This episode dives into parenting through adoption and the essential role of workplace support.
Joining us is Boomie Odumade, a software engineering leader and adoptive parent. She shares her journey through domestic adoption, from navigating long wait times to the joys of bonding with her son. Boomie discusses balancing work with preparing for parenthood and highlights the importance of inclusive workplace policies, gender-neutral parental leave, and the critical support from her colleagues and HR.
Whether you're a prospective adoptive parent or interested in modern workplace culture, this episode is packed with insights you'll appreciate.
Connect with today's guest:
Boomie Odumade is a software engineering leader, with over 20 years of industry experience in software technology. She is Senior Director of Engineering at MIG, and a career coach. Past roles include engineering leadership roles at NPR, Capital One, Accenture, and more. She was also a co-founder of Nexercise, a mobile fitness startup. She is involved in organizations that mentor youth and/or advise people interested in STEM careers, and previously worked as an adjunct faculty. She holds a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering, a master’s of science in computer science, and an M.B.A. from Wharton. She firmly believes that you can succeed at parenting and your career simultaneously. As a mom-by-adoption, she is passionate about educating others about the adoption process and supporting adoptive families.
Note - This transcript is automatically generated and has not been checked for errors.
Welcome to the NextGen Work Culture podcast, where leaders learn to support working parents, because being a family friendly business isn't just a nice to have anymore. It's essential for businesses that want to stay competitive, and it is critical for the next generation and those who are raising them. I'm your host, Courtney Ross, and I am so glad that you're here. Welcome back to the NextGen Work Culture podcast. Today I am here with Boomi, and we are going to talk about the path to parenting through adoption and how the workplace can support those who are going through this process. Welcome, Boomi.
Thank you for having me, Courtney.
Absolutely. Thank you for coming on to share your story and your experiences. So, before we dive in, can you tell the listeners just a little bit more about yourself?
Sure. My nickname is Bumi, Bumi Odomadeh, and I've been an engineering lead, a software engineering leader for a while now. And I was an engineering leader during my path to parenthood. So right now, I'm senior director of engineering at a small company, and I'm also a career coach, sometimes an adjunct faculty. But my favorite title is mom.
Absolutely. That's the best one, isn't it?
Yeah.
And you have a son through adoption. And how old is he now?
He'll be six in a few months.
Six.
We met him when he was about eight months old, so we didn't have baby, all the baby parts, but still remember a lot of it like it was yesterday. And it's also just amazing how, you know, to see the growth from when he first came home to now.
Yeah, absolutely. You still got to see a lot of those big milestones. I feel like about eight or nine months old is when things start moving so quickly, and they're, like, hitting all of these milestones. They're pulling up, they're crawling, they're standing, they're walking. It's like all of that happens so fast around that time.
It does. It does. Like, he came home, and we're like, we gotta start childproofing now.
You kind of had to hit the ground running. So, Boomi, tell us more about the whole process to go through adoption. What is that like, and what all does that entail?
So, first of all, I do want to point out that there's multiple different kinds of adoption. There's international adoption, where you go to another country and bring the child back to the United States, and the rules there differ by country. There's foster care adoption, where you're adopting a child who's been in the foster care system but is now legally free to be adopted by a family that's usually a little bit faster and sometimes less expensive because the child is legally free. And there's what the US calls domestic adoption, which is an interesting name, but it's basically adopting a child in the United States that's between the ages of zero and five. There may be other types as well, like this private adoption with lawyers if you already know the child, which sometimes happens with interfamily. We initially actually started out intending to do international adoption from Nigeria, where I'm from, and for reasons I won't get into, we changed our minds and decided to do domestic adoption first and maybe do international adoption from Nigeria at a later date.
Okay, that makes sense. So I wonder if there's a difference in, like, I guess, difficulty level between domestic or international, or is it just kind of a different beast?
It depends on the country. First of all, adoption is hard, period. So it's a matter of differing degrees of hard. One thing that I think makes domestic adoption harder, at least at that time. Adoption also changes with the changing landscapes and different rules. Like growing up, I wanted to adopt because I felt like there's all these children who have, who need to be adopted, and now there are still kids who need to be adopted. But for domestic adoption, it's actually more, it's gotten somewhat competitive. I heard a stat that I don't know if it's true.
