Hello friends and family! Welcome to our adoption page. Parenthood is a long-held dream for us. In August 2015, after nearly 7 years together, we graduated from partners to husbands. Now we are ready to graduate from doting uncles to doting parents. We&'re creative goofballs with careers and hobbies that combine contemporary art, theatre, logic and coding, cooking and baking, music, Disney, Hello Kitty, and Dr Who. Can you imagine how awesome our kid could be?! After our wedding, we kicked our quest into high gear. We found an adoption agency, completed a home study, posted our profile, and waited. Finally just before Christmas, we got the news we were waiting for: a sweet, bright, and startlingly mature birth mom chose us; she says she knew as soon as she read our profile that the match was &'just right.&' While most parents-to-be get 9 months to prepare, we&'d have 9 weeks. She was already in her 3rd trimester, which meant that before spring we&'d be traveling out to the midwest to meet our son. However, our excitement is tempered by the realization of just what a financial burden this will be on our young family. Years ago we began working with a financial planner to plan for parenthood as best we could on two non-profit salaries in one of America&'â„¢s priciest cities. We made a budget, we saved that amount, then the budget grew. Legal fees in two states, travel expenses, and other administrative fees have increased the cost by almost 50%. Add to that the surprise when she went into preterm labor at 32 weeks. We are grateful to the medical team that stopped her labor during the most stressful 24 hours of our lives. But a preemie was likely on the way increasing our costs due to extended travel time and special care for both birth mom and baby boy. We&'ll get some savings from the Adoption Tax Credit. Our wonderful families are contributing as much as they are able. But this will definitely impact our finances over the long term, especially once we have to pay for daycare, nannies, diapers, formula, and - eventually - college. So we find ourselves in the uncomfortable situation of turning to you. As far as boppy pillows or cute outfits go, we have a great community to turn to for hand-me-downs. Any financial assistance you provide would be more than a gift to us, it would be a blessing. Thank you for considering helping bring our dream to life so we can raise an amazing, kind, creative, socially-conscious kid.
