Dallas Adoption Agency, Hope Cottage, would like to share these resources for Wanting to Adopt and Adoptive Families. Knowledge is a great thing!
Here is a link for a recent blog post, entitled "Five Tips for Exchanging Gifts Among Birth and Adoptive Familes."
Interested in adopting from the Foster Care System? Click here for a Fact Sheet dispelling myths about Foster to Adopt.
Hope Cottage is the oldest nonprofit, non sectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918 Hope Cottage has been building and nurturing strong families through counseling, education and adoption services.
If you have questions about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 214.526.8721.
If you are a woman facing a crises pregnancy and would like to talk to someone about adoption, please call Hope Cottage at 1.800.944.4464 or 214.404.4546.
Showing posts with label birth families. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birth families. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
An Adoption Story - Brought to You by Hope Cottage
Share this adoption journey and a family made by Hope Cottage.
Seven years ago Joe and I sat in separate steel chairs as the doctor leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk, his words betrayed his smile..."I give you no more than a 5% chance of ever having children." We were devastated. The dream of our curly, red-headed, freckle-faced, green-eyed child smashed against the white walls. It wasn't supposed to be this way...but it was. After that hour passed, we looked at the pieces of our dream that were left. Our hearts and our hopes had survived in the shards and we held onto them as we made a new path for our journey.
According to our doctor, adoption was our only option. It was also the safest bet that we would end up with a child. My search ended at Hope Cottage. I loved the name. A name is a bizarre reason to choose an adoption agency, I know, but the reality of our family was dependant on that idea, the idea of hope. Joe and I combed through the website and absorbed all the information. Soon we made the initial call. That call was followed by other calls and orientations and informational sessions and huge binders full of materials. We made a scrapbook of us to show to perspective birthparents and wrote letters telling about ourselves. Once a month, we attended a Hope Cottage support group along with other waiting families. We attended one, then two, then three and so on learning about the legal side of adoptions, birth-families' feelings, and adoptive families' feelings. We loved learning how to be parents, but wondered along with all the others in the room when we would be. We jumped when the phone rang hoping it was "the call". We looked deep into our hearts during the times of helplessness and held strongly to hope that someday all of this would result in a child.
Eleven months passed, and the phone rang and it was "the call". We drove anxiously to Dallas wondering what we would say. When we arrived we learned that Janine, the birthmother we were scheduled to meet, had gone into labor that morning. We knew we had to meet this little baby boy. Before we laid eyes on him though, we had to meet with his birthmother. We called Hope Cottage and set up the second meeting with Janine.
We met her at a Starbucks in Dallas close the the hospital after she was released. Scariest first encounter I have ever experienced. She was tall, blonde, loud, gregarious and just as scared as we were. The conversation was easy and the answer then was simple. It was a match. We met our baby the following day.
The first time we saw him he was hooked up to tubes, but breathing on his own. Joe held him. I fed him. He pooped and I changed him. Janine was there and smiling. She asked us what we were going to call him and we told her the name we had decided on during the drive down. She even asked the nurses to start calling him that name. We continued to visit daily for the next four weeks. Joe would work a full day, drive to pick me up and we would drive to Dallas and spend time with our baby. We held him and sang to him and read to him. I brought Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little and Baby Island and we went through all of those. Slowly but surely the tubes came off, and it was time for us to take our baby home. Years of trying, 11 months of waiting, and now, instant baby.
It didn't matter that he didn't have my curls or green eyes or Joe's red hair and freckles, he had our hearts, our hopes and our dreams. The shards had come together to make this family. This is exactly how our life is supposed to be. We are grateful for the heartache and the frustration and the wait. We are grateful for Janine. We are grateful for the feeling of hope.
Hope Cottage is the oldest non-profit, non-sectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918 Hope Cottage has been building and nurturing strong families through education, counseling and adoption services. To learn more call 214.526.8721.
Seven years ago Joe and I sat in separate steel chairs as the doctor leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk, his words betrayed his smile..."I give you no more than a 5% chance of ever having children." We were devastated. The dream of our curly, red-headed, freckle-faced, green-eyed child smashed against the white walls. It wasn't supposed to be this way...but it was. After that hour passed, we looked at the pieces of our dream that were left. Our hearts and our hopes had survived in the shards and we held onto them as we made a new path for our journey.
