First, let me say thank you for taking the time to read this. My name is Jonathan and I have a beautiful wife, Michelle, and two lovely boys, Hayden and Lucas. This page was put together to share a little information about our journey to adopt a third child.
April 4, 2009
Our roller coaster ride is over. Unfortunately, it derailed along the way, hurtling us over the edge. The birthmom has decided to parent.
All the time, effort, and money spent are for naught. It's a chance we take with this type of adoption and there are certainly no guarantees. We felt pretty confident about this going in and invested a lot of our selves and our emotions into this. While there's still a slim chance she'll change her mind back, for now, we're done.
I'm full of emotion right now. I'm sad. I'm angry. I'm embarrassed.
I'm sad that we'll not have a third child just yet. It'll have to wait.
I'm angry that we invested so much for nothing. We put our lives on hold for two months. All the appointments, all the phone calls, and everything else that went into this. And it's gone.
Most of all, I'm embarrassed. I feel like I let everybody down. We decided to be very public about this process — more public than we've been with any other time we've been down this road. And because it didn't work out, I feel like an ass for doing so. I feel stupid having asked for money that has only gone to lawyers and agencies.
While many of these emotions are selfish, I can only imagine what the birthmom must be going through. She has a tough road ahead of her, either way.
What about the money?
Right off the bat, I'm amazed at the outpouring of support. I didn't know what to expect. What surprised me the most were people who went out of their way to do what they could. I want to thank Rogie King and Chris Harrison for continuing to talk about it and pushing everybody they knew to help out. I want to thank Dave Shea and Luke Dorny for raising money. I also want to thank Jamie Oastler who was in the midst of putting together a BBQ to help out. I've no doubt forgotten others (I have a notoriously bad memory) and if I have, I'm sorry. I wish the end result of all this hard work could have been different.
What sucks is how much money we spent already. We spent around $1,000 on social worker fees and the associated paperwork to get our homestudy updated. A little higher if you include the cost of fingerprints, doctor appointments, and police checks that go into getting a homestudy completed. We sent $800 to the agency in Utah. Another $3,000 went to the Utah lawyer. Our Toronto lawyer has yet to invoice us for his work to date, and I can only hope that it's not too high. When all is said and done, this entire debacle will have probably cost around $8,000.
With all that said, I feel like I owe everybody something. In an effort to pay it forward, we'll be taking the money we have left over and donating it to another worthy cause. (If you have any suggestions, please feel free to email us!)
The future?
Despite how this turned out, there is a silver lining. We still want a third child. It was always in our plan. With our homestudy now updated and valid for the next year or so, we're open for another opportunity. We might as well take advantage of that while we can.
And while we can't get any of the money back that we've spent, we'll have the time to save up properly. We'll be better prepared next time.
It was nice to be able to share this journey with everybody, even if it didn't work out. Thank you once again.
- Jonathan Snook
April 1, 2009
As we turn into April and with a week since the last update, it seemed time to fill in some details on how things have progressed since.
It's been a frustrating week for us as we had originally thought our paperwork was in with the provincial ministry and that we were just waiting on approval. As it turns out, our lawyer in Toronto hadn't even sent our paperwork on yet. I can only hope that he managed to get the stuff sent off today as promised. Paperwork slowed us down in our first failed adoption back in 2006 (with the same lawyer, incidentally).
Thankfully, the birthmom hasn't given birth yet. We did get some news today that may complicate the process but the Utah agency is looking into it to see if it will actually be a problem.
The other big thing I wanted to mention was a couple fundraising efforts that Dave Shea and Luke Dorny have (separately) put together. Dave has some great icons for sale and has offered to donate the proceeds from the next two weeks to the fund. Luke Dorny, who I've been remiss to mention before, has lovely LD t-shirts for sale. $2 of each will go into the pot.
I wish I could express in words the gratitude I have for everybody who has helped out, even just by talking about it or asking questions. With only 18 days until the official due date, the next 3 to 4 weeks is going to be crunch time. I'll be sure to keep everybody posted.
March 23, 2009
Right off the bat I have to say thank you for all the support everybody has given us. It's been great to hear of those who've been touched by adoption (or of those who are also in the process of adopting).
