I had a conversation with a friend the other day about “the checklist”. It’s somewhat of a crazy process but at the same time, makes sense. Fortunately it’s just me so the decisions were easy.
When you get pregnant, you have no idea if you’re going to have a boy or girl (initially) or how healthy your baby will be.
But you do know if the mom (your or your wife/girlfriend) were taking drugs, what drugs, drinking, smoking, health status of you or wife/girlfriend, history of mental illness…
When you’re adopting, you literally get a checklist of things you need to mark that you’re okay with, you’re not okay with or it depends. This is to help you get matched with the right baby. Below are some of those items you get to decide on.
Checklist:
- Domestic or international
- Sex: boy, girl, either
- Age of the child: maximum and minimum
- Single child or sibling set. If sibling set, how many and ages
- Mother drug abuse: daily, weekly, monthly, every now and then
- Mother drug use type: marijuana, heroin, LSD, methadone, meth, opiods, other
- Expected nationality of the baby: Caucasian, Black, Asian, Middle Eastern, Native American, bi-racial (Black and Caucasian), bi-racial other, mix of these
- Circumstance for conception: prostitution, rape, incest
- Birth father medical and birth mother medical (different questions for each one)
- alcoholism
- epilepsy
- diabetes
- mental limitations
- sickle cell anemia
- heart disease
- deaf
- blind
- mute
- missing limbs
- cerebral palsy
- muscular dystrophy
- heart murmur
- asthma
This isn’t the full list, but a sampling of the things you need to consider when adopting. As a single person, it was easy for me to answer these, but I know of married couples who get stuck on these. If one person is okay with smoking by the birth mom throughout the pregnancy and another is not, a compromise needs to be made. The good thing though, is that you are able to change your mind at any point in the process.
What would you select?
Journey 2 Childhood 
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