Gay Daddy Blog

Major adoption news going on right now.  I can’t discuss some of the details out of privacy for the birthmother, but here’s what I can say about what’s going on.

1 - We got a call last Thursday regarding an adoption situation.  It was very specialized due to some medical concerns and did not fit anyone’s “key” within the agency.  Of the four families that were close matches, Jeff and I were the closest and had been waiting the longest so we got the call.

2 - I prefer not to disclose the medical issues, but I can say that the baby is full African-American and the birthmother is 28 years old.  She has dealt with some personal problems in the past few years and is unable to parent her child at this time.

3 - It took us several days to obtain enough information regarding the situation to make an informed decision.  On Sunday night we gave a tentative “yes” to the agency provided three questions were answered to our satisfaction.

4 - The questions were answered satisfactorily yesterday afternoon.  However, the birthmother failed to show up at the meeting to irrevocably surrender her parental rights.  She was found later but was in a mental state where she was unable to sign the paperwork.

5 - At this point in time we are waiting to here from the agency.  We’ll know a lot more later today.  (That’s been the mantra we’ve been saying every day since Thursday.)  Meanwhile we’re keeping our fingers crossed.  I may have a baby on my lap in 48 hours, or this whole thing may have fallen apart.

So that’s where we’re at.  I’m hopeful, but very wary at the same time.  Jeff and I are thinking of seeing the new Harry Potter movie this evening just to get our mind off of all this.

Another week, another phone call.  That’s one of the nice things about having been in the program for a while.  The staff begins to think of you as a semi-priority for being considered for situations and always tries to take a second glance at your file, even if there might be otherwise “enough” profiles to show a potential birthmother.

The latest situation involved a thirty-something birthmother with a longstanding drug problem.  She learned she was pregnant last last year and entered a treatment program several months later (as pregnant heroin addicts can harm the baby if they stop “cold turkey”).  She had been using methadone since partway into her pregnancy, and had used cocaine “a couple of times” since that time.  She had not used alcohol during her pregnancy.

Knowing her drug program made parenting unrealistic, she was creating an adoption plan.  Our profile didn’t quite fit her situation but was close, hence why our social worker called.  The agency only had one exact match to show her and wanted to find some others so she would have a choice.

Jeff and I did a little research into the effects of heroin on an unborn child.  It can have some effects, but the primary one is that it can cause premature birth and all the problems therein.  She was about a month from her due date anyway so we figured the worst danger had passed so we agreed to be considered.

Seven profiles were shown to the mother.  She did not choose ours, as she elected to go with a family with several adopted children.  She said she liked the idea of her child having a big family.  That’s not something we can offer.

So she chose another family.  We weren’t too disappointed.  It’ll happen when it happens.

As I said before, after several months with no news we’ve had a bit of excitement this week.  The latest was a phone call this morning from Terry concerning a “situation”.  (When our agency says situation, they mean a case that is just outside of our key, but close enough they want to ask if we want to be shown.  Sometimes the circumstances of the situation are such that it doesn’t match anyone’s key.  Other times it doesn’t match many keys and they want a few additional profiles to show to the birthmother).

According to Terry, this concerns a young birthmother.  Her due date for the baby is next week sometime.  The birthfather hasn’t been interviewed by the agency, so they don’t know his medical and drug histories (not that it’s a particular issue to us — like many keys, ours is more restrictive on the birthmother because of the increased danger to the baby).  He is aware of the adoption though and is in support of the adoption plan.

Terry said that the birthmother has no mental health issues and no drug or alcohol use during the pregnancy, so the baby will likely be healthy.  The baby will be 1/2 Puerto Rican, 1/4 African-American, 1/4 central European.  The sex of the baby was not disclosed (and we forgot to ask.  It’s considered somewhat awkward for us to inquire about the sex, as our program doesn’t allow us to restrict our key to one sex or the other).

Now remember, our adoption agency has two programs — one is African American and mixed race children.  The other is Caucasian, Latino, and Asian (CLA).  There is a different fee structure for each program, with the Caucasian program being more expensive as the AA-mixed race program is partially subsidized.  We had elected to participate in the Caucasian program only (well, any race in the CLA program) because we were concerned about the lack of racial diversity in our community.

So we had to be called because this child is 1/4 African-American and technically outside of our key.  We weren’t as concerned about this situation though, and believe we will be able to give this child the additional support he or she may require in life.

We’re guessing that a lot of people will elect to be considered for this baby, so we probably won’t be chosen.  You never know though.  The birthmother will be shown the profiles tomorrow (ack, today! it’s after midnight!) so she’ll probably decide the same day.  If not, almost certainly by Wednesday.  So if we don’t get a call by Wednesday evening then I can’t imagine this will come to anything for us.