Things have been a little tense as the paperwork process was off to a rough start. There's a couple steps that we need to complete before we can head to the States. The first was to get a homestudy update, which we did fairly quickly. After that, the homestudy needs to go to the provincial ministry who then says we're allowed to adopt. That's where we're at now, waiting for approval.
Then, we need to be presented with this opportunity with our social worker. This gives us a chance to review the social and medical history and to back out if we wanted to. Which we won't. This is a great situation for us. Michelle and the birthmom chat on the phone and via instant messenger almost every other day. It's great to be able to have that kind of relationship.
The birthmom has already had to make a couple visits to the hospital and is more than likely going to have this baby early (if the doctor's predictions are to be believed, about 3 weeks early). That's within the next week, in case you were wondering.
Financially speaking, we've been working hard to get everything organized. Before now, we weren't really sure how much it was going to cost. Now we have fee schedules from the agency and the different lawyers involved. Because of the Hague, we have to use accredited agencies in Canada and the U.S.. That leaves us with only one lawyer that can help us here in Ontario, and only one agency in Utah. Luckily for us, it just so happens that the lawyer that helped us with Hayden's adoption will also be working through the agency to help us on this adoption.
Just lawyer and agency fees will be $22,000. We still have travel and likely some minor medical costs to manage while we're in Utah. While it is an expensive process, we have no regrets.
A number of people have reached out and offered their support while we're in Utah, which is so nice. We're definitely looking forward to hanging out in Salt Lake City again. The people are great and Michelle, especially, loves the mountains. At the very least, I'll see if we can arrange a small meet-up. It'd be great to meet some people face-to-face that I've only talked to online.
Anyways, I've rambled on longer than I expected. I'll continue to keep everybody posted and thanks again for all your support. It really does mean a lot.
The Rest of the Story
Family
For those of you not familiar, Michelle and I have had the wonderful opportunity to adopt two fantastic, beautiful and healthy boys. Our eldest, Hayden, who's 5 now, is from Utah and Lucas, at 1½ years old, is from Kansas.
With Hayden, we participated in a show called Adoption Stories (we're the Snook family, if you've ever seen it), which has been a great chronicle of our story and is something that we get to share with Hayden as he grows. With Lucas, we got to be in the room during the delivery and was an experience that I'll never forget.
We are supporters of open adoptions, continuing to be in contact with the birth families of both Hayden and Lucas. It was a decision that felt very natural to us and in the end, worked out even better than we could have ever imagined.
Number 3?
Now, plenty of people have plans of "what-if". Michelle and I had come up with a 5 year plan that included the possibility of adopting again in a couple years time. Maybe a girl next time? As life happens, things don't necessarily turn out as you planned.
Hayden's birthmom gave us a call a few weeks ago to let us know that her friend was pregnant and was looking for a family to adopt him or her. That family was us. Luck has struck a third time! To say that we were and are excited would be an understatement.
Alas, the baby is due in under two months — a situation which we're not completely ready for. And that's where you come in.
Expenses
Adoption is an expensive process, especially to adopt out of country. There are lawyer costs both in Canada and in the U.S.. There is the adoption agency fees which cover things like pre- and post-adoption counselling services, court documents, and living expenses for the birthmom. Our home study needs to be updated which comes with the need for medical checks, police checks, RCMP fingerprinting and lots of photocopying. There will also be the travel costs (flight, hotel, car rental) and some hospital fees that we'll be responsible for after the birth.
This is not something that is unknown to us. We've gone through this process before.
This time around, when all is said and done, it'll likely cost us around $25,000. That's a lot of money to get together in such a short period of time, hence the idea to put together this site.
We've set a goal of $15,000 for our fundraising efforts and even if we don't come close to meeting that goal, every little bit helps.
We really hope you can help us and we are eternally grateful for your support. Michelle and I would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping us grow our family.
Thank you!
- Jonathan Snook
Still here? For reading all of this, you get a bonus! We've maintained sites for both our sons, allowing friends, family, and birth-families to share in our joy. Check out Hayden's and Lucas's personal web sites. (...and yes, I'll be putting a site together for #3!)
One last tidbit to share: it looks like it's a boy. Michelle will have a house full of boys to contend with! If you have any baby names, be sure to let us know. :-)
