DCF Adoption - Our reasons for waiting...

Hi All. I know that many of you out there are wondering why John and I have not chosen DCF foster/adoption. It is, after all, free and comes with many benefits. We spent a good amount of time discussing this option and decided that we want to go this route for our second adoption. DCF foster to adoption can be a very painful process. DCF always has the best interest of the child and the child's birth family as their primary goal - which is of course what they should be doing! They are actively working to reunite a baby with it's biological family. When you foster these babies, you need to go into it being emotionally prepared to relinquish that baby for up to 6 months. I have heard success stories but recognize that the pain of giving up a child that has been in my home for several months may be too much for me. Though you can never predict what is going to happen in the future, we would like our first baby to be a sure-thing. We experienced too much loss already with all of the miscarriages. John and I fully intend to adopt a second child (probably an older child) through DCF in the future as well as opening our home (when we have a slightly larger one) to foster children.