Closing out 2008!

On this New Year’s Eve I, like most, find myself taking stock of 2008. It didn’t really dawn on me how much we’ve accomplished this year until now. We have completed both our homestudy and dossier for our adoption, have been approved, and are now officially on the wait list to receive a referral for a child from Ethiopia! It took 7 long months and felt like writing a thesis, but now that work is behind us and we’re a step closer to having our little bambino/bambina. Adoption aside, we’ve also completed a remodel project that we had talked about doing for years: converting our detached garage into a liveable, insulated space with a bathroom and closet. It’s essentially an in-law, but without a kitchen and it looks fantastic! It will soon be our office and refuge from the madness that will ensue with parenthood. Then our current office/spare bedroom will be the baby’s room. I’ve settled into my job and feel comfortable being a nurse now. Chaat continues to like his work, his co-workers, and we both feel fortunate to be employed in these times.

Back to adoption stuff though. I realize in reviewing our previous posts that we never explained a bunch of background that lead to our adoption. We actually started trying to have our own biological child way back in 2003, went through many trials (of all kinds!) and tribulations with that (which many of you already know about), then I got accepted to a graduate program I had been dreaming of doing for many years and that put having a child on the back burner for a couple of years. After I was gainfully employed with my new degree, we came back to the idea of having a child, but with a new perspective. We knew we wanted to adopt instead of having our own. Frankly, at my age, the idea of pregnancy and birth is altogether unappealing. And neither of us was up for more bodily manipulations of IVF, the hopes, expectations, and disappointments, not to mention the unknown risks. Looking back on all that now, we feel relief to no longer have that attachment to seeing our own genes play out and to be free of that obsessiveness of IVF that so many people suffer in.

At first, the whole world of adoption was pretty intimidating for us. Where do we start, what agency do we use, how do we decide international vs. domestic? It took awhile just to get educated about it all. One reason we decided against domestic adoption was that the birth mother has up to 30 days to change her mind after giving birth, despite the adoptive parents thinking everything is final and they’ve taken the baby home and bonded. We couldn’t imagine potentially going through something like that. Of course many people complete domestic adoptions successfully, but that was a risk we weren’t willing to take. International adoption just felt right. We’ve both travelled a lot and I’ve always loved other cultures and languages, so that choice wasn’t so difficult. But then it was which country? Naturally, because of Chaat’s heritage, we looked into both the Phillipines and Thailand, but neither worked out. To adopt from the Phillipines you need to be Catholic, something we weren’t even willing to feign, and under 40years old. Thailand doesn’t do many adoptions at all and the children they do have up for adoption are around 4-10 years old, often with a known medical condition. We want a healthy infant. Then we thought of South America because I’m fluent in Spanish and have travelled the continent, but there’s very few countries doing adoption, it takes a long time, and is difficult to get infants. Then we looked into Kazikstan, but that requires 3 trips, one of which has to be 6 weeks in length – out of the question for two people working full-time. Ethiopia is one of the countries that’s moving a little faster than others, it only involves one trip for one week, and you can still get infants, so it’s definitely the best fit for us.

Although Ethiopia is moving faster than other countries, it still takes a long time; we expect to get a referral in December of 2009 and then travel to pick up our child in around March of 2010. So that gives you an idea of how challenging international adoption has become! Basically, there was a lot of corruption – people kidnapping kids and selling them, so many countries shut down (like Guatemala and Vietnam) and something called the Hague Convention was implemented to prevent this kind of thing. I don’t’ want to bore you all with too many details, so you can google it if you want to find out more about it. Ultimately it’s a good thing, but it means that there’s more red tape and things take much longer.

There’s much more to tell and I’ll explain the referral process in the next blog entry, but now it’s time to get out and celebrate the new year. Happy New Year everyone!!! May 2009 bring us a speedy referral and everyone lots of good health, fun, growth, and prosperity!