Adoption Option Number 2

Okay, so the second option for adoption in Oklahoma is by using an adoption agency. I feel like I could seriously write a book about this, so I will try and touch on the important things!

The agency works as an advocate for both the adoptive family and birth parent wanting to choose placement for their child. The agency counsels both the birth parents and adoptive parents before the actual adoption takes place. Most agencies have some sort of training and also an application process.

The cost for using an agency in Oklahoma can be anywhere from $3,500-$25,000. Usually this amount is paid over the course of the adoption with a large amount paid after placement. They are so smart waiting until you have your sweet something in your arms to then ask for the big bucks! And can I tell you, IT'S SO WORTH IT! I have never been more excited to write such a big check...but you've got your bundle of love in your arms and you've experienced one of God's most amazing miracles of adoption! Well talk more about cost later...

The hardest part to starting this process is to choose your agency. A good place to start is the website for the Oklahoma Adoption Coalition linked on the right of our blog. They have a list of placing agencies. I would encourage you to ask around and talk to friends who have adopted that could give you advice. When you are looking online, you can generally tell if the agency has the same agenda as you. Are they a Christian agency or do they share the same beliefs? What do they offer birth parents as far as counseling and support? Is the counseling free? If so, for how long? I got frustrated because one agency said they do offer counseling but it was half price for the birth parent. Another agency said they offer free counseling, but when I asked for how long it was only until 2 months after placement. What? This is something that birth mothers will deal with off and on for years...2 months is an insult (but I guess it's better than half price?)! Make sure that your agency has a good handle on respect of birth parents and that there is no coercing going on to place the child. The agency should never bring up adoption unless the parent is seeking placement or information on placement.

When you are researching agencies think about your new child and family. What are you going to need as far as support in 5-10 years. Does this agency provide any kind of post-adoption care for the family and child? Do they have get togethers, seminars, support groups, classes, camps?

It's so easy when starting this process to focus on placement and feeling the need for it to happen as quickly, care free and cheap as possible... Remember there is a reason that adoption costs money, the agency does a lot of terribly hard work and they need to be paid just like any other hard working individual. The cost in adoption falls on those that can pay and that have resources...the adoptive family. So if you need to think about it this way, keep your focus that you are helping your child's birth parent survive this. This is the most painful thing that a person will go through in their life, choosing placement for their child. It takes a lot of support to survive it.

There can be grants available for funding if that is a problem. Some agencies have those grants available for "hard to place" babies (African American, exposures to drugs, alcohol, etc). Some agencies allow for donations to be made for a specific adopting couple that are tax deductible. Check with your church. Several churches are starting adoption ministries that will help grant money to pay for adoptions. Most any couple you talk to about how they afford adoption will tell you that God made it happen. There are miracles left and right about how God works it out! Take a leap of faith!

Generally speaking, domestic adoption in Oklahoma can be rather quick. Wait time from "ready" to placement can be two weeks to two years. This usually depends on what specifics you have placed on the child you are open to (race, exposures, open/closed adoption, etc.). Most agencies allow for the birth parent to pick the adoptive family. There usually is no "match" like in international adoption.

Most agencies encourage some degree of open adoption. This could be anything from pictures and updates twice a year to visits, phone calls, emails on a monthly basis. Most of the time agencies still encourage some confidentiality, so there aren't visits at homes or baby sitting and such. People always ask me that, so that is why I addressed what "open" can mean! Having an open adoption is not legally binding. The adoption is still complete/final, but there is a written agreement of contact between the birth parent and adoptive parent. Most of the time this agreement fluctuates as the relationship grows and changes. The adoptive parent and the birth parent can choose what they want their adoption to look like as far as openness. I will have to devote a whole post to open adoption...I could go on and on here!

After a child is placed in your home, the birth parent sets a court date to relinquish rights. After this is complete the child is really in legal custody of the agency and the family is more like foster care. For the next 6 months you have home studies, interviews and check ups to make sure the child is safe and thriving in the new family. Once this period has lapsed the agency releases you to legally adopt the child. Now you take your attorney and get a court date set for finalization! The only hard waiting time is from leaving the hospital with your baby to the court date for the birth parents rights. Once this has been completed, you can rest easy praying that you can pass the interviews! Ha!

Hope this has been helpful. Please post any questions or comments so that we can address anything that I have missed!

A Birth Mother's Thoughts

We are trying to think of way to not only encourage other families to adopt, but also give a positive voice to adoption. In this post we are trying to improve this journey for everyone involved by opening our eyes to what birth parents go through who choose to place there child for adoption.

We wanted to give a birth mother an opportunity to give us insight as to what they feel and experience during the process. Below is a snipit of Abbie's story.

