Serenity Prayer

Just spoke with our case specialist and still no response from Ethiopia about having Bedilu transferred to Addis. Our specialist doesn't expect it to be a quick or easy thing, as it's complicated and involves approval by the Ethiopian govt, but it's been submitted as an URGENT request.
So, to get through these days I just keep repeating:

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

How quickly the bubble bursts

Literally the day after our celebratory blog post about referral we receive updated photos that our MD had requested over a month ago, regarding an area of skin that was of concern. Not only do the photos not show the area of concern, but Bedilu does not look good at all. He looks emaciated, scared, has a terrible skin rash on his legs and torso, and we’re like: we just accepted a referral to take on this little boy’s life who is in major distress? And we have absolutely no control over what happens to him til he’s in our arms, after our 2nd trip there, and on the plane home?! I’m sure this happens to parents with their biological babies if they find out their baby has a birth defect or ends up in the NICU, but at least there is physical contact with this being, whether in utero or postpartum. This guy is in a developing country, half a world away and we have no idea what the heck is going on there. It’s HEART-WRENCHING.

I minored in Cultural Anthropology in college, I’ve travelled in the 3rd world a lot, I can imagine what it’s like in Ethiopia, how things can get lost in translation, how their idea of healthy is different from ours, how we as Americans have the luxury to obsess over details, facts, science, efficiency, recourse. We know there are power outages there constantly, making for undependable internet and fax connections. But somehow that doesn’t assuage my fears.

Luckily, we have a truly wonderful pediatrician that is advocating for us. She is currently on vacation in NYC, but she responded to an email we sent her with the updated photos right away. She was very concerned too and feels that it’s essential Bedilu get transferred to Addis (the capital of Ethiopia) ASAP. Bedilu is currently in an orphange in a rural area of the Southern region. The care is better in Addis, they have better access to hospitals, labs, etc… We don’t yet know how they’ll respond to her request, as she cannot mandate actions taken in Ethiopia. I know this sounds weird because we’ve invested our absolutely EVERYTHING into this, but this is international adoption (IA) and this is their soil, their laws, their courts, and Bedilu is not legally ours yet. He won’t be until we pass court, which will be scheduled on our first trip and we’re still waiting to hear when that will be – hopefully sometime in May. But I'm choosing to be hopeful that the doctor will have some clout.

Mind you, we’re working with a very ethical, reputable agency and I think even they feel frustrated with their limitations around what they can implement in the quagmire of buerocracy in Ethiopia, so I truly believe that all involved are doing their best.

Anyway, the only guarantee of IA is that it’s unpredictable, so for now we’re staying the course, praying a lot, fighting for our Bedilu, just as he must be fighting for us, and showing him what strength, perseverance, and commitment mean. Please pray for him/send him positive thoughts too – I really think this can make a difference.

Paperwork

Thanks everyone for all the good vibes and well wishes! We’ve gotten many questions about what’s next, especially on timing, and we’ll fill you in on all that through the blog. Today we want to tell you about paperwork, just to give you a little window into all the hoops.

As many of you know, we’ve already completed mounds of paper work. Seriously, this is more than is required for buying a house! After we accepted our referral, we were given a new to do list of paper work, including:

• Powers of Attorney – for the two people in Ethiopia that will be handling our case. We had previously done powers of attorney, but we’ve been waiting so long that there have since been staff changes, requiring us to do it yet again.
• An updated home study – yep, expired. Gotta get an update.
• Police record and fingerprints – Had to get finger printed at the police station in San Leandro so they could do a records check and confirm that we’re clean
• Employment verification update
• Medical certification – yep we’re still healthy
• A copy of Form I-171H – this form is a confirmation that our I-600A (our fingerprints) is current
• A letter to Ethiopia’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA) summarizing why we want to adopt from Ethiopia. We’ve written this letter before, but we had to do it again.

Mind you, all of these documents must be notarized. Not only that, but the notary’s commission must be current and cannot expire while we’re in process, or potentially in process. So to be safe, we had to find a notary whose commission was good until at least 2012 just to be safe. And for the Powers of Attorney and the Home Study, those notarizations need to be certified by the state. Basically, notary is a witness, and certification is official confirmation that the notary is in fact a registered notary. Redundant? Perhaps. We’ve had to do this before and it’s a real inconvenience because you can do it by mail (if you trust our postal service), or you can do it in person in Sacramento at the Secretary of State’s office. My good friend Jamie Fine, who works one day a week in Sacramento, saved us the trip and got these docs certified for us while he was in Sacto for business. Thanks Jamie!! You rock!

And of course none of this is free. Notaries cost money, and so does certification. Additionally, there are other administrative costs for couriers, certifications in Minnesota (where our agency is located), and for the Ethiopian Embassy for processing.

