How long did your adoption process go for?

Looking into adoption, How do I go about starting the process?

• My husband and I have been trying to conceive for 3+ years, with no luck. We just started to look into adoption and it seems even more difficult then fertility, which I thought was ...show more

• Answer:

  I suggest you start http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100823193059AAxG6Px I usually suggest people start at http://brainchildmag.com/essays/summer2010_friedman.asp though. :) Many women adopt who can not call themselves mothers by the way they behaved to their children. Please, no-one take offence at that, I just mean to me personally because there're so many people who've adopted and then abused - and some have even killed - their adopted kids: http://nobodyisforgotten.blogspot.com/ Moms are there because you can go running to them with a problem - dads and brothers and sisters and nans and granddads and aunts and uncles and cousins are there so you can go out and play and laugh and have fun. I was gonna say that my opinion on that was nothing to do with being adopted, but seriously, it's probably got a lot to do with it because I grew up in a loving, caring, nurturing adoptive family from when I was seven months old, instead of growing up with my abusive biological mom. Oh, and you don't get to bond when you adopt - you might get to communicate and share, but bonds rarely happen. Go look up "genetic mirroring". You're never gonna be able to "win" 'cause adoption screws kids up one way or another, but you need to be able to learn to understand what your kid's going through. My aparents have had to watch as their kid goes through all of the agony and trauma that comes with being adopted. They have had absolutely no help in dealing with any of this - as all good parents do, they winged it. It's testament to their brilliance that I'm even remotely sane (hush you lot at the back! :p) and a functioning member of society. Adoption screws kids up. It's not a fact that the adoption mongers like seeing said in public, but it's true. Not every kid, obviously - some on here are happy to've been adopted, but a surprisingly high percentage of us grow up deeply screwed up. I was abandoned to adoption at seven months old. I honestly and truly wish that I'd been aborted instead of abandoned to adoption. I didn't have a bad adoption - my afamily are the best I could ever have chosen... but if I'd been able to choose, and I'd known then what I know now, I'd've chosen to be aborted before birth instead, 'cause at least that way the lifetime of agony I've gone through would've been over in minutes, instead of the decades that I've been suffering for now. Taken from Nancy Verrier's book, Coming Home to Self: http://www.nancyverrier.com/self_book.php For the adoptee every day is a challenge of trying to figure out how to be, although he probably doesn't understand the difficulty this presents for him. It has been true his whole life and, therefore, feels normal. However, it takes a great deal of energy and concentration. And it never feels quite right. He never quite fits. Therefore he feels as if /he/ is never quite right. (pg 50) Abandonment and neglect are reported to be the two most devastating experiences that children endure - even more devastating then sexual or physical abuse. That's why some neglected children do naughty things to get attention. Even though the attention is hurtful - being yelled at, hit, or otherwise harmed - it is better than neglect. /Anything/ is better than abandonment. Abandonment is a child's greatest fear. For adoptees, it is also reality, embedded in their implicit and unintegrated memory. (pg 102) It is sometimes difficult to spot grief in children. After all, it isn't as if the child sits in a puddle of tears his entire childhood. As one adoptee said, "Of course I played, laughed, sang. Do people think that if you're not sitting in a corner with your head on your knees, you are not sad? I had happy times, but the sadness was always there, even when I was having fun." (pg 117) Please read back through a few months worth of resolved questions in here http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/index?sid=2115500138 Comprehend ^^that lot^^, and you'll be about ready to adopt. :)