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Seth Edlavitch and his wife, Melissa Segal, pictured with their son, Noah, never thought that Facebook would make them a family. Credit: Michael Krauthamer
The Kensington, Md. couple turned to private, independent adoption, which is facilitated by adoptive parents and a birth mother without the assistance of an agency. Little did they know that posting their hopes for a child on Facebook would make them a family of three.
"When you pursue a private, independent adoption, you are responsible for all the marketing," Edlavitch, 39, tells ParentDish. "We did some newspaper advertising and we sent an e-mail to all of our friends, but as part of this spread offense, we turned to some of the Internet mediums."
Edlavitch says he didn't know much about blogging beyond the fact that he could sign up for a free website, but that didn't stop him from creating "Melissa and Seth Adoption" in 2008. He also signed up for a Facebook account, but really didn't expect any adoption information he posted there to go much beyond his own circle of online friends.
But it did reach much farther than that -- and much closer, in a way. A friend of Edlavitch's shared the couple's information with his Facebook friends, and an old acquaintance of that friend responded. She knew a woman looking for an adoptive family.
"She has a local business, and she employed (the birth mother's) husband," Edlavitch says. "She was eight or nine months pregnant. I posted (on Facebook) in early December, and she called me Dec. 8. On Dec. 9, we met (the birth mother), and on Dec. 30, Noah was born."
The woman who gave birth to Noah lives just 10 minutes from the couple, so they were able to be present when their son was born. The new parents celebrated Edlavitch's New Year's Eve birthday by getting their home ready for the child they were never certain they would have.
"We didn't have any of the gear because of the experience we had before," Edlavitch says. "I wasn't interested in getting a lot of stuff, because I didn't want to have to return it."
But after meeting Noah's birth mom, the two took a deep breath and painted a room for him, and purchased basics such as a crib and a car seat. Today, the three are happily settled in and the couple is looking to adopt a sibling for Noah, now 16 months old.
"We can't wait to find a sibling for Noah and are looking again to find another newborn to adopt," Edlavitch says. Although, "as the typical guy, I'm already not getting enough sleep," he jokes.
The Edlavitch family story is one that caught the eye not only of the media (stories about the couple have run on CNN and NBC Washington), but also of Emily Liebert, author of the book "Facebook Fairytales: Modern-Day Miracles to Inspire The Human Spirit." The book details 25 inspiring stories about connections made via the social medium.
"I didn't believe her," says Edlavitch, when asked what it felt like to be included in the book. But now, he says, the two count Liebert as a good friend. "It turns out she was going through infertility and the adoption process, too."
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 3)
5-15-2010 @ 9:57AM
lily said...Congrats to this lovely couple being blessed with a child! I hope we soon are just as blessed as we are looking to adopt. And Derrel if you had been adopted by good parents such as this child had, perhaps youd have been brought up better and with some manners and class. Sorry that you didnt...this child is more blessed than you.
5-15-2010 @ 7:31AM
The Furman Famil said...Derrel: what a jerk you are to say such a thing. Obviously they don't care who is jewish and who is not.
Reply
5-15-2010 @ 1:44PM
Lilly Pegourie said...I didn't see the word Jewish mentioned anywhere in the article. Why is a lady so critical of this. Because she can't have yet what she wants? Adoption is wonderful and when you do your "homework", as they obviously did they were blessed. Open adoptions are wonderful family memories.
5-15-2010 @ 8:42AM
Kim said...Derrel, Isn't it a wonderful world where an ignorant, bigoted idiot such as yourself can utter stupidity. Do you feel better now? Fool.
Reply
5-15-2010 @ 8:56AM
Dancer at heart said...Derrel:
What makes you think they are Jewish?? They don't look Jewish to me and before you spew your hatred for the Jewish religion all over the internet, Noah just happens to be one of the MOST popular boy's names chosen today..
My daughter has red hair and brown eyes and my son has red hair and green eyes..and guess what...they're Jewish..
A-hole.
Reply
5-15-2010 @ 9:11AM
Michele said...With all the negativity coming out about Facebook, I guess they needed a positive "feel good" story.
I wonder if the author of "Facebook Fairytales: Modern-Day Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirit" is connected to Facebook?
Maybe I should write a book: "Facebook Nightmare: How People I Never Wanted To Have Contact With Or See Again Have Managed To Find ( And Annoy ) Me Because I Have A Relative With A Facebook Page."
I'm very happy for the couple who adopted their baby. I'm NOT a fan of Facebook. Thanks to "Social Networking" sites, there is no such thing as privacy anymore.
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5-15-2010 @ 8:03PM
edwardsnj1 said...Derrel you are dumb!! But I will say that if you wait until your 40ish you knock your odds down of making your own baby. All I can think of when I see the 40 somethings trying to have babies is that movie Idiocracy.
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5-15-2010 @ 9:15AM
just me said...actually, the woman does look Jewish to me but what does her religion have to do with the fact that people are pretty much selling children on line.
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5-15-2010 @ 10:31AM
James said...To Just me.... You must have read a different article than me. I didn't see anything where this child was Sold.
5-16-2010 @ 6:35PM
adoptee2 said...That baby wasn't free. The firstmother didn't get anything. The adoption industry got the $$$$. The adoption industry isn't supplying babies to people who want to have a family out of the goodness of their hearts. They are supplying babies for big money.