According to our doctor, adoption was our only option. It was also the safest bet that we would end up with a child. My search ended at Hope Cottage. I loved the name. A name is a bizarre reason to choose an adoption agency, I know, but the reality of our family was dependant on that idea, the idea of hope. Joe and I combed through the website and absorbed all the information. Soon we made the initial call. That call was followed by other calls and orientations and informational sessions and huge binders full of materials. We made a scrapbook of us to show to perspective birthparents and wrote letters telling about ourselves. Once a month, we attended a Hope Cottage support group along with other waiting families. We attended one, then two, then three and so on learning about the legal side of adoptions, birth-families' feelings, and adoptive families' feelings. We loved learning how to be parents, but wondered along with all the others in the room when we would be. We jumped when the phone rang hoping it was "the call". We looked deep into our hearts during the times of helplessness and held strongly to hope that someday all of this would result in a child.
Eleven months passed, and the phone rang and it was "the call". We drove anxiously to Dallas wondering what we would say. When we arrived we learned that Janine, the birthmother we were scheduled to meet, had gone into labor that morning. We knew we had to meet this little baby boy. Before we laid eyes on him though, we had to meet with his birthmother. We called Hope Cottage and set up the second meeting with Janine.
We met her at a Starbucks in Dallas close the the hospital after she was released. Scariest first encounter I have ever experienced. She was tall, blonde, loud, gregarious and just as scared as we were. The conversation was easy and the answer then was simple. It was a match. We met our baby the following day.
The first time we saw him he was hooked up to tubes, but breathing on his own. Joe held him. I fed him. He pooped and I changed him. Janine was there and smiling. She asked us what we were going to call him and we told her the name we had decided on during the drive down. She even asked the nurses to start calling him that name. We continued to visit daily for the next four weeks. Joe would work a full day, drive to pick me up and we would drive to Dallas and spend time with our baby. We held him and sang to him and read to him. I brought Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little and Baby Island and we went through all of those. Slowly but surely the tubes came off, and it was time for us to take our baby home. Years of trying, 11 months of waiting, and now, instant baby.
It didn't matter that he didn't have my curls or green eyes or Joe's red hair and freckles, he had our hearts, our hopes and our dreams. The shards had come together to make this family. This is exactly how our life is supposed to be. We are grateful for the heartache and the frustration and the wait. We are grateful for Janine. We are grateful for the feeling of hope.
Hope Cottage is the oldest non-profit, non-sectarian adoption agency in Dallas. Since 1918 Hope Cottage has been building and nurturing strong families through education, counseling and adoption services. To learn more call 214.526.8721.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Birthmother Poem
Here is a poem written by one of our recent adoptive mothers. It is too beautiful not to share.
Birthmother Poem
by Shannon Hills
Giver of life
Beacon of hope
Unselfish sacrifice
Beyond the courage of most
Beyond the courage of most
Nurturing watchman both day and night
Keeper of the dream until God's appointed time
Some say it was a mistake, an unplanned event
But the heavens rejoice that you chose to commit
To choose life, to give life, not once but twice
Birthmother, I thank you for the ultimate sacrifice!
Your child, our child, will always know
How deeply she was loved in the womb and forever more!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The History of Hope Cottage
Emma Wylie Ballard was the president of the Dallas Humane Society and was distressed at the thought of children and babies abandoned in the streets of Dallas. This concern for the welfare of these children was the beginning of Hope Cottage. A few weeks after I began work here, I was shown the original ledgers from Hope Cottage - ledgers that recorded the children who passed through the doors of Hope Cottage from the very beginning. Some of the records will break your heart - an entry that indicates a one month old was left on a back porch swing in the middle of the night in February. Another entry that listed 6 children, ages 4 months - 16 who had been abandoned in a car. We found a copy of an old newspaper article that stated "can you believe this happy boy was the child who was found abandoned on an ant hill".
By 1922 crowded conditions led to the construction of the first Hope Cottage at 2301 Welborn, the site of the present day playground at Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. Babies were cared for in nurseries there until 1960. Enjoying community support, Hope Cottage merged with other agencies serving children. In 1960, the merger with the Children's Bureau, a large foster care organization, broadened the focus to include older children in need of homes. In 1965, Hope Cottage merged with Girls Foundation of the Dallas Federation of Women's Clubs, a foster group home. In the 1970's, a rapid decline in the number of children available for adoption begain with the legalization of abortion. In 1978 Hope Cottage sold its home of fifty years and moved to the present location at McKinney and Fitzhugh Avenues.And that is where our story stops for today. Tune in next week for a trip from the 80's to the present at Hope Cottage. One thing to remember - for almost 100 years, Hope Cottage, with the assitance of the citizens of Dallas, has been finding loving, permanent homes for children.
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