Michele and Pedro's Adoption Story

Our adoption story starts the way that so many do, We are a loving couple, blessed in so many ways, yet unable to move from a couple to a family. We tried for many years to conceive with many heartbreaks before deciding to adopt. Adoption was not a foreign concept to us, I have a adopted sister and Pedro has a half sister that was adopted by his father. We started to look in to our options as we began the paperwork for our home study.

Initially, we looked into both domestic and international adoption. In my heart of hearts, for my first child, I wanted a newborn, but my parents and I lived through a failed placement and I was not willing to go through that again. We had heard all the horror stories about domestic adoption, and living in NY we were having a difficult time finding anyone who was licensed in this state, as was required. The few agencies that were licensed didn't call back or told of high failure rates, as high as 45%. I was discouraged and turned to international agencies. However, in the back of my mind, I still longed for a newborn. When the international agency closed unexpectedly, I almost gave up. I found your agency with little expectation that you could help us become a family. That was when everything changed.

We started our adoption journey after September 11, 2001. My husband witnessed the buildings fall, and we lost close friends and family in the tragedy. By the next September we had a completed home study and no agency. We found American Adoption in the middle of September. Shawn Kane was very helpful in answering all of our questions and dealing with any concerns that I had. We completed all of our paperwork and became active by Halloween 2002. We thought that we might be matched by January and settled down for the wait.

On November 19, 2002 I received a call from Kelly saying that she had news for us. WE WERE MATCHED!!!! And the Birthmother was due in a week!! We flew out Thanksgiving day, eating the traditional dinner of airplane pretzels and chocolate whoppers, and we could not have been happier. Our beautiful daughter, Josefina, was born the next day and we were able to be there in the birthing room when she was born. She has become our whole world. We both know that she is the reason that we were born, to be her parents. And this would not have happened with out the wonderful people at American Adoption. My husband and I thank them every day in our hearts for helping us to become a family and for finding us the child that God meant us to love.

Making the decision to adopt in a soul searching one. Finding the right agency is crucial. American Adoption is the right agency.

Thank you again for all that you have done for us.

Sincerely,

Michele, Pedro, and Josefina