What kind of adoption will we be doing? We will be adopting domestically. Our plan is to have a semi-open adoption. This means that we will develop a relationship during pregnancy with our birth mother. We will not be obligated to share last names, addresses, or phone numbers unless we both feel comfortable. We will arrange an agreement, through our agency, to keep our birth family updated with pictures and letters.
When will we get our baby? The wait time varies on a few different things, but the average is 9 to 15 months. Once our profile is ready to view our agency will match us with birth mothers according to our values and racial preference. We are open to many ethnicities and biracial birth parents so our profile should be shown more often. We will be notified when our birth mother goes into labor and if everyone is comfortable, Jill may be in the room during delivery. In Texas there is a 48 hour waiting period after birth before any legal documents can be signed. In most cases adoptive parents bring their baby home from the hospital at the 48 hour mark.
How much does adoption cost? This is the biggest question asked, so please try not to get intimidated by the answer. The agency fee is $27,500 which is the bulk of our cost. The home study and home study update is $2000. Supervisory visits are $300 each and there are two of those visits. Attorney fees for finalizing the adoption are approximately $1500. Then the miscellaneous fees such as creating and producing our profile will be about $1000. This totals the cost of our adoption to be about $32,600. I know this sounds overwhelming, but the bulk of it is broken up into 3 payments. We have felt a little relief by setting our goals at one payment at a time. The first payment is 25% ($6,875) when we submit our formal paperwork, 50% ($13,750) when our profile is ready to go out to birthmothers, and the last 25% ($6,875) when we receive placement of our little miracle.
How can you help? First and foremost, please share our story. There are many people out there who would love to support adoption simply by helping another family with theirs. We have already started applying for some of the many grants that are out there for adopting families; however there are more applicants than grants available. We have recently discovered that Jill’s work will reimburse $4000 after finalization. I know times are tough, and that many of you may not be able to contribute financially, but there are many ways you can help if you are interested. If you feel the need to make a financial contribution, whether its $10 or $1,000, we have a separate bank account set up just for our adoption. You can receive a full tax deduction on all money donated because Gladney is a nonprofit organization. If you would like to make an anonymous donation directly to Gladney, attach a note saying it is for the adoption of Bram and Jill Johnson. If you are unable to contribute financially but still want to help we will be doing different fundraisers over the next few months and would love some help organizing those.
Please understand that by reading this we are not asking you for your money. We want to get our story out to as many of you as possible because we just don’t know who God will use to support us through our road to parenthood. Though funding is important the best thing we could hope for is your support. This will be a long road ahead for our family, and could use all of your prayers and encouragement.
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