Curious Parents Parenting Resources

Feature

Journey to Motherhood: A Personal Quest
By Kimberly Davis

I’ve always known I wanted to be a mom. Growing up, I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time alone. I had ample time to think, to dream, to plan and to ponder. I dreamt about what my life would look like, what kind of job I would have, where I would live and who I would marry. I wanted to have one child, I was going to be a lawyer, I was going to live anywhere but Florida, I was going to design and build my own house and I would marry a handsome man who would love me forever. My girlfriends and I would talk endlessly about these things and we thought we had it all worked out. Then life hit.

We didn’t know what was wrong with me. Back then, the doctors just thought that the pain I was experiencing was ‘normal’ and that I just had a low tolerance. Turns out they were wrong.  My doctors diagnosed me with severe endometriosis at 16. By 19, they wanted to perform a full hysterectomy. I refused, due to the fact that I wanted to have children, so they performed the first of many surgeries to try to help alleviate the pain.

By the time I was 27, I had undergone seven surgeries, two of which were major enough to keep me in the hospital for over a week, once even in the ICU. None kept the pain away for more than six months at a time. The final procedure in 1994 resulted in a complete hysterectomy. My body was too damaged to carry or produce a child. All my efforts had been a waste.

I was devastated.

At the time, I did not think I would recover. Part of the human experience as a woman is bearing a child, isn’t it? How could I overcome the loss of this experience? Would I ever know the joy of becoming a mother? Sure, all the ‘experts’ told me that I could adopt and that this would fulfill my desire to have a child of my own. What did they know? Had they gone through everything I had? I was reluctant to believe.

Time passed and life went on. I dabbled in researching adoption. I consulted the internet, visited a few adoption agencies and spoke with families who had gone through the process. I wanted to hear from real people who had actually lived through the process and hear their thoughts. The common reaction was that it wasn’t going to be easy. I was told to plan on spending a lot of money—I mean a LOT of money, to plan on being raked over the coals by the social workers during the ‘home study’ process and plan on it taking years before I would bring home my child. Oh, and forget ever getting a newborn—that’s just impossible. Needless to say, I wasn’t excited.

It would be a few years before I would investigate this option again. Then, as fate would have it, a colleague of mine visited with an agency. She told me that I had to speak with them. “It’s a private agency and the owner has a different take on how the adoption process should work. I think you’ll really be impressed with their philosophy. Oh, and did I mention, they placed 36 newborns last year?” I thought I was hearing things. I called the next week and set up a meeting.

Upon entering the office, I was greeted by the owner, Maxine Seiler. She is a petite woman with a genuine smile and a warm demeanor. We sat down in her modest office and proceeded to discuss my desire to adopt a newborn. Maxine listened intently and informed me that she could help me. Not only could she find me a newborn baby to adopt, she said it should take less than a year! I thought I must be dreaming. What’s the catch?

Turns out, there isn’t one. The honest truth is that Maxine has a different approach than the state agencies. She believes that the guidelines that typically exist in the state agencies are not a practical method of evaluating who can be a good parent. She believes that your marital status, weight, ethnicity, or sex do not dictate if you will be a good parent. Her staff looks past that and evaluates your home, financial status and beliefs based on the ability to provide a stable, loving, healthy and safe environment to raise a child. If you meet their reasonable criteria, then you are approved and placed into the system.

I will not lie. I was reluctant to believe that it was as easy as Maxine was telling me it was going to be. I still thought there was a catch, but decided to take the leap of faith and informed her that I was ready to begin the process. What was the next step?

I was handed a pretty weighty package of information and told to go home and look through all of it. First things first, I would need to decide which package I wanted to choose. There are 2 options to choose from.

1. FAMILY PLAN: See Base Agency fees. You pay pass through costs for birth mother living expenses if needed, birth mother legal and/or medical fees when required. 

Base Agency Fee: $24,000.00

$10,000.00 due after acceptance into the program

$7,000.00 due at birth mother match plus 2 month birth mother living expenses deposit if applicable

$7,000.00 due at placement and balance of birth mother living expenses if applicable

2. FAMILY PLAN: See Base Agency Fee and Birth Mother Care and Treatment Fee.

Full Service “No Risk” Adoption

Base Agency Fee: $24,000.00

$10,000.00 due after acceptance into the program

$7,000.00 due at birth mother match

$7,000.00 due at placement                   

Guaranteed Birth Mother Living Expenses

$9,900.00 due at placement             
 $33,900.00 * Total fees for this adoption plan will be $34,400.00 for residents who do not require Interstate Compact or $34,900.00 for out-of-state families (ICPC included).

Needless to say, this is a lot of money. However, if you want to adopt a newborn, you cannot beat the price. Over the years, I have met with or consulted with both international and domestic agencies regarding adopting a newborn or an infant. I discovered that generally, it was almost impossible to adopt a newborn. More than likely, you were going to be lucky if you found an infant, probably a toddler was more likely. Not only that, I was probably going to have to go out of the country to do it. So while it might only be $20,000-$25,000, I would have to incur the travel expenses to go back and forth to the country of my choice. On top of that, plan on taking a lot of vacation time to fly back and forth and meet with the authorities. In some countries, they actually require you to spend six weeks in their country learning about their culture and bonding with the child before you can return home.

After that, the cost for adopting through Family to Family did not seem too outrageous. Especially since I was guaranteed a newborn! So I completed the application and began the daunting process of completing the 12 page autobiographical instrument that would give the social worker a glimpse into my psyche. I would need to complete this before I could schedule my home study.

Again, I won’t lie, I was as nervous as I could be about the home study. My family and friends did not understand my anxiety. Did I think my home was inadequate? Did I think that I wouldn’t pass the evaluation? What was I concerned about? Of course I would pass! They didn’t realize that my anxiety wasn’t in the actual home study process, but more in the fact that the past 20 years had been leading up to this moment. All of the surgeries, all of the tears, all of the emotions had led up to this one moment. This one social worker had the power to deny or fulfill my dreams in one visit with me and my family in our home. She had the power to make or break this quest for me and it was totally out of my control. This was to be my first true lesson on the journey to motherhood. You can only control your own actions, the rest is left up to fate.

Kimberly Davis is a freelance writer.