Congress Considers $30 Million Grant for Birth Parent Assistance

An act to help enhance services available to birth parents following the adoptive placement of their child has been introduced in the U.S. Congress.

Representatives Jean Schmidt (R-OH) and James Oberstar (D-MN) introduced H.R. 5640, the Birth Parent Assistance Act of 2008, which would provide post-placement counseling services for birthparents who have placed a child for adoption.

The bill, introduced March 13, authorizes a $30 million grant program to enhance counseling and other support services for birth parents after they have placed a child with an adoptive family. Funding may also be used for a national hotline and the training of hospital and birthing facility staff as it relates to staff interaction with the birth parents and adoptive families. The legislation also requires the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to report to Congress on all of the services available to birth parents and how such services might be improved.

"Placing a child for adoption is a positive and loving choice for the birthparent, child and adoptive family," said Rep. Schmidt in a news release. "This legislation will help ensure more birth parents have the support they need - if they require it - to positively move forward with their lives."

from www.americanadoptions.com

Waiting for a Match - Why There is no Crystal Ball

The adoption process is a very personal one for waiting families. First, they must provide financial, medical and other personal information during the home study process, then they share a snapshot of their personal lives in their family profile. It is perfectly normal for waiting families to experience anxiety about having their lives be such an "open book."

Once a family is active with an agency and their family profile is being shown to expectant mothers, it is also common to experience some anxiety about what impression those birth parents are getting of the family. Many waiting families worry that perhaps they aren't attractive enough - that they must look like Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman to adopt a child, or that they don't appear "fun" enough in their photographs. However, this is untrue.

Birth parents choose adoptive families for many reasons. To some birth parents, it is important that their child grow up in a specific region or state because they envision their child spending their days at the beach, or running through a field in the Midwest. Other birth parents want their child to be brought up in a specific religion and will therefore only consider families that are of that religion, while others want their child to grow up in a household with other children - or to be an only child. Just as each adoption story is unique, so are the wants and desires of the birth parents - making it impossible to gauge what, exactly, birth parents look for in an adoptive family, or why they choose or don't choose a specific couple.

There are however, some steps families can take to increase their chances of being selected. Families who are very narrow in their preferences (such as only willing to accept a Caucasian child or will only accept a child that has not been exposed to any drugs or alcohol in utero) may experience a longer wait as their profile can only be shown to a narrow group of expectant mothers. However, families that are willing to accept a bi-racial baby, or who are open to other social histories, will be exposed to a larger group of expectant mothers, therefore increasing their exposure greatly. Currently at American Adoptions, families who are willing to adopt a bi-racial child that is of any race and African American experience the lowest waiting times, as there is a great need for families to adopt these children.

AF PICKS: Best Memoirs

* The Waiting Child, by Cindy Champnella
* I Wish for You a Beautiful Life, Sara Dorow, ed.
* Borrowed Finery, by Paula Fox
* ITHAKA: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found, by Sarah Saffian
* The Kid, by Dan Savage
* In Their Own Voices, by Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda
* An Empty Lap, by Jill Smolowe
* Love in the Driest Season, by Neely Tucker
* The Adoption Reader, Susan Wadia-Ells, ed.
* Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother, by Jana Wolff

AF PICKS: Best Adoption Storybooks

* Sam’s Sister, by Juliet C. Bond; illustrated by Dawn Majewski
* How I Was Adopted, by Joanna Cole; illustrated by Maxie Chambliss
* Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born, by Jamie Lee Curtis; illustrated by Laura Cornell
* You’re Not My Real Mother!, by Molly Friedrich; illustrated by Christy Hale
* We Adopted You, Benjamin Koo, by Linda Walvoord Girard; illustrated by Linda Shute
* A Mother for Choco, by Keiko Kasza
* Over the Moon, by Karen Katz
* The Day We Met You, by Phoebe Koehler
* I Love You Like Crazy Cakes, by Rose Lewis; illustrated by Jane Dyer
* Families Are Different, by Nina Pellegrini

Financing Your Adoption: The Adoption Tax Credit

Parents who finalized an adoption in 2007 may qualify for a maximum adoption tax credit of $11,390 for adoption expenses on their federal income tax returns. The credit begins to phase out if you have a modified adjusted gross income of $170,820 or more and is completely phased out if you have a modified adjusted gross income of $210,820 or more.

Families who have experienced a disrupted adoption (an adoption situation that did not end in a completed adoption) may also benefit from the adoption tax credit. Any family that qualifies for the adoption tax credit may also deduct qualifying adoption expenses from a disrupted adoption. However, families must wait one year before filing for the credit.

For adoptions finalized in 2008, the tax credit has risen to $11,650. The 2008 credit will begin to phase out with a modified adjusted gross income of $174,730 and will completely phase out at a modified adjusted gross income of $214,730 or more.

To learn more about the adoption tax credit, visit http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc607.html.

