Revising and Editting and Money Oh My....

It's been a bit more stressful of a week in the adoption journey with a few bumps to smooth out. We received a letter from the agency letting us know they were missing copies of our driver's license, birth certificates and physicals. I called the dr's office who say they mailed them and then called the agency who says they didn't. Hmm...perhaps they've gone to the land of lost socks? I went by the agency to pick up copies that I could drop off to the agency. The other 2 things should have been easy except Tim somehow lost his copy of his birth certificate when he went to apply for his IN driver's license. Luckily, his mom and dad had a copy that dad was so kind to take to work, scan and email to me. Yeah Dad! Thanks so much! That was a HUGE timesaver!
The next big thing that happened was we were emailed copies of our web paragrah which birthmothers will be able to see online and our bio sheets that will be given to birthmothers that might be interested in us. The web paragraph was easy to look over, made a few changes and voila! Done, checked off the list. The bios proved to be a bit more challenging. The bio is 3 parts: a Dear Birth Couple letter with our picture and a scrapbooking background; 2 pages of narrative text about us; and 2 pages of pictures about us. The Dear Birth Couple page was fine except I didn't care for the background paper. The one the director, Julie, choose was very modern with lots of browns and light blues. Not really fitting our personalities so I choose something softer with rusts and greens. I like it much better. The other challenge was the 8 pictures chosen. She wants to include a picture of our house in GA which I'm hesitant to do. I don't want to lead a birthmother to believe that her child will be raised in a house that looks like that since we do not plan to buy anything like it here. We agreed to leave it in understanding that we will update it after we buy our new home later this spring or summer. There was a picture of Tim with children but no picture of me with children so I asked to one one put it. I left the meeting with Julie feeling a bit stressed and am trying to stay positive.
The final adoption stress of the week was in regards to the advertising fee the agency charges. They have one amount for most couples and an $1800 higher amount for couples with children and couples over 40. The higher amount is because their experience shows that these 2 categories typically take over a year to place and result in higher advertising fees. I am 39 and Tim is 43 so , in our opinion, we are not a couple over 40 but, in the eyes of the agency it turns out, we are. This fee is explained in their paperwork and was talked about in the opening seminar. We were very surprised though to learn that we were considered to be in the over 40 category. I've written to Julie requesting we be considered for the lower fee because the fact that one of us is over 40 is the only main con against us. We feel we have many, many pros on our side. The fact that I'm a teacher, we are very active, willing to consider different ages, races, premature birth, some types of drug use and even do a full open adoption which we are told they have very few couples willing to do so should all help us. We also have great networking skills and will be working to locate a birthmother on our own (You can help!). We are also uncomfortable with their policy to charge the extra fee up front when their policy does not include refunding the extra money if we do adopt in less than a year. We would be totally willing to pay the additional $1800 at the 12 month mark if it was necessary. We expect a letter this week giving us our final home study approval and along with it will come the advertising bill. What amount will it ask for? If nothing elses, hopefully the "over 40" couple will be more clearly defined by the agency so that future couples like us will not be confused as well. All in all it was quite a stressful week in the adoption process. I'm sure it'll have lots of ups and downs and this week was certainly one of the downs.