Either way, I wanted to keep you apprised.  I’ll post an update if the birthmother chooses us.

Update (16 hours later): Got an e-mail from our social worker.  The birthmother has narrowed her choices to three families and we are not among them.  Perhaps we’ll have better luck next time.

The vast majority of comments I receive on this website are spam comments (”buy Viagra!  Click on this link”).  Some are messages of encouragement from other parents and prospective parents.  But about a week ago we received a few unusual replies from a woman in Florida.  She wrote in short cryptic language that she wanted to discuss placing a baby.

I wrote her at her e-mail address and we exchanged a few notes over the next few days.  The pregnancy turned out to be a friend of hers.  A woman who has two children and was “totally unattached” to this pregnancy.  She was about to be evicted, didn’t have a car, and was looking for someone who could provide immediate support.  She specifically wanted a gay male couple to raise her child.

Now I know that there are con artists on the web who prey upon prospective parents.  They try to get them to send funds using all sorts of excuses.  I had no way of knowing whether this was real or a scam, so I engaged in the conversation with two rules.  #1:  Not to send any money.  Period.  #2: Any adoption must be cleared by our agency, who would do the screening to make sure everything was in order.

Well, rule #2 turned out to be too much for my contact.  She said that the woman was in a “real jam” and needed “immediate help, not more bureaucracy.”  They had no interest working with an agency, so it wasn’t going to work.

Even if it wasn’t a scam (and in retrospect I’m pretty sure it was), the adoption probably wouldn’t have worked.  They were in Florida and Florida has a strict ban on gay people adopting.  If you’re gay, you can’t adopt — period.  I had been carbon copy’ing Terry, my social worker, the entire conversation.  Terry said the only way the agency would get involved in a gay adoption from Florida would be if the mother came to New Jersey and had the baby here.  Since she had two kids, no car, and was broke and virtually homeless, that wasn’t likely to happen.

And so an interesting conversation came to an end. Nothing happened and I didn’t think anything would come of it, but it was an interesting little nibble.

(FYI, for privacy reasons I don’t normally post the states that the birthmothers are located within, but made an exception in this case as Florida’s law is so specific to this story. It’s a big state and I didn’t mention a city so I believe privacy is still maintained.)

I haven’t written in a few months because there hasn’t been anything to report.  At least until this week.  A bit of excitement going on.

First up, I met our new social worker a few nights ago at a “waiting families support group”.  There were nine people there — two social workers, three couples, and myself.  Jeff works until 7 so he wasn’t able to make it to the meeting.

Our new social worker, Terry, is older than our last one, Lauren.  She has been with the agency longer and really knows her stuff.  Admitted, we were pretty impressed about Lauren as well.

Terry surprised me when she said that the number of adoptive parents is approximately the same as it was when we joined the agency.  With the agency’s difficult obtaining its Hague accreditation for international adoptions I’d have thought that domestic adoptions would be way up.  Especially with the economy as it is.  And so adoptions are up, but only in terms of the number of children being placed, but not the number of parents in the program.

She also said that the number of non-traditional situations is up as well.  Sibling groups, for example, or children less than a year old that aren’t newborns.  Some parents are attempting to raise their children and discovering it’s just more than they can financially afford.  So they are turning to adoption when the baby is 6-8-10 months old.

We learned that the agency will be redoing the “key” form that we filled out regarding what situations for which we want to be considered.  We will be getting a new key in a month or two.  We’ll redo our profile letter at that time.  So if we don’t have a kid by then we’ll have a bit more news to report.

Another bit of excitement to report.

The day before Thanksgiving we got a phone call from our agency around 10am with a possible emergency placement.  Here’s the scoop:

A white woman had given birth the day before to a boy.  Six pounds, two ounces if I recall correctly.  Unfortunately, the mother was a long time methadone user.  (Methadone being what they treat heroin addiction with).  Furthermore, the baby had tested positive for Xanax in his system.

The mother, according to the agency, had two children in foster care in her state.  She was also refusing the name the birthfather out of concern for her safety, so she would need to pick birthparents in the state of New Jersey.  (Quick lesson: When an adoption is taking place, the birthmother can use the laws of her state or the laws of the state with the adoptive parents.  New Jersey has very progressive laws regarding not naming the birthfather, hence why she would need parents from this state).

Unfortunately, the baby was showing signs of addiction — fussiness and restlessness.  So that morning the hospital had put morphine in his morning formula.  As a result he was sleeping well.  (If you put morphine in my morning formula I’d probably sleep well too!).  There was no official statement from the doctors, but nurses with experience in this kind of issue said he would be in the hospital for at least a week.