Below are some examples of questions/topics that are appropriate to discuss with a birth mother:

1. How are you feeling?
2. What helped you to choose adoption?
3. Is there anything in particular that led you to choose our family? Did we have similar hobbies or interests?
4. What are your some of your hobbies/interests? Favorites?
5. Would you like to know more about what we like to do? Our family?
6. Is there anything we can do to help make this process more comfortable for you?
7. Is there anything else we can tell you about us to make you more comfortable?
8. Explain how you will tell the child about her and the adoption. Ask if there is anything she wants to share for you to tell the child.
9. Reassure her about future contact such as pictures and letters.
10. Tell her how much this means to you and tell her how honored you feel that she has chosen you to become parents. Thank her.
11. Tell her about your recent vacation, family outing, typical weekends etc.
12. If she has other children or family members who are a positive in her life, ask about them.
13. If the birth father is involved, it will be important to include him and ask him questions also.


Below are some examples of questions that are not appropriate to ask a birth mother:

1. Have you been making it to all your doctor appointments?
2. Have you been checked for Sexually transmitted diseases (STD's)?
3. Do you have HIV or AIDS?
4. Do you do any drugs?
5. In-depth questions concerning medical disorders.
6. Detailed questions concerning the birth father.

So much has been going on that I've completely neglected this journal!

Some time this week, I will definitely post detailed updates. For now, I will just say that we are well on our way!

Also, my amazing husband bought me a subscription to Adoptive Families Magazine for Christmas. I'm very pleased, and look forward to reading the articles.

Check back for updates soon!

Robert and I received an excellent call from the adoption agency today!

Our Home Study file is missing only two more forms which they told us we can bring with us to our approval meeting. We will finally be approved that day, which we could call being "paper pregnant"! Once we are approved, the matching process will begin, and we will be moving along in the adoption journey. It's hard to believe we are finally on our way!

We first want to thank our friends and family that have been so supportive with the situation over the past few months. We love you for it, and couldn't get through this without you. We look forward to you experiencing the coming year with us, I'm sure it will be a roller coaster.

In preparation for all that is to come, a fund raising opportunity was given to us and we'd like to share it with you. I'm sure most of you have heard of the Chicken Soup For The Soul book series by now. They have a great and easy fund raiser and really support families that are going through the adoption process. They have a catalog of 50 books available for us to offer to you, which you can check out here:
Book Catalog

Each book sells for $15, plus $1 shipping. If you buy 3 or more books, you do not have to pay the shipping cost. (I checked several bookstores and most of these titles sell for $14.95 or more off the shelf). Christmas is coming and these would make excellent gifts for your friends and loved ones. If you want to help out, but are unable to purchase books, then we simply ask that you print out the catalog (if you don't have a printer, we can get one to you) and pass it around your school or workplace for us. We would greatly appreciate
it.

For those of you who are not local, you can also participate by e-mailing us the titles and quantity of books that you would like, along with your address for us to ship them to you. All orders must be to us by November 30th in order for the books to be received in time for Christmas.

Again, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for everything you have done, and continue to do, to support us in this venture.

Love
Alli

Here is a new list of books made by American Adoptions, mostly geared to helping children understand adoption.

I'm Brown and My Sister Isn't, by Robbie O'Shea

My Special Someone: A Child's Perspective of Adoption, by Brittany and Sherry Kyle

Things Little Kids Need to Know, by Susan Uhlig

Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born, by Jamie Lee Curtis

Twice Upon a Time: Born and Adopted, by Eleanora Patterson

Beginnings: How Families Come to Be, by Virginia Kroll

Rosie's Family: An Adoption Story, by Lori Rosove

The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child, by Nancy Newton Verrier, M.A.

Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, by Sherrie Eldridge

Bella, a new film being heralded by the adoption community for its portrayal of adoption, will open in theaters October 26.

The National Council for Adoption (NCFA) has awarded the soon-to-be-released film the Excellence in Adoption Media Award for its portrayal of adoption.

According the NCFA President and CEO, Tom Atwood, Bella "beautifully portrays a story of love, life and relationships in the face of the unexpected … Rarely does such an affirming movie come out of Hollywood. Written with sensitivity, produced with rare artistic beauty and acted with tangible passion, Bella gives audiences a fresh way to think about adoption and the real people who make loving sacrifices. This movie is about friendship, family and most importantly it is about love that sees people through the most difficult decisions."

Starring Eduardo Verastegui and Tammy Blanchard, the movie centers around Nina, a young, unmarried waitress at a Mexican restaurant who finds herself pregnant and without work after coming in late several days because of morning sickness. Jose, the restaurant's chef, is taken by Nina's plight and becomes her sole confidant, helping her decide what she should do about her unexpected pregnancy.

Bella has also been awarded the People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival and the 2007 winner of the Smithsonian Latino Center Legacy Award. For more information, or to find a theater near you that is featuring Bella, visit www.Bellathemovie.com.

Jane T. Schnitter, William Is My Brother (Perspectives Press, 1991)

Schnitter's simple children's book is a rare one: it's a book about
adoption written from the perspective of the biological child in an
adoptive family. While this would seem an obvious idea, I haven't been
able to find any others that deal with adoption from this perspective,
so it was a must. That said, I have to say I wasn't terribly impressed
with it. The story is fine, though it reads a little kludgy; the
artwork has some great concepts (I love the family dog), but it comes
off as primitive, and not in the good way. I had actually thought this
either a self- or vanity-published book until I looked up Perspectives
Press on the internet. (That said, the book's afterword does strongly
imply that William is My Brother was Perspective's first book, so the
fact that it's now a legit publisher with a wide array of both
children's and adult titles on alternative family groupings may not
exclude the possibility that this is a self-pubbed effort.)