That said, for every healthy child, there are 30 waiting families ready to adopt them. Once you get into health, depends on how you define healthy. We didn't ask for, we were open to certain things and got a healthy child, but you shouldn't go and expect. And so domestic adoption's gotten harder from that standpoint. But international adoption can also be hard because various countries have decided not to allow children born in that country to be adopted internationally, which is one of the things that I think makes domestic adoption harder. And also the rules can change. Used to be able to adopt from Ethiopia, you can't anymore. I'm not sure what the current rules are for Haiti.
And also because every country has its rules, you need to be very mindful of those rules, and you need to find an agency that can work with you on the rules. And you also, this part's very important. You also want to make sure you're adopting a child who needs a family and not a child who's maybe been trafficked or been kidnapped. And so you need to make sure you're doing, you or the agency you're working with is doing that. Due diligence I know there was one country, I forget which one, that was where it would have been like nine months from start to finish to adopt from that country. And we considered it, and part of the reason we chose not to is because we weren't sure that we'd still be able to give that child the full access to their culture, which was important to us.
Yeah, yeah, that's an important consideration. And I wonder if with international adoptions, is there, I imagine there's more travel.
Involved usually, or there's more travel. And again, every country's different with some countries. I'll use Nigeria as an example. And this isn't why we decided to put it on hold. But if we had decided to adopt from Nigeria, the agency that we found, which has found the orphanages that it took us, we would have had to wait a year before we were even matched. Then we would have had to go to Nigeria and stay in Nigeria for three or four months before we could bring the kid back. And other countries, it wasn't other countries, it was more back and forth travel. So it.
And that's one of the reasons why international adoption can be more expensive, because there's just more travel, more accommodation involved. But I will say that even in the United States, I mean, we were open to out of state matches and that could still lead to travel. We, you know, we considered an agency that was in, I think it was Louisiana, but it doesn't matter. You know, it was actually as expensive to adopt from that state as it would, as we thought it would have been for international because of the various, you know, because of the processes and the travel and things like that.
Yeah. Wow. So once you decided to adopt, you found an agency you wanted to go through, you've decided you're doing a domestic adoption, you've ruled out other options. How long did that process take for you guys?
So I want to step back a moment and say deciding on domestic adoption is. We actually went to the information sessions for all the options. So, I mean, I do research, but it was still recommend that people go to the information information sessions from multiple agencies and hear it from people who are doing this. So we decided on domestic, and thankfully, at the time we decided they were about to start the classes. So if we had. So that's part of it. You have to go through the classes, you have to get home study approved. And from being home study approved until we got a match was almost a year.
You know, the classes were a few months, but home study to the match was almost a year. And I know this because when our social worker called to tell us that we were matched, I thought she was calling to tell us that our home study is about to expire. She emailed saying, hey, start to get your renewal for the home study. And usually I'm very responsive to that kind of thing. And this time I hadn't responded. So she called, and I, I apologize that I hadn't replied to the email. And she said, what if I told you you may not need it?
Oh, gosh, that's great. Yeah. Were you at work when you got that call?
Yes, I was. You know, I was at work. I went to a private room because this was, you know, when still working in person.
Right.
She asked me how I was, and I said, I'm okay, I guess. She's like, what's wrong? I said, the waiting is hard, you know, and then, I'm sorry, I haven't, you know, I haven't sent the paperwork back. And she's like, what if I said you didn't need it? And I'm like, what? What are you talking about? And, and she said, um, a birth mother had selected us. And so I, um, I, after the whole, then conferenced in the dad and, and she told us about him and the birth mom, and I was still, I was being like, okay, don't get your hopes up. Just, you know, temper your hopes. And then it was a nice day outside, and my workplace had a patio, so I could see people looking at me. I was waving and smiling at me. And then when I got off the call, I, you know, again, there's a chance if this works out, he's gonna be home in a few weeks.
That's part of what she shared, that because he was eight months old, they wanted to have some transition time before he would come. So it'd probably be a few weeks. And so I had to balance, like, when do I tell people? Because I need to start making plans to be out. I also don't want to tell people, and it doesn't work out. And so I waited until we'd met him the first time. She said, you can start telling people it's okay. So I'm cautiously optimistic. Need to plan for being on parental leave.
So let's talk about parental leave there. So obviously, when you find out you're pregnant, you usually have a due date, and unless anything goes wrong, you're pretty sure really close to that date is when you're going to start your parental leave. It wasn't at all like that with adoption, right? Because it was kind of sudden.
