After a successful adoption of an infant from Vietnam, a successful adoption of a special needs toddler from Korea and a failed adoption from India, my husband and I were left trying to find the right adoption program for our family to bring us our sixth child.

Our agency knew we were still hoping to adopt, and they called one day and informed us about their two domestic programs, one for children in the foster system and one for African-American infants. Since we had five young children, they did not see our family as a good fit for the foster care adoption program, but they did think that we might be just right for their infant program.

We had originally been dissuaded from a domestic adoption because we believed that the wait would drag on for years or that we could bring a baby home and then have him taken away, but the agency assured us that there was a need for families to adopt AA babies in the U.S., especially families open to special needs or at risk babies.

We learned about domestic adoption laws and practices, learned more about the program and decided that we would really love another young baby. We prepared a family profile and signed up with the domestic infant program. We were open to babies of any race and a long list of special needs, and we were hoping for an open or semi-open adoption.

Before our attempt to adopt from India, we had discussed adding an additional race and/or culture to our family, and had come to the conclusion that we were ready, willing, able and desirous to parent a child of any race, and that definitely included black children.

We were aware that if we adopted a black child, that our family would likely face more racism and would receive more/different reactions than we did with our Asian daughters. We read books, talked to other adoptive parents, did a lot of online reading and felt prepared.

The domestic process was a bit unnerving for me. With our international adoptions, there was a process to follow. Things were not always predictable, but there was still a series of steps that led to our child coming home. With the domestic program, we turned in our paperwork, we were “on the list” and big news (and a child) could come at any moment. That was both exciting and nerve-wracking!

I worried that a birth mother may not choose our family, since we were able to have biological children and already had five young children in our home. I worried that a black birth mother would not choose our family because we did not have any other black family members. I checked emails and websites compulsively.

Our agency networked with several other agencies, and recommended that we turn in our paperwork with several others to give us the best chance at a timely placement. Networking is usually encouraged when you are adopting domestically. We were called about a few possibilities, but none that turned out to be right.

Then one day I got an email about an agency that was working with five pregnant women who were planning on placing their babies for adoption. All of the mothers were black, and all were expecting boys. The agency did not have any families waiting to adopt black baby boys at that time.

We turned in our paperwork, and were contacted a few days later. One of the mothers really liked our family, and wanted to have a conference call with Josh and I. (I have a post coming soon about how to prepare for a conference call with a potential birth mother).

The phone call went well. The match was made official. I developed a strong friendship with our son’s mother during that time, and we were in the room when he was born a month later. It was not even five months after we had decided to adopt domestically.

See my next post for my comparison between transracial domestic adoption and transracial international adoption.