Coming Out

Theresa’s extended family is coming over Saturday, roughly 20 people total. This is the last big group for us to tell. We’ve agreed on a prediction of who will be the most excited. (Hi LucyAnn!)

Our moms have known since August, along with some friends who were references. We told some of my family when we were out that way over Thanksgiving. We told our local friends on New Year’s Eve. Our moms have told most of the people in the states they live in. 🙂

When we decided to go public around Thanksgiving, we were thinking we were maybe 6 months away from the finish line. But then we found out how far behind our USCIS office is and that we were being over optimistic in general. So instead of 6 months after Thanksgiving, it’s February and we’re hoping only 9 more months. Oh well. We’ve come to grips with the schedule not being what we thought it was. It is what it is.

Reactions have been uniformly good. It usually generates a lot of questions. Some of our friends (a techie crowd, in general) said we should have a blog, without even knowing how common international adoption blogs are.

So here we are. While we enjoyed several blogs when we were deciding on a country, we don’t imagine the world needs our viewpoint on this. Our intended audience is friends and family. I thought that this Saturday would also be the first exposure of the blog to friends and family, but Theresa told me she’s tipped a couple of people already.

Read Full Post »

The Adoption Doctor

Last night we went to see a talk by a doctor that specializes in adoption related consultations and assessing medical histories prior to adoption. Dr. Aronson was recommended by our agency and another agency we interviewed.

She clearly knew her stuff. We will have no reservations using her when the time comes. She likes to say she provides preparation not prediction. As with any child, you can’t know everything that’s coming. There are no guarantees. She discussed a number of topics I won’t try to list here.

We’ll e-mail her any medical information we can get while we’re there.

We met some two other couples there who are going to Kazakhstan with WPA who have the same coordinator.

Read Full Post »

Why Kazakhstan?

For us, the issues were healthy children, the time it would take and my age.

Some countries have a reputation for more medical problems than others. Kazakhstan is known for relatively healthy babies and a high caregiver to infant ratio in the “baby houses”.

Other countries take significantly longer. China is well known as a place to adopt (girls, anyway). But it currently takes over two three years to complete the process.

I’m turning 45 this year. This is too old in some countries. (I think South Korea is one.)

Other countries had individual issues. For example, the agencies we talked to had growing concerns about the practices in Guatemala and the “Hague Convention”.

Also, Kazakhstan has some unique procedures that, while more work for the adoptive parents, should make an easier transition for the child. In Kazakhstan, an adoptive parent is required to stay for three weeks, visiting the baby house and bonding with the child. This is less traumatic than taking a child from everything she knows and handing her to strangers.

Regarding the travel, we’ll be making two trips to Kazakhstan. The first one is for three weeks of bonding and ends with some court stuff. Then there’s a three week delay for any family to step forward and claim the child. (This is extremely rare.) It’s possible to stay for the whole six weeks, but most agencies recommend you go home for two weeks and return for the last week and some more courtroom stuff.

The bonding aspect really resonates with us. But as the paperwork snafus have dragged things out, I’ve had thoughts like “Just FedEx us a kid. She’ll get over it.” 🙂

Speaking of which, a friend of mine was adopted from Korea almost 40 years ago. After the home study, his adoptive parents wrote a check for $600 and my friend was put on a plane. All the adoptive parents had to do was drive 90 minutes to the airport. Times change. 🙂

Read Full Post »

Why International?

We saw several disadvantages to domestic adoption when comparing it to international. I wouldn’t want anyone else to base their decisions on this though. Do your research. You’ll probably feel differently.

First of all, there are (virtually?) no infants in U.S. orphanages. Domestic infant adoptions are through lawyers. The basic process is: The would-be adoptive parents write a letter about how great they are. They give it to a lawyer who shares a pile of such letters with expectant mothers. The expectant mothers select the adoptive parents. Clearly, there’s no telling how long until someone picks you.  We weren’t really comfortable with selling ourselves like this. I don’t exactly know why.

And when you’re dealing with an expectant mother instead of an orphanage it puts you in the position of hoping that the mother doesn’t change her mind and decide to raise her own child.  That’s not who we want to be.  But I don’t know how we could do this kind of adoption without feeling that way.

And mothers do change their mind.  In some states they can change their mind up to 30 days after the adoptive parents have taken the child home.  This can be the best thing for the mother and daughter, but it’s devastating for the adoptive parents and a setback time-wise.  That’s a pain we don’t need.

Another avenue is the foster care system. But since we both work, we couldn’t see a way to do this.  Also, there’s no telling how long it would take.

So for us, the key points were the availability of healthy infants, not feeling like we’re separating a child from her mother, and having a better idea of how long it will take.

I’m writing this to share what went into our decision, not to influence anyone else’s. There are lots of successful domestic adoptions everyday. We have friends who have adopted domestically. It just wasn’t for us.

Adoption in any form is a wonderful thing. We respect anyone who makes a different choice.

Read Full Post »

The Journey So Far

After several months studying domestic vs. international, different agencies and different countries, we’ve decided to adopt from Kazakhstan!

After signing with the agency, we were sent a large 3-ring binder of instructions. There’s a lot of paperwork with international adoptions. We started on it in late August after returning from vacation. Theresa tore into it. We accumulated notarized birth certificates, physicals, bank statements, proof of medical insurance, a marriage certificate, etc. We’ve had our fingerprints taken twice and had an FBI background check. We had a home study, which involved two visits by a social worker who then wrote up that we were suitable. We sent all this in to the agency to get apostilles (authentications for international legal use).

When you get all this paperwork (the “dossier”) gathered, notarized and appostilled, you send it to be translated to Russian and then send it to Kazakhstan.

The problem is one form held up in the USCIS (a.k.a. “INS”) — the I-600A, “Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition”, which we mailed in on October 30. The agency told us it usually takes 6 to 8 weeks. Then Theresa found a .gov site that told us they were taking about 6 months in our local office. Our adoption coordinator didn’t seem to believe us.

On January 30th, exactly 3 months after mailing it, we got a letter acknowledging the receipt of our application, “filed on 1/17/2008”. Ha! We know when they signed for the certified mail. It’s been sitting in someone’s in-box for 3 months. The acknowledgment letter explained that we’ll eventually get an appointment date for another set of fingerprints and the form should be done 10 weeks after that.

To add insult to injury, our coordinator told us that we’d have to redo “everything else”!! When the paperwork gets to Kazakhstan nothing can be more than 6 months old. So everything needs to be less than 3 months old when it goes for translation.

February 12th we got notification of the fingerprint appointment on February 27th. So we should have the form in 3 months. Maybe 6 months after that we’ll have a child.

Read Full Post »