It can be sudden. And that's one of the hard things about adoption, is that you just don't know. I know people who got the call days after they were home study approved, and I know people who unfortunately were waiting for years and some who even more unfortunately never got the blessing. And so. And people had also told us that, oh, there's such a need for black parents, it's going to be fast. And so, yeah, I was a manager at the time, and so when we got home study approved, I let my department know because I said, in case it happens fast, I want people to be aware that I may need to go on parental leave on short notice. And like I said, it took a year. So when it did actually happen, I told people, yeah, we've been matched.
There's a good chance I'm going to be on parental leave and let's scramble to arrange the things. And then my boss had actually just resigned at that time as well. So my boss was leaving, I was going on parental leave. So I was working with the other leadership on both things. Coverage for both things that had happened at that time.
Yeah. Gosh, that was a lot, I guess. So you had, you said, like, three or four weeks from the time that you knew you were getting him to bring him home to the time that he actually came home with you.
Yes.
So you had a little bit of time to plan there. Is that pretty, I guess, typical. Do you usually get a few weeks notice.
Also? One, if you remember nothing else about adoption, is that there's almost no rules, because in the state of Maryland, where I live, even if a pregnant woman chooses you, the baby, the agency we worked with, the baby's not coming home for the first month anyway because she has 30 days to change her mind. And the adoption agency we use does not want a situation where the baby's home with you birth mother changes her mind, and then, you know, and the adoption is disrupted. And for the record, if a birth mother can parent, I support that. I'm not and chooses to parent, I support that. But that's hard as an adoptive parent to and then have the baby leave other states, it's two days, three days, and some states is even longer than 30 days. So we had assumed that we would have a one month old, the pregnant woman had chosen us. We would have had, like, a one month notice. Right.
If we had adopted from a different state, we would have maybe had a two or three day notice, but because of the way interstate works, we probably still would have been away for two weeks before bringing so many different rules. So we didn't. And some other agencies may have said, hey, child's legally free here, but love that. Our agency said, this kid's been in an interim home for eight months. Let's have the kid get adjusted to you all before the kid comes home. So, so many things can happen. There's also situations where a birth mother who has not previously decided to make an adoption plan delivers and says, I want to make an adoption plan. I'm not sure what the positive language for that is.
I call it a stork drop, which I don't like.
Yeah, that doesn't sound great.
And so we were open to that as well. Right. We were open to call from the hospital and having to go. So there's so many different ways this could have worked out. Out and three weeks also. The other thing I'll mention is, in adoption class, I know many hopeful parents who set up the nursery as a sign of hope. I didn't do that.
I was going to ask.
I'm like, if we get matched, I will scramble. And that worked out because if we had set up the nursery as a sign of hope, we would have had things for a one month old and not an 8th.
You would have had, like, size one diapers instead of, like size three or four. Whatever you needed. Yeah. It's a big difference between a one month old and eight month old.
Yeah.
Yeah. So that's. So they had been in an interim home, your son, before you adopted. So in a foster care situation, I guess, or was like a. More of like a state home, I guess.
Not even the right term agency that we use. They have families who have agreed that because in the state of Maryland, the kid is not legally free to be adopted for 30 days, we will take care of the kid for the first month until they are legal. That way the kids in a loving place and the hopeful parents aren't dealing with. Okay. Yeah. And so the, the family he was staying with, they actually were one of the families that told us their story when we were going through the classes. And they do this a lot. After he'd been home with us for a month, they had a new baby.
And by the way, they had five kids of their own, all who have been adopted. So that there are people who are willing to do this, people who love.
That first newborn stage a whole lot, I guess, so much more. Cause it's tough.
It's tough. When they did the session as part of the adoption classes, they had to hold on taking newborns because mom had had so many newborns that something had happened to her arm and she was recovering from surgery.
Oh, gosh. Wow.
Doing this?
Yeah. That's crazy. So how did you prepare for your parental leave? Did you kind of start preparing from the time that you were home study approved, or did you just wait until you got that tall and then kind of scrambled to figure it out?
Once we were home study approved, I let my engineering department know. I let hr know that this might happen. And when we were, when we got the call, even before my department knew, I went to HRN because I wasn't sure how much notice we needed and had the discussion with them about, okay, there's a chance this might happen now, so what do I have to do? And they were, they were great, you know, and, you know, on the parental leave, like you said, when you're pregnant, you have an idea of the date, you have an idea of other things. And so you're able to give your HR department more notice with adoption. Sometimes that notice, we could have been matched the day after we were home study approved. Right. So it's important for companies to understand that. And also my path was adoption.
But foster care is another area where you also may not get much notice, whether you're parenting the kid until reunification or parenting the kid as part of Foster to adopt. Being asked to foster can also be something that is short notice that still requires a parent bond with the child, et cetera.
