Revelations

Sparky was up at his parents' house for the last week painting the outside of their house. He didn't think it was a good idea to have his parents up on a two story ladder trying to paint in the heat. I agreed.
I had a lot of trouble sleeping while he was gone. I think it is because I was doing extra research while he was gone. Because Sparky was not there to distract me, I sat for hours on the computer and with books looking up adoption information. I was overwhelmed by the financial aspect.
It costs an average of $25,000 to do a domestic infant adoption (cost varies greatly depending on the agency). Please remember, the fee is NOT to pay for the baby it is to cover advertising to find birth parents, salary of the staff members of the agency, advertising Sparky and I to appeal to a birth mom, legal fees, paper work processing, etc.
If Sparky and I were to find a birth mom on our own, we would only have to pay for a home study and for the legal work, about $3,000 total.

When Sparky and I looked at what we make and how we could pay for an agency, we quickly saw that with the help of the adoption tax credit we could pay for an adoption in a year. What we did not think about were all of the extra expenses.

I plan on using cloth diapers, so the only extra expense there will be energy to run the washer/dryer, detergent, and water.
For a while I was under the delusion that my mom would provide free child care because she lives about two blocks away, and we had always talked about it. Apparently that isn't in the plan. I completely understand from her perspective, because who wants to finally retire just to get tied down to the responsibility of providing child care? Not me. Not her either. But from my perspective it sucks.
We are fortunate that Sparky works in a building that has child care available for newborns up to age five. It costs about $120 a week for infants. We are hoping that they will give us a discount since he works in the building, but I am doubtful.
So that adds an additional $480 fee to each month that I was not planning on.
We also will need to buy formula because I do NOT react well to hormones. Part of our decision to adopt is because we don't want to make my body do what it clearly was not designed to do (carry a baby). Obviously, I am not designed to create milk either so that will be on average $105 a month for formula. Yuck.

I do not want to have to worry about paying back a loan at the same time as creating additional funds for new baby expenses. Don't get me wrong, I think we could do it, but it would be easier not to take out a loan for the adoption. Or at least not for the entire thing.

Our tentative plan... since it changes about every week... is to do our own marketing for the next year by word of mouth while we save money for the expenses of an agency. We hope to save up $20,000 or more so we are not worried about money when we finally get a baby. With the agency we like there is only a 2.5 month waiting list anyway, so it shouldn't be too bad. (At least that is what I keep telling myself.)

So now we wait. And save.