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Domestic Adoption
Building a Family
By Michele St. Martin
Sara Chase of San Francisco had two biological children, 9-year-old boy and girl twins. While talking one night about their family, Sara asked the children what they'd think about bringing another child into the family. Her daughter quickly agreed, but her son needed time to think about it. One day he said, "Mom, I'd like a little brother, just not a baby brother." As Sara and her children talked, they decided that adopting a younger school-age child was the right choice.
All three couples chose domestic adoption for different reasons.
For Vicki and Mark Baker, adopting domestically was less of a choice than an opportunity that fell into their laps. "We leaned toward an international adoption," Vicki says. Their plans changed when a family friend asked Vicki and Mark to adopt her 4-year-old son, Joe – the result of an unplanned pregnancy. "She just didn't know how to be a mom and really had no interest in it. We told her that we would rather help her learn, but that was not what she wanted. She wanted us to be his parents."
With rare insight, Joe's birth mother told Vicki and Mark that she didn't think she could support the boy financially or emotionally. She felt, for many reasons, that she could not provide a healthy upbringing. "She said she wanted him to have a real family life, the things all kids deserve," says Vicki. Joe's birth mother felt that Vicki and Mark would provide that life for Joe. After Vicki and Mark considered the situation for months, they hired an attorney and moved forward with Joe's adoption. Joe came home to Vicki and Mark two and a half months later.
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