An important topic, and one on which, I hope, other, more
well-crafted, titles have since appeared. I haven't found any yet,
though. ***

Holly Keller, Horace (Morrow, 1991)

Horace is another of the adoption books that's been on my plate
recently, and of the batch I've read over the last month or so, I'd
have to say this one's the best by a pretty wide margin. The title
character is a leopard who's been adopted by a family of tigers, and
after a birthday party where he's overwhelmed by the number of stripes
surrounding him, he decides to go out into the world and find a place
where people look like him.

Oddly, despite the fact that I really liked this, I wanted to see more
of it; Keller sets up the situation in such a way that there are a
pretty sizable number of neuroses that could crop up towards the end,
and seeing how Horace and his family reacted to those could have made
for an interesting book (though it would quickly grow much larger than
your typical kids' picture book), but what's here is good for what it
is-- a reassuring look at the choice adoptive parents make in choosing
kids that don't look like them. Good stuff. I'm hoping for a sequel.
****

Catherine and Sherry Bunin, Is That Your Sister? (Our Child Press, 1992)

Is That Your Sister? is another of the adoption books I've been
reading recently. It's more vertical-market than the others (as the
title implies, it's about how to deal with questions from ruder
sections of the populace when your parents have adopted a child who
doesn't look much like you), but still holds up quite nicely under
scrutiny. (To clarify and explain that comment: books are like
computer programs. The more vertical-market they are, the shoddier
they tend to be. Think back to the worst of your school textbooks for
an excellent example.) The big drawback is that there's not much there
to hold up for scrutinizing. This isn't to say it's bad-- nothing
impressed itself upon me as really awful (as the creepy pictures in
This Is How We Became a Family), but within two weeks of first reading
it, I had to read it again in order to refresh anything but the basics
of the book's mission in my head. It doesn't stand out either in a
good or a bad way, but that puts it ahead of about 90% of
vertical-market books of any type. Thus, if you are in a situation
like this (if you have adopted children of two different races, for
example, or if you have a birth child and an adopted child from
another country), you may well find this a valuable book to have
around. ***

Wayne Willis, This Is How We Became a Family (Magination Press, 2000)

I've been reading a lot of kids' books about adoption recently,
getting them out of the library and trying to figure out which ones we
want to buy for our own kid. This is the most recent of them, and
while I admire what it sets out to do, there's something off in how it
goes about doing it.

The book presents its situation in straightforward language, but it
seems almost cold, informative but distant; the language is
age-appropriate (this is aimed at the preschool set), but the tone
isn't in some way I can't quite define. While I can't say that
underinvesting the language in emotion is worse than overinvesting
same (quite the opposite, in fact), this one seems to go a bit too far
in the right direction, if that makes any sense. And, to be technical
about it, the pictures (photorealistic, but with a primitive streak)
creep me out. I doubt they'd have that effect on a kid, but who's
going to be reading the book to the kid, eh?

I'd suggest getting this one out of the library and giving it a
going-over first if you're thinking about buying it. ** ½

I can't help but buy things for the baby we don't yet have. I need to stop that, it's hard to look at all this stuff and not have a little one to use it.

I went to a community sale today and got this adorable bed set for $45. I got the blanket, sheet, valance, dust ruffle, bumper and diaper stacker. Pretty good deal I think, and the set is SO cute!

http://www.dreamtimebaby.com/malawi.html


A lot has been going on, everything is going so fast that I haven't had a lot of time to update this journal. I'm sorry. I plan on updating about the homestudy tomorrow. I don't want to flood your friends' page with too many posts :-)

~Alli

My baby shower is something I think about a lot, so I thought I'd toss this article in here.

~Alli


Showered with Love

Whether you feel most comfortable holding it after completing your dossier, or when you receive your referral, an adoption shower is a wonderful way to celebrate your growing family.

by Lisa Milbrand

( Read the article here )

How to be an anti-racist parent:

http://www.adoptedthemovie.com/2007/09/10/how-to-be-an-anti-racist-parent/

Just a little update:

We started filling out the agency application last night. It's very long and confusing. We're having a hard time coming up with solid answers for a lot of the questions. We hope to finish it and mail it in by next weekend. The agency gives a timeline of about 2 weeks before we hear back on our approval. After that, we have to begin the homestudy process which can take up to 3 months.

The links below are sites I've found to be very helpful in doing my research:

A Child's Waiting Adoption Angency

American Adoptions

Adoption.com

Celebrate Adoption

Cleveland's Adoption Network

Adoptive Families Magazine

Adopting.org, overall info site

Many Hearts One Beat

National Adoption Foundation


If you so desire, take a quick browse around those. There's a lot of information there.

When Love Takes You In by Steven Curtis Chapman, a love letter written for his own adopted children