We were given until the end of the month to complete the paperwork, but we finished it all up last week and the package was received in MN yesterday. We should be good for the time being…but our fingerprints for the I-600A will “expire” (yep, who knew that fingerprints go bad!) in June, so we may have to do that again if we’re not back with Bedilu by summertime. They had already expired once, in June 2010, so we had to redo them to get an updated I-600A extension. The first extension is free, but if we have to do them again we’ll be charged a fee.

As difficult and annoying as all of this is, at least now we know we’re doing it for Bedilu. At least we can feel like we’re doing something to move the ball forward. But now that this is done, it seems we are waiting again, this time for a court date. In the meantime, there’s still plenty for us to do, like getting the house ready, thinking about gear/registry, figuring out travel plans for Ethiopia, and preparing our friends and family for what we can all expect.

Best Christmas Present EVER!

Happy New Year!

Hello all,

Yes, it’s been a long while since our last entry. We didn’t even post in 2010! That’s because we thought 2010 was the year. We knew that 2009 was always going to be about The Wait, and we believed that 2010 was going to be the year of The Referral, and ultimately of bringing home a baby. Well, we were right about one of those things…

A few days after turning 40, my birthday wish came true: we got a referral!

I got the call at work. It was someone from our agency, but different than our regular case worker so I wasn’t expecting anything except maybe more excuses or changes in the program. Then she said she was calling to give me some good news. I asked if she had called Bekah. She tried but got VMs. So I conferenced Bek on the phone and we got the news.

First a bit of the details: We’re having a boy! He’s cute and adorable and he was 2months old when we got the referral. (He’s about 3 months old as of this writing.) His given name is Bedilu, which means “in his luck” in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia.

When we got the referral, of course the initial reaction is complete joy. This whole thing becomes REAL. I’ve gone from this abstract concept of parenthood to knowing that I am the father of a baby boy…should we choose to accept the referral.

This is where it gets complicated. It’s not as easy as Oh gee it’s a boy! With international adoption, you are given a week or so to decide whether or not you will move forward and accept the referral. We’re given a couple of photos, a brief history (if available), and some medical records.

We retained a pediatrician at Oakland Children’s Hospital who specializes in international adoption. We sent her Bedilu’s file, which includes weight, length, head circumference, and a whole slew of blood work. This is extremely nerve wracking. Of course we want to say YES, but we know that we’re not doing this for charity, or charity alone. We’ve engaged in this process because we want to be parents and we want to raise a child together.

When we began the process, there are a number of forms to fill out and decisions to make up front. Do you want a boy or a girl, or are you open? How many children? What age range? And of course, what health conditions are you open to? We know that adopting a child of another race from another country is already going to be a challenge. We didn’t want to add health problems on top of that. So we go through a checklist and ruled out HIV/AIDS, cerebral palsy, and a number of other things.

Bedilu’s blood work comes out clean. He was born a perfectly healthy baby. But now he is malnourished and undersized, presumably having lost a lot of weight post birth. Our doctor presented us with a number of worst-case scenarios which put a scare into us. She has reviewed hundreds of Ethiopian adoptees over the years and told us that on a percentile spectrum of healthiness, Bedilu is in the bottom 1/3. There are healthier babies out there, she says. We would not be out of line to refuse this referral. Nor would we be frivolous to accept it.

How will his development be affected? What is his long-term prognosis? We had a little more than a week to decide. We got the news on a Friday, and the following Friday was Christmas Eve. The agency’s office would be closed, so we’re given until the following Monday. We spend several days talking to the doctor, consulting various adoption message boards, we research online, we meet other Bay Area adoptive parents of Ethiopian children, we do a lot of soul searching.

As Christmas approaches, we really want to tell our families, but we haven’t yet made a decision. We are strongly inclined to accept. Bedilu is beautiful. Something feels very right. But we also got a lot of encouragement from the adoptive community. These kids are fighters, they are resilient, they say. We meet a number of families and their Ethiopian kids/babies at a well-timed brunch. We share the news and all are thrilled. They tell us tales of their children and others they’ve known or heard about. Get them home and they’ll turn around.

We want to believe every word of it. We learn that Bedilu is being cup fed. No bottles, no nipples, for sanitary reasons. We research and find that that is not uncommon, but it also makes it more difficult for the babies to consume enough to get their weight up. That explanation actually makes me feel better because it helps explain Bedilu’s slow weight gain. Perhaps it’s nothing more than that?

The day before Christmas Eve, we have dinner with Bek’s family and share the news with them. We got a referral! They are thrilled. We tell them we haven’t decided yet, but all are thrilled by this major milestone. On Christmas Day, Bek and I do a Skype video conference call with my family. Mom and dad are visiting NYC and the whole clan is together at Keith & Kim’s and my parents had just met their granddaughter for the first time. We tell them the news via Skype! Pretty fun like that. Again, we say we haven’t yet accepted.

But we are strongly inclined to. I think it was that day, on Christmas, that we decided, yes we’re going to do this. Bedilu is our son, and we are going to do everything we can to get him home as quickly as possible. We just don't know when that will be.