My husband and I met while working at a residential facility for abused and traumatized children.
There were many kids in foster care who needed good homes. My husband and I had always
wanted to adopt but we always came back to it would happen “someday.” We spoke about
waiting until our other two children were a bit older before adopting a child.
When I was 38 years old, I got a phone call out of the blue from a family member. The family
member was young and not ready to have a child. They said they were 6 months along and
wanted to give the baby boy up for adoption, but asked and hoped that my husband and I
would want to adopt him. We had a 5 and 7-year-old at the time and had made the decision
to be done having biological children, yet the linger for wanting to adopt was always there.
We felt we were in a good place to have another child, and we did not want to see this
upcoming baby boy leave the family. My husband and 2 children agreed to take the baby.
I at first was so excited at the thought of adopting! I had worked with many
families that, too, had adopted. I wanted to give this child the best home we could offer him
once he was born. We were under a 3-month time period to get everything up and going.
Months earlier my daughter had been begging me and my husband to have another baby,
she wanted a sister. A parent we normally sat next to during Karate practice would say to
my daughter, “pray to God every night and he will listen.” I was so annoyed she would tell
my daughter that because my husband had a vasectomy and I was not going to have another
child biologically. My daughter stated she would pray every night for one, we are not a
religious family, yet by some “miracle,” we were blessed with a baby a few months later.
When we started to reach out to adoption agencies in the area, I quickly felt defeated and
heartbroken. We discovered the process was going to cost us $15,000 – $23,000! We didn’t
have that kind of money; we had enough to live and pay our bills month to month but did
not have savings for that amount. We started a Go Fund Me account while we continued to
search for other routes. One of my girlfriends who had recently adopted called and gave me
the name of her lawyer who handled her adoption privately. My husband and I found out
that Colorado was an “Agency State” which meant that all adoptions needed to go through
the Department of Human Service or an Adoption Agency. My sister had done
some research, and it looked like this adoption could fit under a “Kinship” adoption, and it
could be easy. We quickly found out that a Kinship adoption was for grandparents and aunts
and uncles only. Since we didn’t fit that bill, it was considered a Custodial Adoption which
meant more complication and more hurdles to jump.
We met with two adoption lawyers. The first lawyer was a well-respected lawyer, and he wanted
a $5000 retainer – which again, we didn’t have. That lawyer wanted us to work with him and an
agency, which would cost us $23,000+. When we left his office, my husband said in the car “we
can’t adopt this baby, we can’t afford to.” I immediately began to cry. I wanted this unborn child
and did not want anyone else to have him; in my heart, he was already ours. I could tell my husband
was building an emotional barrier around his heart, and he expressed he did not want to get excited or
create any hope around the adoption in case it didn’t work out. It was so hard for me to hold my
emotions and see my husband start to close down. He would say “I have to protect my family; I have
to protect my children from getting hurt and protect you from getting hurt.” I wasn’t able to hold that
truth; all I could do was hope that things were going to work out. I had made a promise to my family
member and a promise to myself that this baby was going to make it to our family. The cloud of fear
lingered above me at all times throughout the process, and trying not to burst out in tears often was a
task I would have to master until the baby was born, and we had the legal document to call him ours.
We decided to call the second lawyer, the one my friend referred to us. He stated he needed a $1500
retainer to cover guardianship, which would be the first step in the adoption process. If we were going
to do the adoption privately – not through an agency, we would need to get guardianship of the child the
day he was born and then have him for a year without either biological parent being involved.
We knew then this process was going to be so complicated since the biological mother was a close family
member. The emotional roller coaster had just begun… we still had 2 ½ more months to go before our baby boy
was born. In my heart, when I allowed it, I would let myself get excited – we were expecting again!
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