Hello, friends! We have exciting news! We have recently begun the process of adopting.
Our backstory: Cody and I were married in June of 2019, and we were very fortunate and blessed for the delivery of our biological daughter Genevieve almost three years ago. We do not take lightly the gift that it is to have a biological child, and are grateful for the light she has added to our lives.
However, a story that I have not shared with many is that while I was pregnant with Genevieve, I suffered not only with severe sickness throughout most of the pregnancy, but also with severe perinatal depression. Once she was born (on the winter solstice, the longest night of the year) this evolved into a spiral of postpartum depression that went undiagnosed for many months and lasted for the first year and a half of Genevieve’s life. After lots of time and treatment, I can happily say that the Lord has brought me out of that period of suffering into a place of joy and love with my daughter and our little family. This brings me to the beginning of our adoption story.
Cody and I are hopeful that we will be able to grow our family through adoption. We have talked about adoption since we were engaged, and it is something that both of us have said we would like to pursue someday. After much prayer and discussion, we decided to move forward and officially begin the adoption process through Covenant Care, a Christian adoption agency and ministry to women experiencing unplanned or crisis pregnancies. Covenant Care assists over two hundred women a year in providing resources and helping women (and men) to create parenting or adoption plans. After sharing this news with our parents, my mom actually told me that I have been talking to her about adoption since I was a very young child, which I didn't even remember.
As you may know firsthand, or may have heard, the process of adoption can be a long and expensive one. The first steps of adoption through Covenant Care involve being approved in a home study, a months-long process in which we meet with licensed professionals who will examine our home and marriage before placing us on the list of waiting families. We will be traveling back and forth to Macon for interviews and this will culminate in our home being examined and a study compiled and written over an eight week period (once we complete our interviews) to approve us to be viewed by a birth mother. A lovely and wonderful thing about Covenant Care is that a birth mother chooses an adoptive family for her child, rather than the other way around. So we will be on the waiting list until that time, whenever it comes.
These first steps of background checks, home assessment and other related fees will cost about $2,200. Then before we are added to the list of waiting families, there is an additional pre-placement fee of $3,000. After this we will face the hurdle of placement fees and legal fees to finalize the adoption. You might be surprised (or not) to learn that these costs can exceed tens of thousands of dollars. But we are taking it one step at a time, and are grateful for any way you might consider partnering with us, through prayer, spreading the word, or monetary support.
Please pray for us! Please pray for the birth mother of the baby who will someday become ours. If you are struggling with perinatal or postpartum depression, there is hope! I’d love to talk to you. If you have questions about adoption or what the process will be like, I would love to talk to you.
Thank you for reading our update. Thank you for your prayer and support. With love, The Morans
Matched by Pat & Sandy McCarty