Getting off the phone with the agency, I called my brother-in-law who is a doctor in Ohio.  As it turns out, my sister was having trouble with her pregnancy and they were in the emergency room of his hospital.  So after speaking with him he was able to talk to several specialists about possible side effects of prenatal exposure to Methadone and Xanax.

Here’s what I learned.

Methadone is associated with low birth weight.  Some anecdotal reports said that the children suffered some mental developmental issues, although that could be as much a product of their environment as the drugs.   Generally speaking methadone babies were born addicted but did not suffer long-term problems.  Xanax, on the other hand, was associated with a cleft palate when the baby was exposed to the drug in the first trimester.  Fortunately the baby did not have a cleft palate.  One or the other drug (I don’t remember which) was also associated with respiratory issues, but the baby didn’t appear to have those either.

So I called Jeff and we talked about the issue.  We decided to go ahead and put our name into consideration.

We never received a call back from the agency though so we were obviously not picked.  Sad, but our time will come.  Either way, it was a bit of excitement that I wanted to report to y’all.

Jeff and I heard from our adoption agency today.  Seems they’re closing our local office.  Our social worker will be losing her job after a “period of time” in which she will be working as a “consultant”.  We take that to mean she’ll be doing two things.  First, she’ll be continuing to work with the birth mothers most of whom would otherwise up and leave the agency.  Second she’ll do the home visits, in which she’ll visit the homes of the prospective (or completed) adoptive parents (thus saving someone in South Jersey from making a long trip).  They’ll probably keep her on the payroll until the birth mothers give birth, at which time she’s out of there.

We’re rather bummed about this, and not just because we feel bad for our social worker.  We like our agency, but would not have joined with them if we had to do a ton of driving to the south Jersey office.  We’re lucky in that we’re done with the majority of our visits now. We may have to do a couple around the time the adoption is completed, but even then we’ll try to do some fast talking so they’ll Fedex our paperwork to us (and we’ll Fedex it back the next day).

Our agency is having a bad year, I think.  A new international treaty regarding international adoption has gone into effect, and all agencies which deal with it will need to be certified by… was it 2010?  If they’re not certified it becomes a criminal offense to offer international adoption services.  Our agency lost round one of getting their certification.  They’re in the midst of appealing and are confident they’ll get it, but at this point they don’t have it.  If they don’t have it in 2010, they’ll be able to finish some adoptions that have reached a certain stage, but otherwise they’ll have to shut down about 60% of their business.  In Jeff and my opinion we will see widescale office closings and staff layoffs at that point.  Many of the international parents will undoubtedly switch into the domestic program, thus glutting the number of prospective parents and causing further delays for us.  So we’ve got our fingers crossed they’ll get their certification problems worked out.

Just a little note to let you know that at the moment we’re on hold.  Jeff and I are taking a cruise at the end of August, so when the remainder of the money was put down at the end of June we temporarily had our file pulled so that we won’t be selected.  Once we return in mid-September we’ll go back into the list and await the big day.

Otherwise, no news to report.  No new calls or e-mails since my last update.  As soon as I have something to report I’ll post it here.

We received a promising little e-mail from our social worker two months ago.

Just figured you would like some good feedback since I got some today. One of the other offices had a website inquiry sent to them and they were interested in your profile and another couple from the website. It was just an initial inquiry, and the social workers have not met with her yet, so we don’t know if the situation is a match for your key, but I wanted to know the website is working, and there is interest in your profile. If we eventually get an application from this woman I will let you know!

So for two months I’ve been patiently waiting to here more on this lead.  She hasn’t written again though (on this subject).  So I wrote her an e-mail this evening asking if she had any follow-up information on the lead.  I doubt it’ll go anywhere, but one never knows.  I’ll let you know what I hear back.

Update: Our social worker got back to us fast.  Here’s her response:

The birth mother never responded to our contact. A placement from this inquiry never occurred. However, the positive piece is that you got some good feedback from a potential birth parent.

So nothing for us there.  Oh well, was worth looking into. 

I’ll let y’all know when there’s more to report.

About a month ago we got another call. The birthmother was due in two weeks, and was in excellent heath.  She had tested HIV-negative and had been receiving prenatal care since the first trimester.  All good signs.

The reason this was outside our key (and most keys) was that the birthfather’s race was something of an unkown, so they wanted to have approval from adoptive parents before their profiles were shown to the birthmother.  According to my social worker, the mother is white but there were several possible birthfathers including one Asian, three white guys, and one Africa-American.

Jeff and I talked it over, and we said we’d be glad to have our profile shown to her.  Jeff figured nothing would come of it, but I spent the next week tip-toeing around the house wondering if I was about to become a daddy.

Sadly, it was not to be.  Our social worker called us back and said the birthmother had picked another family.

Our day will come though, and so we remain patient but hopeful.