We want to adopt. What next?

Deciding you want to adopt is EASY compared to deciding how you want to adopt. There are these big decision matrices available online to help you wade through the decisions: international, domestic, or foster? Things like how much money you can spend, how long you're willing to wait, how much you want to travel and for how long, your age, your marriage history, your adopted child's age, his background, etc. all go into the decision.

I spent a lot of time online trying to figure out which of the dozens of available countries to adopt from. A LOT. But none of them felt right. What kind of engineer makes a decision based on how it feels?!? This is new territory for me. Especially when decision matrices are available. I love decision matrices. But because international adoption didn't "feel right", we decided to pursue domestic adoption.

Don't worry, I still used spreadsheets to help us make the rest of the decision.

This is where the stress of decision making really got to me. Sure we eliminated a bunch of countries, but now we had to choose just one of hundreds of adoption agencies to send our thousands of dollars to. And it's pretty clear on the internet that there are bad agencies out there that will take your money and run. Each state treats adoption a little differently too. It felt like we were trying to find the needle in the haystack!

Thankfully, I think we did find that needle. We looked at the web sites for the agencies in Utah, searched the adoption forums for feedback on our favorites, called the Utah licensing office for complaint history and resolution, and talked with adoptive parents. So many people took time out of their lives to help us! I am still amazed at their generosity. We learned which agencies raised the ethical eyebrow, which had documentation problems, which treated birth mothers well, and which had good customer service. And, oh yeah...we learned which were the most expensive! (Let me know if you want any of this information.) In the end, we decided to go with A Guardian Angel Adoptions. What a relief to choose an agency!

We've hired a social worker for a home study, and we're off! Now we just need to avoid pregnancy unless we want "twins"...