The Interstate Adoption Option!

What to Pack for an Out-of-State Adoption

When pursuing domestic infant adoption, it is not unusual for your child to be born in a different state than the one in which you live. Therefore, oftentimes adoptive parents find themselves traveling out-of-state to bring home their bundle of joy. As an adoption consultant, I get many questions about what adoptive parents should bring on their out-of-state journey and what items really aren’t necessary. Here are some key tips to help with your packing.

Pack to Stay for Awhile
The first thing you need to know when you are packing for adopting a baby out-of-state is that you will be staying there for a while. You will not be heading straight home after gaining custody of the baby at the hospital. There are many legal maneuverings with interstate adoption and one of them is the ICPC (Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children). The ICPC involves paperwork that needs to be completed and filed with both the state in which the baby is born and your home state. Only after both states approve it are you legally allowed to take the baby home. This usually occurs sometime between 2 and 15 business days after the baby is discharged from the hospital.

Comfort First

When you are packing for picking up baby, you want to put comfort first for everyone. If it’s important to you, pack nice outfits for the precious memories you are going to photograph when you first meet the baby and/or when you leave the hospital. Besides that, focus on comfort. Sweatpants, yoga pants and comfy t-shirts are all you are going to want to wear as you adjust to your baby’s schedule and try to catch some sleep whenever you can.

Of course, you also want to think of your baby’s comfort. Since you will be spending some time in temporary housing (a hotel room, a friend’s home or an AirBnB), you want your baby to have the same comforts he or she would have at home. Pack a swaddle blanket that is soft yet breathable. You can also consider a bassinet or foldable Pack ‘n Play but check first if your hotel has one to rent or if your AirBnB host has one available. It is also sweet to bring a special newborn-safe stuffed animal for your baby to cuddle with.

Lastly, since you will be staying for a while, choose accommodations that have plenty of space and convenience. For instance, select a suite with a kitchenette including a microwave, sink, and refrigerator. Also consider a unit with a living room area so you and your partner can take turns caring for the baby at night in a separate space while the other one rests. AirBnB or HomeAway are great options that can provide you with plenty of space for less cost than a hotel room. If you explain your situation to the host, they’re often willing to be flexible with your unknown arrival and departure dates.

Baby Essentials

Since you won’t be bringing your baby directly home, you need to pack the baby essentials to care for your newborn while you are away. Of course the first thing you need is a car seat as no hospital will allow you to leave with the baby without one. You can either pack it and take it with you, buy one at your destination, or pre-order from a national chain and pick it up at your destination. Some other essentials that you will need include:

Baby bottles (you should hold off on formula until you know which brand the hospital is using)
Baby clothes (a few onesies and t-shirts will do)
Laundry detergent for babies or for sensitive skin
Blankets (soft swaddlers)
Diapers and wipes
Disposable trash bags for diapers
Changing pad
Diaper bag
Pacifiers (even if you don’t intend to use them, they’re good to have on hand as you never know if you might change your mind)
Burp clothes and washcloths
Bottle dish soap and drying rack
Stroller (this isn’t absolutely necessary but you’re going to want to go out rather than stay in a hotel room all the time. I suggest a lightweight foldable stroller frame into which you can just snap the car seat.)

Paperwork Organization
It is very important that you bring all relevant adoption paperwork with you and keep it organized. If you are traveling by plane, keep your paperwork with you in your carry-on so there is no risk of it being lost. It is also a good idea to make extra copies of important documents and to store digital versions in the cloud for easy access in case anything happens to your hard copies.

Adopting a baby from another state can seem overwhelming but being open to that option can be what leads you to your baby. With a little preparation, some savvy packing, and a healthy dose of patience, the out-of-state travel can go very smoothly. Once you’re back home, the hassle of traveling will quickly become a distant memory as you focus on the joy of life with your new child.



Written by Nicole Witt, owner of The Adoption Consultancy (www.TheAdoptionConsultancy.com), an unbiased resource serving pre-adoptive families by providing them with the education, information and guidance they need to safely adopt a newborn, usually within three to 12 months.

Impassable Borders

Although I personally have met families that have adopted across state lines, I think the following article is informative and eye-opening as to some of the problems that exist in our country's adoption laws. Let's pray together that these barriers, that keep children from having a forever family, will be removed.

"Interstate Barriers Keep Children in Foster Care, While Willing Parents are Ignored."

By Jeff Katz

For many years I ran an agency in Rhode Island that recruited families to adopt children from that state's child welfare system. Like many such organizations, we had a "waiting child" feature on a local television station. After one of our TV spots showed a seven-year-old black boy named Justin, I got a call from a woman in Massachusetts. She was a lawyer, and her husband was a doctor. Both were black. She told me that they had been considering adoption for several years. They saw Justin and were moved by his story. They prayed. And they decided that they would adopt this child.

But they couldn't. Rhode Island could not legally provide a homestudy to a Massachusetts family. And Massachusetts would not use state resources to prepare a family to adopt a child from another state. This situation repeats itself, every single day, in America. The simple fact is that it is virtually impossible to adopt a foster child across state lines in the United States.

In the most recent year for which we have data, states reported that 71 children were adopted from foster care across state lines by non-relatives. For perspective, consider the fact that the national weather service estimates that 600 Americans are struck by lightning each year. Despite common misperception, the problem is not a lack of people wanting to adopt a child from foster care. Analysis of the most recent National Survey of Family Growth shows 600,000 American women seeking to adopt a child. The vast majority was willing to adopt the kinds of foster children we label "hard to place": black and Hispanic kids, older kids, kids with disabilities. For every waiting child between 6 and 12, there were eight prospective parents.

Given the intensity of the need and the number of families willing to adopt, why is interstate adoption so rare? The primary reason is that we do not have a national adoption system. Instead, we have 50 different child welfare systems, each with its own process for adoption eligibility, recruitment, approval, and training. Even worse, our system has created disincentives for states to support adoptions across state lines. Each state pays the cost of recruiting and preparing its own families, with no compensation if the family adopts a child from another state. In other words, each interstate adoption has a "winner"� (the state that sends the child) and a "loser"� (the state that receives the child).

In the current system, it makes more sense to keep an in-state family waiting indefinitely than to match them immediately with a waiting child in another state. This issue is especially significant in large metropolitan areas that straddle state lines, such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Incredibly, this win-lose pattern holds true across county lines within many states.

There is a vast number of variables for both prospective parents and waiting children. Parents entering the system do much soul-searching to decide what kind of child they are able to parent. When a pediatric nurse in a small community says she wants to adopt a child with spina bifida or another developmental birth defect, she may wait years before one is available in her community. Meanwhile, 50 miles away, in another county, a child waits.

It is a national scandal that 25,000 children age out of foster care each year while willing adoptive parents are ignored because they are in the wrong state, or even the wrong county. We must change the incentives in our adoption system so that everyone wins when a child finds a forever family.