The Matching Game

Back in March, we actually got matched with a birth mother. For 2 weeks we were excited, worried, nervous, and hopeful. But we were having some trouble making sense of the whole situation. . . it was all a bit murky and confusing. I/we spent 2 weeks on the phone talking to the adoption agency staff, other adoption professionals, and family members, trying to get a sense of what was going on and trying to figure out what we should do.

Contributing factors to the confusion were: 1. we are in Wisconsin 2. the agency doing the matching is in Utah 3. the birth mother is in Ohio 4. birth mother's case worker was on vacation at the time of the match 5. no one had actually met personally with the birth mom yet - another agency in Ohio was on call to get in on the act 6. every state has its own adoption laws.
By the time we started to come clear on matters like what the birth mother wanted, her due date, her situation at home, and the legal and financial risks ahead, the birth mom had asked to see another family's profile. Shortly after, she chose to place her child with them instead.

Heartache.

What we're finding out is, these things happen. Often. In a recent issue of Adoptive Families magazine, their 2009-2010 survey results indicated that 34% of domestic adoptive families experienced at least one "false start" before they successfully completed an adoption. I'm not sure if our experience even counts as a true false start, since we hadn't signed any contracts or put down any money yet (thank goodness). So there may be more of this to come before we're done. Even in the most seemingly solid match, there's always the chance that the birth mom will change her mind when the baby is born. Friends of our friends had this very thing happen at the same time our match unraveled. After hearing their story, I realized that, though we were disappointed, our situation could have gotten a lot worse.

There is a steep learning curve in this world of adoption. We've learned a lot about what we will and will not do again in the future. But for now, for this adoption, there aren't a whole lot of changes we can make to the track we're on unless we are willing to start over, completely. With 2 years of skin in the game, the gains of changing course do not appear to out-weigh the costs. Perhaps, at some point, we may change our minds on this. But right now, it seems, the best thing to do is just sit tight, and wait, and pray.