Nebraska Children's Home Update

Matt and I were finally able to attend an informational meeting for Nebraska Children's Home last night.  They only do about 6 meetings per year and only allow so many in each meeting, so we had to wait about 4 months to get in.  Let me tell you that it was worth the wait.  There have been moments over the past couple of months that we wondered if we should wait on making a decision until after this meeting or just go for it (did I mention I am also working on patience ;) ) But I am so glad we waited!  The meeting went great, we got lots of questions answered and feel like they are another great organization.  I may have mentioned this before, but I was so nervous when we started looking at adoption agencies because of the horror stories you hear on the news and hear-say.  I am pleased to tell you all that there are lots of amazing adoption agencies out there, with amazing missions.  We have really enjoyed learning about the agencies and hearing what they do to advocate for the birth mom and dad, adoptive parents, and baby.

Nebraska Children's Home is quite unique, they are the only agency in the country that does not charge for their adoptions or birth mother care and counseling.  They are run strictly by donations.  If we decided to go with them, we would pay legal fees and that's it!!!  This is amazing to me, as most agencies we have talked to so far estimate anywhere from $12,000-35,000.  I kept thinking of questions because I thought surely there has to be a catch, so far we haven't found on though.  NCH is also different in that they offer very in-depth education regarding adoption, parenting, and counseling.  Not only do they offer this to the adoptive parents, but they also offer it to the extended families.  I also thought this was a great concept, obviously adoption doesn't just affect the parents.  Even if we don't end up going through the process with them, we may use them for some education.

NCH, like all the other agencies we have met with, focus on open adoption (see earlier blog for details on what this is).  This still makes me quite nervous, but I am coming around to the idea.  I know that this could be a really cool relationship, depending on the birth mother.  And knowing that we have a lot of control in just how open the relationship is.

NHC has finalized about 50 adoptions in the last year.  Currently they have 85 adoptive families who are waiting for placement.  And there were 18 couples at the meeting last night.  What that means is that there are a lot more waiting families, than there are babies.  The birth mom chooses an adoptive couple based on their profile, so it is not first-come-first-serve.  So, the process could go really quickly or it could take years.  But hopefully we'll look pretty good on paper ;).

So, now we have a HUGE decision to make.  Matt and I talked on the way home and feel that our options to consider are:
1. Holt International--pursue an international adoption, not quite sure what country would be our first choice to adopt from.
2. NCH--pursue domestic adoption with the agency
3. NCH--pursue identified adoption, but use the agency to provide services to the birth mother and help us along the way.
The cool thing about NCH, is that we could pursue both 2 and 3 at the same time.  One home study would cover both and they would help walk us through the process.  The one question we thought of on the way home regarding the identified adoption is whether they'd we able to work with a birth mom outside of Nebraska.

I am not sure what decision we will make.  We are praying that God will show us in a BIG way, what direction to pursue.  Matt surprised the heck out of me on the way last night.  One of our biggest struggles over this whole process is figuring out how we are going to financially going to make the adoption work.  To me, we're talking about a baby-so how do you put a price on a baby. Matt is very much the realist and thinks long term how spending down our entire savings may not be a good idea :)  Thank goodness we can balance each other out in this regard.  But on the way home last night, Matt had a very interesting IQ point.  He was  impressed by the number of adoptive families they have and stated that you know all of the babies that need a home will get one here in the states.  In reverse, there are many babies waiting for adoption in orphanages overseas and we could be their only hope.  Oh decisions!! 

Anyway, this is getting very long so I'll wrap it up.  Thank you all so much for caring, loving, and praying for us.  We are very blessed.  ~megan