T and I are in the process of discussing when we are going to start the process to adopt again. Yes, I know we are in the middle of bankruptcy and yes, I do plan to wait until we have at least 75% of the costs saved. We won’t/can’t do it as haphazardly as last time with saving, then using the savings, then paying with credit because we won’t have credit to use and it was a BIG mistake last time. The good thing about bankruptcy is that it will, once all is said and done, actually give us a chance to save the money we will need to adopt again and build our emergency fund. Otherwise, unless we were given an inheritance or won the lottery, it would have taken us about 10 years to reach the point where we could save a decent amount of money a month.
Anyway, enough about the money aspect. On to agencies.
I’ve started gathering information about our various options and I sent an e-mail to the woman who was at Catholic Social Services when we adopted Widget but is now on her own. She was doing some domestic placements but I don’t know if she still is or not. My preference would be to use her again since I am very sure that she is pro-family, pro-openness, practices ethically and has true options counseling available but I don’t know if she can do placements here since we are not in the same county anymore.
There is the agency we used to start the process last time but I’m hesitant to use them, even if I feel confident that the local branch is doing things ethically, because of the overall agency attitude and connections. I don’t know whether I can justify using them, and contributing to the finances of practices I absolutely do not agree with: closed records, biased counseling, adoption is a “win-win” attitude prevalent in so much of their literature.
There is one agency I know we won’t be using. See this post here for a good example as to why. I cannot and will not give them a single dime. Besides they are outrageously expensive compared to most of the other agencies in the area. All that money going to lure unsuspecting expectant women into their trap, I don’t think so!
Otherwise, I’m not sure what our other choices are. There are a couple other agencies here and in GR where we used to live. I guess I’m going to have to do some extra research to find out what they are like. T and I both want this to be done as ethically as possible and want to feel sure that our future child’s first parents went into this knowing what the possible ramifications of adoption are to them, to their child as well as having explored parenting to its fullest.
We probably won’t go the route of using an attorney and adopting privately unless a situation came our way, mainly because the state requires an agency to do the homestudy and follow-up visits and because I don’t really like the idea of “networking” to adopt, which I know goes against using an agency too since they do advertise. I kind of wish something would just fall in our laps, where we could avoid having to network or advertising for expectant mothers, either on our own or through an agency. It just makes it feel so commercialized and like we are after a commodity instead of hoping to parent a child whose biological family is not able to.
I’ve toyed with foster-to-adopt in my head but we really don’t want to disrupt the birth order with Widget. It is something I would like to do in the future, when Widget and her next sibling are in school full time and I can devote myself to nurturing children who will likely have some different needs and backgrounds. Whether T is up for it, I don’t know. I have always envisioned myself with several kids but I know he has some reservations about more than two. He never really comments much when I throw it out there but I’m hoping over time, he’ll come around to the idea 
And to be honest, I miss the baby stage and want to do go through it again. So, yeah, I’m going to admit to some selfishness on my part. I love being mommy to a baby and watching all those beginnings.