Adoption should be the last resort. All avenues of keeping the baby with their biological relatives should be vetted first -- both paternal and maternal and extended. It is then, and only then, that adoption should proceed. Babies should NOT be used to fulfill an adult fantasy of having a family. That's backwards.
5-15-2010 @ 11:12AM
t said...Jesus was born a Jew. Love your neighbor.
Reply
5-15-2010 @ 10:57AM
Angiebaby said...So what if both the birth mother AND the adoptive family were all Jewish? Jewish couples struggle with infertility just like the rest of the world, and what is wrong with a birth mother making the adoptive family's religion important in the adoption process? It would be important to ME what faith my child would be raised in. I don't find that odd at all.
What really bothers me is that there is little emphasis placed on the fact that the birth parents and the adoptive parents knew people who knew each other, so the adoption had a safety net for the child. I thoroughly disagree with putting a child up for adoption via the Internet where you don't know anything about the adoptive parents but what they tell you. And nobody ever tells you they are pedophiles, or that you're the 3rd couple they've agreed to let adopt their baby after paying medical expenses, etc. Just take extra precautions in this case. I wouldn't consider a criminal background check unreasonable if I didn't know the people wanting to adopt. Nor would I think it unreasonable to ask the same of the birth parents.
One thing I do not understand is why it is so expensive to go through the adoptive process here in the U.S. Many people cannot afford to adopt here, with expenses in the formidible tens-of-thousands of dollars. Something is not right when it is cheaper to adopt an infant from the other side of the world instead of your home country.
Reply
5-15-2010 @ 12:36PM
tessa said...Hi
Actually it is cheaper to adopt in the U.S. Our child from the U.S. cost around $15,000 and our other child from Russia was about $30,000.
5-15-2010 @ 10:59AM
robyn said...I thought it was a nice article for a change. Who cares what their faith is. For once it showed a networking that did not involve someone getting raped or murdered for using it. I beleive it takes a very unselfish person to realize they can not raise the child and someone who must love that child enough to say I want the best for them and then go out and try to find a family they feel that can love it, cherish it, and give it the life they can not. It would have been much easier for her to have abort it. She choose to love it and give it life and hope. By her choice she has spread love to a couple who may have never known the joy of a child. It is a very unselfish act to give
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5-15-2010 @ 11:36AM
Sunny said...Just hope that it's all legal adoption thru Facebook since I all have heard bad stories about Facebook.
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5-15-2010 @ 11:48AM
Linda said...Doesnt matter if he looks like he can be the biological child to these parents or not.No he really doesnt look like these parents at all.But,that shouldnt matter.They all look happy and well adjusted.The child has a great home with parents that love him.I think in this case it worked out well. but in the future I think facebook adoptions should not happen for alot of reasons.
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5-15-2010 @ 12:37PM
shelly said...They also could have simply contacted their state's division of child and family services. There are SCORES of children waiting for permanent homes. Every state has children who are awaiting adoption and most of the time, they waive adoption fees. Granted, these children may not be blonde, blue-eyed Gerber babies, but they are in need of loving parents.
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5-15-2010 @ 1:02PM
Marilyn said...Yeah, and good luck with that one! My husband and I tried for two years to adopt through the state. The only children who were waiting and waiting were older Black sibling groups, or Black teens. My husband and I were more than open to disabilities of all sorts, as well as small, younger sibling groups. What we did not feel we wanted to do was adopt children older than our own bio kids, or teens, which we had no experience parenting yet.
But except for one adorable little girl with MASSIVE medical issues, who we reluctantly had to turn down, ALL the children and sib groups we looked at were snapped up before we even called our caseworker. Or they turned out to not be free for adoption due to some legal issue. "Waiting children". That's a sick joke in this country.
We ended up adopting two girls from Russia, an infant and a toddler, both of whom have Down Syndrome. Due to their special needs, the cost was greatly reduced. They are teenagers now, and I am SO thankful to have them in our lives!
I totally support adopting American children first, so our own country's children have proper homes. But with the system the way it is, this option is closed to a lot of willing, able adoptive families. And children in other countries have a MUCH greater chance of never being adopted, and of dying in an orphanage (as our toddler almost did), or of becoming a homeless street person, and a target for predators, when they age out of the orphanage system.
Babies are a blessing, no matter where they come from.
5-15-2010 @ 1:31PM
Jill R. said...A baby* that is born to a woman who feels she can not care for her or him well is just as needy as those children in foster care, IMHO. She may be sparing him from having to go through the foster care system later by having him be adopted now.
*of ANY color
7-15-2010 @ 10:17PM
patches said...Shelly,
That's a nice sentiment, but it's not as easy as you make it sound. Yes, there are scores of children out there, but it can be very difficult to adopt through the Dept. of Human Services. You don't just contact them and they give you a child to adopt. You have to attend foster parent classes, have a home study done, have background checks done, be approved for placement, be selected by the child's worker, foster the child for 6-12 months, THEN you go to court to finalize the adoption. During the home study they inspect your home, health, finances, references, everything. Yes, they are trying to protect the children, but I think in the process the government has made it so difficult that many people willing and able to love and support a child are not given the chance.