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BDP21

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  12. How Long Did You Wait? Why Abrazo?

    in Looking to Adopt

    Posted

    Your story sounds somewhat familiar to me as well. We signed on with a local agency (the same one as Sara and Andrew in the DC area) in July 2009, were homestudy ready in October 2009, and settled in for what we figured would be around a 1-2 year wait. The wait times for this particular agency were getting longer and longer and their program was dealing with a lot of staff turnover as well. We started looking at what they called "out of area agencies" in the summer of 2010 at their recommendation. I did a ton of research and looked at each of the agencies on their list of those that Barker families had been successful with. The only agency I was at all comfortable with was Abrazo - the forum sold me truly as I learned so much and gained confidence in the agency through seeing and watching other families go through the process. It was a tough decision, as you've mentioned, to enlist another agency and start our wait all over again. In August/September 2010, we were considered for a special needs child (a 14 month old baby girl born at 24 weeks) who was in TX foster care. Her foster parents ended up deciding to adopt her (a very good thing!) and so we looked back at all the research we'd done and knew what our next step should be - Abrazo. We sent in our inquiry in October, quickly filled out the application and attended the November 2010 orientation. We had a few calls and thought we'd had "the" call in May 2010. Unfortunately, in August of that year, that match ended abruptly. We headed home to DC and less than 2 weeks later, we did get "the" call that brought us back to Texas that same day and signing entrustment papers the next morning before meeting our beautiful boy at 1 week old. Ours was a bumpy ride but SO worth it. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Joseph and his first family were meant to join ours.

    Our second journey with Abrazo has been even bumpier but having Joseph gives me faith that the right match will come along again. We jumped back in for our second round a little earlier than we had expected to when I called Brianna after seeing a nursery note here on the forum in September 2012. I immediately felt a connection with a family whose needs were not met by anyone in the program at that time. We matched the next week, attended orientation in October and quickly got ready to welcome a baby girl to the family in December of 2012. This match ended without placement when her circumstances changed in the days before the baby was born. We have had a few more calls since that match ended, one resulting in a very short match just last month. Luckily, the wonderful Abrazo chicks did their thing and found out very quickly that it was a scam. So, now we are back to waiting for the right match to find us.

    I think our experience is probably one of the bumpier ones but we are still so glad we have put our faith in Abrazo. They are truly family to us and I don't honestly know if I could trust anyone else with our hearts and the hearts of our child's first family.

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