"Adoption has so, so much potential. In my case, I grew up in an extremely abusive household. I've been beaten, battered, physically, emotionally and mentally tortured, my entire life from people who were "family". I have racist, prejudiced "family" who no matter where I've been or what I've done, they have bent over backwards to have a controlling interest and damming attitude, as no matter how great or how amazing, it was horrible and had to go. To find myself engaged, I was thrilled. To find myself pregnant with twins, I was horrified.

So was my fiancee. He ran.

When your not an abortion advocate, (i am pro-life but respect folks choices in life to leave it at that) You have to think the options are adoption or keeping the baby. My girls deserved better. My girls did not deserve to grow up where I had, even though I could provide for them. No, adoption seemed like such a great choice. Especially open adoption. So I walked in the door. Little did I know, my adoption, although not even started yet, was already horribly messy.

At 4.5 months I was completely turned away altogether by the only agency in my small town.
Because I hadnt given birth before.......I was turned away and told to come back at 6 months along, when I've accepted the idea that i'm really pregnant. I was measuring 34 weeks for a singleton with twins at the time.

At 6.5 months along, I wasn't allowed to look at certain profiles, because of the possibility of pre-term labor, which my agency defined as a "special need" Their reasoning? If I selected a multiple accepting family, but not a multiple accepting with special need family, I could severely detriment their mental state, and possibly inhibit their chance of a successful adoption because they were working with me at the time. Never was it mentioned that I could have to choose another family because the family I selected wasn't able to handle preemies, just what their concerns for the adoptive families were.......

This left me with 2 choices for in-state (the less horrifying of the court dates choice)
One was a family whose religion was LDS. I don't know enough about the religion nor could I find out enough information to see what their beliefs were, which scared me even more.

If you walk into my agency right now and you are 8 weeks pregnant but you have given birth before, whether you placed or not, my agency will bend over backwards for you. They will leave you alone in the confrence room with every profile in the building while they work on housing, and assistance for you. If you are white, it happens much much faster. If you have placed a child before, they will get you lunch and go pack you up out of whatever situation you were in to help you better yourself. You, have known and accepted the reality of pregnancy and giving birth.

However, if you've never given birth before, you may not walk in the building until you are 6.5 months along.

If you are carrying multiples you may only see profiles of special needs and multiple accepting families, unless there is a racial consideration, thereby limiting your profile choices to next to nil. You cannot contact a birthfamily nor will they be contacted on your behalf until you have come to 6 counseling sessions (to see if your serious about considering placement). So that narrows it down for most moms, looking at profiles at 7 months along. Depending on family interest, and some other factors, it may take a few weeks to get together to see if its a great match. IF, the match seems good at 7.5 months then you are a lucky one who gets about 2 months before birth to really get to know your chosen family.

But what about the ones who don't? What about friends like mine who chose their family 2 days before the birth for an "open adoption". They are giving their babies basically to strangers! In an effort to promote open adoptions nationwide, Im (gulp) suggesting a revolution.


Lets encourage adoptive families and most agencies to completely change their ways of thinking. This isn't clinical. It shouldn't be treated as a whose better situation. Adoption is an extremely hard but severely love driven choice, that isn't to be taken lightly, nor made quickly. A rushed decision doesn't lead to the best for any child, or any adoptive family either. Think about how much the adoptive family is missing without really knowing the woman who gave birth to their child. Remove the visiting and sharing pics, etc. for a minute. If you are adopting, think of what would happen if you go into a hospital and pick up a baby that they say is yours and you just walk away. Yes, you would have a baby. But that is all you would have. You dont know if everyone on both sides of his genetic heritage had environmentally induced
asthma from birth and they were on this or that medicine to survive. You dont know that when he is 4 and decides that peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches are the best things ever, that you dont need to throw up, he gets that from his birthmother.

Adoptive parents, just picture this. What would happen, if you KNEW who was giving birth to your child. What if whatever experience or events led you to choosing adoption, could be vicariously lived through one incredible woman who not only wants to share this with you, but has decided the best option for her child was to entrust you with his or her care? What if ( this is an example done by a friend) you, and she both kept a journal. You could be writing all sorts of things about what you do, your likes and dislikes, your plans for the future with your children, your feelings during this time, and then while she was reading that, and knowing that you were so breathlessly waiting for the chance to offer her child everything you had, she was filling you in on the details. Who has what diseases. That she recommends the baby get allergy tests at birth because both her and her brother spent time in the NICU with severe breathing problems before someone realized they were environmentally asthmatic, allergic to pollen and grass, and she would like the baby to not have to go through that, as well as you have the knowledge on whats ahead, to help you be better parents to this precious child. What if you decided to meet Tuesdays and Thursdays to talk about where life is taking you, what you both desire as far as communication after the birth. Do you want to be super close? If so, what does she want? The more time you have to talk about this before the birth, the better, more keepable plan you can have. This benefits all by making sure the plan is clear and concise to the best of your abilities. Doing so makes birthing a baby intended for adoption that much easier. That less of a stress on your birthmother. This just gives you that much more of an amazing chance, at an amazing relationship, with tons of love and support surrounding your adoption .