Yeah, one of my good friends actually just started fostering in the last five or six months, I think. So they've had a couple of kids now that they've kept for interim care. And, you know, it's usually pretty short notice. They find out and usually on like Wednesday or Thursday or something. Hey, we're bringing you a kid this weekend. So luckily she has, you know, workplace that could be kind of flexible with that, and her and her husband are able to work it out. And as far as childcare and everything, because they both work full time, so they have to figure out childcare and fast. So that has been interesting to kind of see from the outside, like, how they're handling that, because it's, it's a challenge, for sure.
And they're, they may do the foster to adopt if, you know, the right situation comes along, but so far it's just been interim care. And I remember when they were getting ready, they had just finished their classes, got their home study. They didn't know what age kid they were getting. So she's like, trying to get clothes and toys and stuff for anywhere from an infant to a teenager. I was like, oh, my gosh, that is so much. So I was giving her hand me downs for my kids. Like, here's a bag of 18 month clothes, here's a bag of two tea, here's a bag of three tea. It's all gender neutral.
And she just kind of has it all organized in like a tote or something so she could pull it out. When they get a child of that size. I was like, oh, my gosh, I.
Will say if I were her, you know, and I'm not, but I wore her. I mean, I've been to pleasantly and not surprisingly impressed with how much support you get at times like that. When our kid was coming home, a friend, through a baby shower on short notice and got the list for the age, the things that we needed at that age. And because that's your friend's going through such a range, if the parents say, okay, we got the call that we're getting a twelve year old tomorrow, you might be pleasantly surprised at how many people are able to jump through on short notice. And like, I try to declutter, so I don't usually have a lot of, I've either handed the things down or sent them to charity. But I, for a friend like that would donate, right? I mean, would whatever their was and get the things.
Yeah. And we have a few, like, closets for foster families and stuff in the area, too. So I know I do a big consignment sale where, you know, I sell my kids stuff every year and then whatever is left over, you can either go back and pick it up or you could just donate it to the foster closet for families to come and pick up. And I'm like, yeah, that I don't want to come back and get it. So there are lots of resources out there. You're right. And friends and family and churches and whatever that will jump in and help.
Yes. And so for sure, there was something else you said that I wanted to respond to, and I forget what it was. I'll come back conversation.
Okay. Yeah.
So various states have different rules about foster care. So in the state of Maryland, the entire point of foster care is reunification. So if I have a foster child in Maryland, I need to assume it's not. I mean, foster to adopt actually doesn't happen. There's foster care, which is for reunification, and then there's foster care. Adoption, which is the child has been, is now legally free. And I don't know if one goes into the other, like, if I'm fostering a child and they become legally free. I don't know if I get priority to adopt or not.
Interesting.
Other states definitely have foster to adopt. I think California does. For example, I think I had a friend. I mean, I think I have a friend who, I don't remember the exact details, but I think she was fostered to adopt for her child's biological sibling. And it didn't happen, but so make sure with foster care, you're looking at your state schools because not all states have fostered to adopt.
Yeah, our states just have to make it so complicated having all these different rules, huh?
Yes, it's so complicated.
And that's like the same with, like, paid parental leave or anything like that. You know, it's different by every state.
Yes, yes.
Yeah. Speaking of which, did your organization have, you know, an inclusive parental leave policy for all these different paths to parenting when you were adopting?
They did. And parental leave, I was working at NPR at the time, and the parental leave had just gone from six weeks to eight weeks, and it's now 20 weeks. So connected to people there. And I'm like, wow. And they, the rule was it didn't matter how you became a parent. That was the lead available to you, whether you were the birthing parent, non birthing parent, whether you were foster. I don't know about fostering, but whether you were adopting. And I've seen companies have different rules for birthing parents versus non birthing parents, for example, and, or companies have less parental leave for fathers versus mothers.
And so I really appreciated that at NPR. It was just, here's the leave policy. So it was very inclusive. And I think model for, for other companies. I've seen companies have more as well. But it's impressive to me that a nonprofit has such an inclusive policy.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that is a great model for other companies. And we are starting to see more companies lean more towards the inclusive, gender neutral birthing or non birthing doesn't matter. This is the leave you get. And I think that's really great.
Yeah. Because I just can't imagine if I didn't have the time to bond with our son just because I didn't birth him. You know, that that time was super valuable. And in his case, especially, he was in a different home for eight months. So if I had just bought him, like, I don't have leave. He's here's daycare. I think that transition for him would not have been as, I mean, easily, but still, that sounds like it would.
