In case you are wondering why we don’t have our baby yet, I’ll attempt to explain. Adoption is expensive. CRAZY expensive. I’ll try and break it down for you with an
example from a profile we recently reviewed.
This standard adoption included the following fees;
Agency
referral $500
Birth Mom Soc. Services $7,000
Adoptive Parent Soc. Services $7,000
Administrative Fees $1,250
Out of State Home Study Review $900
Legal Fees $4,000
Placement Fee $7,000
Out of State Adoption Fees $1,250
That’s the reality.
And couple this with the enormous amount of debt you already have maxing
out credit cards and taking out loans to pay for all the past IVF procedures
(over $55,000), you have a mess and a constant weight on your shoulders and
stress so awful, you wonder how you can get out of bed every day. I have missed a lot of work!! In a perfect world, I would NEVER have asked
for anyone’s help. Dan and I took on a
lot ourselves before we asked for help.
And because of you, we were able to do so much to get us this far in the
adoption process. We have an agency working
hard to find birth moms for us, we have counselors helping us to maintain our
sanity, we had our home study completed and approved, and we put together a beautiful
profile book for a birth mom to consider giving us her baby. We literally would not have been able to do
any of that without your help. Those are
major steps that enable us to get further in the process, but we still have a
way to go. Which leaves me with this
letter. The more we agonize about this,
the more we understand that it isn’t about asking people for money.
It’s about asking them to become part of our story. It’s about our baby’s story and how he/she
got to be able to come home. So I
have a proposal for you. A heart
dropbox. It would look something like
this;
It works like this: 1. We have hundreds of little wooden hearts. 2. We are “selling” each piece for $20 (or $10 or $5?, we don’t care!). You can choose to buy 1, 2, 3, or 10! There is no limit! You can even go half with someone! 3. You can purchase via PayPal (cclark6@yahoo.com), click the “Donate” button that is in the right column of our blog, venmo me @carrie-zampich or you can email me for our address and send a check in the mail. 4. Once you purchase a piece, we will send you a heart to “decorate” or write your own message and mail it back to us. 5. Once every single piece has been “sold”, we will assemble the hearts and hang it in a double-sided glass frame in the baby’s room so that they can always look back and be reminded of who has a heart and a hand in bringing him/her home!
I know it’s a lot to ask of friends that have already done SO
much. Seriously, we think of you all
daily and how much you’ve done and we are SO grateful and try to give back
every day and be better people. It would
be an amazing thing if you could help a little more and spread the word! Share
it with your families and friends. Thank you! We love you! Carrie & Dan
