep in the same room." 

I said, "I don't know.  I'll have to talk to my husband."  She asked that I call her back and let her know.

I knew from the training that a lot of sibling groups get split up into different homes because most Foster Homes won't take groups of children.  I called my husband and we talked about it for about 5 minutes.  We both agreed that although this would be a huge challenge, maybe it was God's plan for us.  We really didn't want these children to be separated from their siblings.  I called the social worker back and told her we would do it.  I asked when we would get the children (thinking it would be a few days).

She said, "I will drop them off at your home sometime this evening."  Oh boy! 

I called my husband and told him to leave work and go get my Dad's Suburban so we could go buy some beds.  He left work and came to get me.  We went straight to Walmart and started buying what we thought we would need.  We bought bottles, diapers, 2 baby beds with mattresses, wipes, diaper cream, lotion, and baby wash.  Just the basics of what we thought we would need.  As we were loading the beds onto a cart to take them to the front to pay for them, my social worker called and said she was waiting in my driveway with the kids.  What??? 

We rushed home.  As I walked up to the social workers car, she opened the door of the back seat.  Three blue-eyed babies looked over at me.  My life changed forever starting that night.