Have been really tough, though. I mean, if you were just bringing him home over the weekend and then dropping him off at daycare on Monday morning, you know, that would be. That would be so tough for everybody involved. So as a manager, you're a manager, and then obviously you had some people over you when you did, went through this process. Like, what can a manager do to be really supportive during the this process?
So a couple of things come to mind. First of all, being supportive, even if you don't know all the things, you know, I was reporting to, you know, male boss Attica didn't know about. I mean, I maybe knew about adoption, I'm not sure. But what, no matter what I was talking to my boss about in terms of my goals of being a parent, I felt it support, and I'll never forget that. And it's definitely also something I share with my directs. Second of all, a hopeful parent is still someone who probably cares about their career, and I really appreciate that. My boss, my workplace, didn't view me as just someone waiting on a child, but someone who was still as dedicated to the job and to my career. Both things can be, too.
And then was able to have open conversations about what things would look like if a leave happened. I had that conversation with my boss when I was first home. Study approved, and he was leaving by the time it happened, but I was able to have conversations with the leadership about, here's, you know, here's my leave plan. Of course, my directs, I had. I think I had 18 directs at the time, but they were all like, what can we take so that you can really enjoy? So it wasn't just. It was up, sideways, down, everybody. I felt the support all around and was able to have a plan for, here's how my legal happened. One thing that I would have done differently, and this, and this shows how supportive the workplace was.
My initial plans was I was going to take a month off, and then dad would be home, and then I would, and I'd work, and then I'd come back and take the other month. I should have taken. I should have realized that when I would take the whole two months, but when I realized two, three weeks into the leave that this time's going fast, and I think I want the whole two months in one bunch. The workplace was very accommodating about that.
That's great.
And so, and then another thing I'll say is, people are different. So I didn't mind that people asked me how things were going while I was waiting. To me, it showed that they cared. But to other people, it might have been like, I don't want to think about this, you know, until it happens. So just. I mean, in general, I mean, that's not just with parenting, you know, as a leader, that's with world events or news or any. You know. And so, I mean, I made sure people knew that.
I mean, I didn't mind asking, but waiting is hard. So you may hear me say that. You may. I'm not. I'm not gonna put on the boomi happy face. I'm like, everything's fun. I'm like, you know, it's hard, and I'm hopeful.
Yeah.
And then, of course, we already discussed, just have the inclusive policy to begin with. You know, don't make a non birthing parent feel less than a birthing parent. Both. Now, I mean, to be clear, there are things that are different. Like, I did not have the physical recovery of a c section, for example.
Right.
But, you know, so you can acknowledge that things are different. But when it comes to the parenting, the bonding, the leave, I also need the time to bond. I also, you know, am adjusting to something I've never done before that is now part of the rest of my life, you know, and I had less time to put people for it.
Yeah. And you had a baby shower thrown together in, like, a couple of weeks. Then you had to put a nursery together in less than a month. But, yeah, I mean, you had a lot, too.
Yeah. Another thing that, I mean, a lot of workplaces have a parents channel. And one thing again that I really appreciate about the NPR parents channel, which I'm still in as a guest, when I thought, okay, I'm about to go on leave, I'm gonna. One of my sisters, a pediatrician, and I can Google things, but I may still ask you all questions. They're like, do nothing, Google, just ask us. And they came through, and I had the questions, and I'm still a slack guest because I made such connections there, and we help each other out.
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Google can be scary when you start googling things. It's always instantly the worst case scenario. Well, boomi, before we go, is there anything else that you wanted to share that we haven't talked about?
Yeah, I just, you know, for. For people thinking about this as a path, just, you know, it can be. It can be a lot, emotionally, financially, etcetera. There's a document that I've written. It's a few years old. Hopefully it's still mostly up to date. And so I want to encourage for people who are wanting to be parents. I encourage you to find the support for whatever your situation is.
That's birthing, foster adoption, fertility, you know, however that may be, and also just because it can be, some paths can be hard, doesn't need to be a competition. And remember, if you are taking the adoption path, for example, that rules differ by state, by country, and it changes over time. So make sure you're finding out what the situation is at the time that you're looking. I do have a document that I wrote in 2019. It's hopefully somewhat current, but again, make sure that you're finding out what the current rules are for your situation and to companies, you know, just, you know, be supportive of all the different paths to parenthood.
Absolutely. Well, Bhumi, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of this wonderful knowledge about adoption with us today.
Sure.