Journey to Same-Sex Parenthood. Eric Rosswood
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and Novia had some health issues with childbearing, plus we only had finite resources to use in starting our family. If insemination didn’t work, we’d have exhausted them with no child to show for it and no further resources for an adoption. So adoption it was!
As with anything I do, I thoroughly researched everything I could find about adoption, including what types there were and how to go about it. I shared all I learned with Novia. We weren’t going to hide our family or pretend this child wasn’t going to be raised by two mommies. We thought about foreign adoption, but soon learned that many countries don’t allow gay couples (or single women, older women, etc.) to adopt. We also considered adoption through the state foster care system but decided against that, because we really wanted an infant—preferably a newborn—and didn’t want to risk getting a child who we would have to give back. I knew myself well enough to know I couldn’t stand that. With those constraints, our chances within the state system slimmed down considerably, so we opted for an agency placement approach.
I read everything I could find on how to pick a good agency. I searched for reviews online, sent e-mails and asked for references. There was a good deal to be leery of: a lot of scams are out there, as well as legal pitfalls with potentially disastrous consequences. Again, we couldn’t afford to waste resources by making any mistakes. I talked to quite a few agencies and the first question I always asked was: “Do you work with same-sex couples?” I got a variety of answers, from flat out “No” to “Absolutely, we have placed many children with same-sex families” to “Yes, but you’d only be eligible for our African-American program.”
It didn’t matter to us what race, nationality or ethnicity our child might be: white, African-American, purple or Martian for all we cared! But we were highly offended that an agency believed minority children were somehow less worthy and could “settle for” same-sex parents or that we weren’t “good enough” for a white child. I refused to even consider those agencies. Then there were some agencies that left me feeling like it was just a business to them, some sort of “baby transaction.”
We finally settled on an agency that we discovered through word of mouth. A gay coworker and his partner had adopted through them twice and described a very accepting environment that was focused on creating loving families. It was a small agency and we liked that aspect. They didn’t work with a large number of couples, but being smaller also meant fewer birthmothers coming to them. However, they seemed to have a pretty good success rate and had worked successfully with numerous same-sex couples. So we signed on!
That was when things got complicated. We had built our house and now lived in a small rural town in Indiana, just across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. But like many in our area, we worked and most often “played” in Louisville. Our adoption agency was located in Louisville as well. Adoption law is state-specific, with each state setting its own rules and requirements. Most states have “agreements” with other states that allow adoptions to occur across state lines, but these are very tightly controlled. Because we lived in Indiana, our home study and all pre-placement requirements had to be conducted by an Indiana agency and conform to Indiana rules. But because we were working with a Kentucky placement agency, we also had to meet Kentucky requirements and follow that state’s laws as well. Upon placement, we were not allowed to bring the baby across state lines (even just the few miles to our home) until the state of Kentucky authorized it—and they likely wouldn’t do that until they had full termination of parental rights. We were told this could take as long as ninety days. During that time, we could not live in anyone’s private residence that was not home study approved, so we would have to stay in a hotel!
I have to admit, it was more than a little daunting to think about trying to care for a newborn baby in a hotel room for three months. But we pressed on with little choice, particularly since we hadn’t been able to find a placement agency in Indiana that we were comfortable with. So we began filling out forms and got our fingerprints taken multiple times. We were sent to three different government entities for checks and got letters of recommendation from what seemed like everyone going back to elementary school.
Next, we found an agency to do all of the pre- and post-placement work required by Indiana. We drove two hours to Indianapolis on multiple occasions to take the agency’s training and complete the interviews needed for our home study. We wrote ten-page-long biographies of our lives and answered dozens of questions about our relationship and how we envisioned raising a child. We hired someone to create our “profile book,” essentially a photo storybook of our lives, interests and home—something a prospective birthmother could look at to get a sense of our family. We found an experienced adoption attorney licensed in both Kentucky and Indiana, since there would be legal actions in both states. And it seemed like every time we turned around, our Kentucky agency discovered something else we needed to do, because of our “dual state” situation.
I can honestly say my top-secret military security clearance seemed easier to obtain than an approved home study and adoption package for the states of Indiana and Kentucky! But finally, FINALLY, we were approved. We started this paperwork and training process in the fall of 2008 and were able to go on the active list in May 2009.
Then the real waiting began. I don’t know how to describe waiting for “the phone call” other than you feel like your life is on hold. Do you put the deposit down for that cruise knowing “the call” would cancel those plans? Do you consider a new job or make large expenditures knowing your financial obligations could drastically change at any time? How do you plan your life knowing that, at any moment, it could turn upside down?
So we joined a “While You Wait” support group through our Kentucky placement agency. We shared updates, talked about concerns and just generally provided an outlet for things that most of our friends and family couldn’t relate to. There were other same-sex couples in the group, so we weren’t alone in that respect, either. It was nice to have that group connection, but at times it was very difficult to participate, especially as the wait became longer. It seemed there was always another new couple joining the group and we felt guilty for viewing them as our competition. Every couple who joined was one more family that a potential birthmother had to choose from.
We were constantly figuring the odds: how many birthmothers the agency told us they were working with against how many waiting families were there in the support group. Each time a family was matched, we were genuinely happy for them, excited they would soon take their child home. At the same time, however, we couldn’t help but ask ourselves, “Why not us?” and then later, “What’s wrong with us?” After a while it became very disheartening to continue attending the meetings. Then there were moments when we heard the “disruption” stories, about how a match didn’t work out for one reason or another. Those always brought tears to everyone’s eyes. Our hearts ached for the families and then we prayed it didn’t happen to us.
After the first year with no match, Novia and I decided that we just had to get on with our lives. We had to make plans and do things without worrying about “what if we got a phone call. So we went on a cruise and visited family, all the while making sure the agency knew how to contact us and having contingency plans in the backs of our minds, just in case.
We also started buying baby stuff, the big-ticket items like a crib, dresser, stroller and car seat, all of those things that cost a fortune if you buy them all at once. So every couple of months we picked up something else we knew we’d need. We didn’t set up the nursery yet, but we still wanted to make sure we were fairly ready. That way, when the call came, all we had to do was prepare the room.
There was a lot of debate among the members of our group as to whether or not couples should set up a nursery ahead of time. Some families, like ours, were planners and wanted to be ready. Others thought it would be too hard to see that empty nursery every day. Now, I can see both points of view.
For a long time, we really didn’t have much luck. Apparently, the poor economy had a pretty devastating effect on the country’s birth rate, so there just weren’t very many birthmothers coming in. Later, when the traffic did finally pick up, we still weren’t getting any interest. Our caseworker became concerned and suggested we revamp our profile book. She thought that maybe it wasn’t conveying the right message. So we reworked it, this time