We received an email this week about birth mother Kimberly from Birmingham, Alabama. She is a 36 year old woman, who is married to a 41 year old man. He is the father of the baby. They have two other boys, a 15 year old and a 21 year old. This was an unexpected pregnancy and they can’t afford another child. There are many positives with this situation. Kimberly has support for during and after the pregnancy, she has not done any drugs and has been receiving prenatal care. The child would have biological siblings, even though they are older that would be nice. They would like a semi-open adoption, so there would be some contact with them over the coming years, which we would like. The challenges to this situation… Due to Kimberly being in another state, we need to pay for the adoption agency she is using, which is $15,500. The agency she is using is based in CA. This makes it hard for that agency to do the birth mother work. This is making sure she is emotionally and mentally ready for the adoption and when the baby comes, she will follow through with the adoption. If we were to go with her and pay the other agency, we are then connected to that agency, even if the adoption does not go through. If the birth mother changes her mind, that $15,500 stays with the CA agency and we would then have to make another match with them, in order for that money to be put towards the next adoption. Otherwise the $15,500 is lost. Another concerns is the “at risk money”, which is the money paid to the the birth mother for her current expenses. For Kimberly, her and her husband are currently unemployed, so they want us to pay for rent, utilities, gas, phone, laundry, food and post adoption cost, totaling $8,600. This money would all be lost too if she changed her mind about the adoption.
We called our case manager Kayla after seeing this email. Brian and I felt pressure to apply to her because of the positives of this situation. Many of the birth mother that come to us have some kind of drug or alcohol use, another situation last week, showed the mother on herion, or the situations state they only want “traditional families”. So, Brian and I are always concerned that another “good” situation might not come up. I expressed our concerns and anxieties to Kayla and she was very helpful at calming that anxiety. She stated that their agency will have more birth mother emails coming out very soon for women with our agency, so we wouldn’t have to pay for another agency.
On another notes, we started moving furniture around in the house. We have been taking pieces out of your bedroom and placing the pieces in the other bedrooms. Next step is to get the room carpeted for you. Then we need to get a crib and changing table. Once we have all that, we are having someone come in to do a Winnie the Pooh mural. It will be awesome once it is all done.
babysedorwagner 