We Need Adoptive Families that are Flexible
Do you want to adopt? Sometimes you will need to be flexible.
We do not want you to take on a situation that makes you uncomfortable, but most adoptions come with unknowns.
If you aren’t comfortable with unpredictable and fluid situations, your adoption wait could be longer.
Sometimes we get situations that we don’t have an adoptive family for, and we need families that are willing to accept fluid and unexpected situations.
For example, we’ve had situations that need adoptive families willing to take:
- A newborn and an 18-month-old sibling
- Six-month-old fragile twin girls.
- An infant born addicted.
- A family that lives close to the biological family!
We need spontaneous and flexible adoptive families
A year ago, we got a call at 4 PM on a Friday. A mother had delivered tiny twin boys who were going to need a few weeks’ stay in the hospital’s NICU.
She did not like the adoption agency she was working with and had sent them away. A friend told her to call Heart to Heart Adoptions. She did, telling us her requirements for a family and that she wanted to meet them before she left the hospital. She had specific requirements for who she wanted to raise her little boys. Those preferences included:
- Family who were available and willing to be with the babies in the NICU.
- Ready to come within a few hours
- Willing to have an open adoption
- Christian
- Had experience raising children. These little boys were not going to be the first children.
We found three family profiles for our mother. She chose one. We called them.
They laughed, cried, panicked for about twenty minutes, then called us back.
“We’re in.”
Today, those boys are thriving, and so is the birth mother, as they communicate in an open adoption.
We don’t know what situations we will see tomorrow.
There was a two-year-old who came with a very specific requirement. Her adoptive family needed to have a dog. Not just any family—a family with a dog. This little girl had been through trauma, and the only thing that calmed her was a large therapy dog.
We had families ready to get a dog. But we needed a family who already had one. That child is now five, and according to her parents, she and their lab mix are inseparable.
We need a pool of adoptive families. We need flexible families.
The only way we can get families for the variety of situations we have is by having families who are open to different situations.
We once had a birth mother whose only request seemed simple.
She wanted her baby placed with a family within thirty miles of her grandmother’s house. The grandmother had raised her, and she wanted her child to know that same woman’s love. It was specific. It was geographical. It was incredibly important to her.
We had wonderful families—just not in that zip code radius.
We made calls. We reached out to other agencies. And then we found them: a couple who lived twenty-two miles away and had always hoped for an open adoption. That little girl is now seven, and she has Sunday dinners with her birth great-grandmother twice a month. Flexibility made that possible.
We've had some amazing families take on some amazing situations and achieve amazing results.
We had a sibling set: a newborn, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old. Most families on our list were approved for one or two children.
We needed someone who could instantly become a family of five.
The learning curve would be steep—diapers, preschool, and toddler tantrums all at once. One couple stepped up. They’d been trying to adopt for three years and had always said they were “open to siblings.” They meant it. Six months in, they sent us a photo: all three kids asleep in a puppy-pile on the couch. The note said, “Chaos and perfect, all at the same time.”
Be flexible in your attitude towards adoption. You may be needed in a place you hadn’t expected.
Another situation sprung on us suddenly.
We don’t have a family that meets the needs of this baby and birth mother. We will call other adoption agencies until we find a family that exactly matches what the birth family wants.
We won’t stop until we find the perfect family.