This is why im advocating that any birth mother should be able to talk with anyone at an adoption agency at any time. Im also advocating that adoptive families should open their eyes to the amazing possibilities of this experience. I believe, if you are brave enough, to accept talking to someone who may be interested in placing with you, from a very early start in the pregnancy, you will receive a reward, one day, when your child comes to you and thanks you, for being brave, keeping the lines of communication open, and completely understands the choice of placing him or her for adoption, and knows that all the people involved, put it all on the line, out of love, for them. "

The other perspective

It's Molly again.



I know, I know...you can't wait to hear from Kim.

Me too! But, we're going to make you wait just a bit for the really good writing!

On my family blog I got a heart-wrenching comment from a birth mother when I wrote about our desires to change the law. It's consumed my mind ever since I read it.

I quickly deleted the comment because I could tell that I had not really communicated well about what we were wanting to do with the law. When this birth mother read it, it was as if we were trying to do something for adoptive parents and something that might coerce birth parents.

In fact, there has been some misunderstanding from agencies as well as other birth mothers. So, I've had to slow down and explain what we are actually doing in only adding to the birth mothers options, not taking anything away from the current law.

I was blessed to have had several "discussions" with this birth mother through email and we were able to share our hearts, our fears, our hurts, and our struggles from both sides. What I wouldn't give to be able to actually meet this incredible woman and thank her for her bravery to speak up for birth mothers everywhere.

So, I thought since I have learned so much from this mother...and that several of you may have never been through adoption, maybe you could learn from her as well.

Every birth parent's situation is very different as to why they are choosing placement. And just like all of us, they process and deal with pain, grief, and loss differently. There is no way that one option is going to work for every birth parent. That is why we feel like giving the option to relinquish in the hospital (or at an agency) would be beneficial to some birth mothers, maybe not all, but some.

This mother, and other birthmothers we have spoken to, agreed that court is devastating and said she thinks there are birth mothers who do back out because of it. She said the only way she survived it was because of the support of the adoptive parents at that time. She knew it was in the interest of the child, and it was not about her at that moment.


This birth mother pointed out to me that there can be a lot of unspoken (and spoken) pressure on the birth parents by some agencies or attorneys. There are actually more agencies and attorneys out there than we would like to believe that see adoption as money and as a transaction. Her fear (and now mine) is that some might use this new law to coerce women into placing their baby, "sign now or it's too late" kind of thing. She has heard of situations in which adoptive parents were hovering until the birth mother signed.


In talking with some agencies, they have the same concern...that this law change might actually end up allowing more of these tragedies to occur. This my dear friends is why our state has hesitated to change the law. How do we protect both the birth parents from being pushed into something they are unsure about and at the same time protect adoptive families from losing children we'd been picked for? One thing that we have written in the law is that this relinquishment in the hospital can only be done by a licensed agency or DHS. There is no way an attorney can have this done in the hospital or any place other than Court. We feel this is the best way we can deal with this particular issue.


This task is bigger than I imagined. As much as I am wondering what God has in store for this "project" and if the law should actually be changed, my heart can't help but wonder if it's right to not change the law because of some bullies out there?

Please pray for clarity in this and at the same time pray for birth parents to be led to agencies and attorneys that will truly show them love, mercy and grace. Placing a child for adoption is more painful than we could ever imagine and it requires much counseling and support to survive it. Because of my faith I want nothing more for these girls than to be shown the love of Christ, but not all (even Christian) agencies take on that mission.

This picture is of Cooper and his birthmom before she had been to court. You guys, I can't tell you the emotions this picture holds. It captures so well the struggle of a mother loving and grieving her child because she is choosing something more for him, she's choosing him over herself. The best part is...she agrees the law needs to be changed and that it would make it easier on most birth mothers. Have I told you how amazing this woman is?



Please pray with me over this law. Please pray with me for our agencies and attorneys so that we can continue to use adoption to glorify God and make the best out of an unplanned pregnancy. Pray that those agencies and attorneys that are not being honest, fair, and respectful will be reported, closed down and penalized.


Part of me fears writing all of this because it might scare some of you off. My dream is that in sifting through all of this together that more families open their homes and hearts to adoption. Adoption is biblical. What this birth mother pointed out to me is that all too often it looks nothing like what God had planned for it to be. It seems too often we hear the horror stories and get our focus off. We put our walls up and harden our hearts instead of trying to understand the "other side" and serve each other. We let fear drive us instead of God.



My heart has been burdened once again to simply pray about this and I beg you to do the same!

In Christ,

Molly