Couple make adoption a personal quest

Kathy and Daniel Ollivier have their hearts on their sleeves -- and in their front yard. A glance at the yard sign and banner magnet on the car outside their Minneapolis home reveals the couple's toll-free number, Web address and dearest hope to any passersby: "We want to adopt a baby!"

The Olliviers are now in the third year of a full-scale, public search for an infant or young child to adopt. They've been working with an agency for nearly five years but have had no luck. So they took the advice of their program coordinator and augmented the process with a personal outreach program.

"I feel in my bones that we'll find a baby through a random connection," Kathy said. "We're just trying everything we can."

It's not as odd as you might think. There are few comprehensive adoption statistics, but a Department of Health and Human Services report suggests that there are just fewer children available in this country to adopt. There are dozens of online forums dedicated to making adoption connections. And in 2007, screenwriter Diablo Cody found a hit in "Juno," a movie centered on a Minnesota teenager who found adoptive parents for her child in the local pennysaver.

While the Olliviers' agency, Children's Home Society Family Services, doesn't keep exact numbers on how many families start individual outreach campaigns, they said it's not at all uncommon. "It's another way to reach out to people," said Mikki Harris, the coordinator for the agency's domestic adoption program.

Kathy, 51, and Daniel, 42, have taken outreach to a new level. They've wanted children from the time they married in 1999, after a transatlantic courtship that began with a chance meeting on an airplane, and had thought about adoption even before three cycles of failed fertility treatments sent them looking for a reputable agency. In December 2004, they submitted a profile to Children's Home Society and Family Services, and began waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

After meeting a woman with an outreach T-shirt at the 2005 State Fair, Kathy decided to put her background in sales to use and made shirts, business cards and fliers explaining their situation. They've spent between $10,000 and $15,000 on the traditional adoption process -- which includes fees for classes, meetings and a home study that vets their medical and family histories -- so the printing costs are a small sacrifice. Now they leave fliers wherever they go, slip cards into all of their correspondence and have even launched a website at www.BabyToAdopt.net.

They know it can be strange for outsiders, too. Sometimes a business owner or a manager will call and ask them to stop leaving the cards at their stores, and they occasionally hear from someone who thinks what they're doing is wrong or unsettling. But the feedback, they say, has been largely positive. People see their shirts and strike up a conversation, saying they'll keep them in mind or say a prayer for them.

The challenges

The Olliviers prefer a domestic adoption so any child they adopt can have a relationship with his or her birth parents, and they want an infant or toddler so they can raise their child to speak both English and Daniel's native language, French. They said race is not a factor for them, and they would love any healthy child.

Why not international adoption? The couple is enrolled in the Chinese adoption program at their agency but Kathy's too old to qualify for many international programs. While the Olliviers understand and appreciate the good intentions behind the agency's policies, the restrictions can be maddening, and they can't afford to start from scratch at another agency with different rules.

"The adoption agency holds all the cards," Kathy said. "They can just pull the plug on you for whatever reason -- they change the terms of the program -- and ... too bad. You've got all of this invested in it, and it just comes to a grinding halt." Outreach, it seemed, was the only way for them to take charge of the process, and Kathy said she works on it a little bit every day.

All the fits and starts can be disheartening. Lately, Kathy's been thinking about packing up the books shelved in the empty nursery they've set up at home. "In some ways, it almost feels like we've got too much invested," she said. After all, they have other children to love in their lives: Daniel's sister just had a baby, and the couple love to spend time with Kathy's nieces and nephews.

But they can't quite give up yet. They know their baby's out there, somewhere. So the Olliviers will continue their search, reaching out to more and more people. "It's like falling in love," Kathy said. "You can't make it happen, but you can tell everyone that you're single and looking."