Two Women and a Baby

To Tell The Truth

My partner and I decided to adopt after attempting pregnancy for three years. While trying to conceive we considered adoption several times during the process. The idea of having a child through adoption was not difficult, it was more that the process and cost seemed daunting.

While we spent a fair amount trying alternative insemination using a sperm bank, the cost was paid bit by bit over several years. Adoption costs a chunk of money up front, and it involves navigating a system that is not always friendly to heterosexual married couples, much less lesbian couples.

At an adoption fair we attended in the midst of attempting pregnancy we picked up information on an agency that had placed children from China with lesbian women; however, it was a very closeted process. The agency likely knew they were lesbians, but never actually knew, so was under no obligation to release the information to China. (We knew this because a lesbian adoptive mother was there to talk about the experience of adopting in general.) China does not allow placement of children with known lesbians and will terminate the process if they find out. We knew of many couples that had adopted children from China and were very happy with the results and thought this might be a way to build our family.

After we stopped attempting to conceive, I obtained new paperwork from the agency and began filling out the initial application. It quickly became clear that we could not adopt this way. I looked around our house and realized we would have to lie a lot about ourselves to hide who we were. I began to wonder how we would be able to be a proud family if we started out lying on such a basic level. We decided not to adopt overseas.

The Hunt for an Agency

For a variety of reasons, we decided we wanted to adopt an infant and that an adoption agency was the right choice for us. I started searching the Internet for agencies, and called all the agencies in our local phone book.

I was very upfront with local agencies about being a lesbian household that wanted an infant placement. There were no local agencies I found that had placed healthy newborns with lesbian couples. There were a few that would be very happy to work with us - but we would be the first lesbian couple they had knowingly worked with in an infant adoption. There were some agencies that stated flat out they would not work with us.

Through the Internet I found an agency based in Massachusetts that advertised on their Web page that they did not discriminate on the basis of a variety of issues including sexual orientation. We talked with the director as well as a lesbian couple who had adopted a son using this agency and decided to use this agency.

As we began to work more deeply with the agency, we determined that it was not a good fit for us. We started having problems getting promised paperwork (I'll put it in the mail today, I'm sure it was sent last week, oops, we are just so busy, we'll get it out...) and the capper was expensive miscommunication about the type of homestudy we needed. We were told we needed a homestudy and that it would have to be done locally. We were anxious to begin the process and used one of the agencies we had talked with earlier to complete it for us. It was not until it was done that we learned we should have had a homestudy that would have listed one of us as an adopting parent so that if a placement was made from a conservative state it would be approved by the courts. In order to have the greatest hope of a placement, we would need to redo the entire homestudy - probably with a different agency.

We then learned about another agency through acquaintances who had friends who had adopted from the agency. The agency is based in Portland, Oregon but has a small branch office in our area.

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