Almost Three Years Ago
I co-founded an organization, the sole goal of which was to permit American parents to receive visas to allow their newly adopted Vietnamese children to come to the United States. I cannot tell you how thankful I am that I am not one of the moms behind this website.
If you have a chance, please sign this petition to help these parents bring their children home.
Hint 3 and the rest . . .
Okay, the photo in Hint 3 is allegedly of an Ethiopian coptic cross. I say “allegedly” because while the great people at Etsy have exquisite handmade wares, I’m not so sure about their ability to identify artifacts of a religious nature. Regardless, the significance of the photo is the Ethiopian connection. Why? Because I’m adopting from Ethiopia, of course.
Yes, I know that this is where I started last year. In fact, it’s where I started over two years ago even before I knew of adoptions in Viet Nam. For whatever reason, I have been drawn to this country and yet have been too frightened to really commit to adopting from there. The rumors that Ethiopia will close to singles have been kicking around for longer than I have been actively pursuing an adoption. In the past year it has limited adoptions to singles, with agencies receiving a quota. When that originally occurred, some agencies were telling singles that there was a good chance that their adoptions would never occur. When I heard this, I said no way. No way am I going to get invested in this process and have to walk away – especially if it’s after I’ve received a referral. But there were no promises to be made here. Sending countries have every right to place whatever restrictions they like. We don’t have to agree with them, but we do have to abide by them. Given my risk-averse nature, I followed my head and not my heart out of that program and into a new program just getting back up and running after a complete overhaul.
I’m sure some adopting from Nepal will assume I’m leaving that program because of how “slow” some people consider the process or the political instability. I actually never thought Nepal was going to be a quick process. I talked with a small number of agencies that said that the first families would be home by May of this year. I never believed them. I always thought that if I got my dossier in by February perhaps I would have a referral by next spring and a child home by fall. So, I did not switch because of perceived delays. I switched because there is a good chance that I can adopt a child from the country that was my first choice. When I saw the photos of the families who came home from Ethiopia recently, my gut-clenching realization was not that I should have continued on in the process last year so I could have a child home like they did. It was simply that I was looking at photos of girls who looked like I’ve been imagining my daughter would look like.
There are some additional reasons that I could share, but it appears there is a “journalist” trolling the blogs of families adopting from Nepal and using material on those blogs for stories. Makes me yet again reconsider going private.
So, there you have it. I went and got my police letter today, which was my last third party document I still needed for my dossier. I was almost euphoric when they gave it to me, feeling the same sort of excitement I felt when I was completing Oscar’s dossier. I think many of us who have already been through a difficult adoption process may be prone to having our hopes and optimism tempered (or crushed) by all we have experienced and learned. I’m just happy that that hasn’t diminished my excitement yet. It’s going to be a very long time before I get a referral, so I’m going to sit back and enjoy my time as a family of two for the time being.
Nepalese faces
For those of you who have asked what children from Nepal look like (which is understandable, given how few of us have ever been there). . .
Third time’s a charm?
I started my dossier yesterday! Given that it’s the fourth dossier I’ve put together, and the third in the past five months in search of baby #2, I’m hoping it isn’t going to take too long. I’ve been waiting for my agency to pull together the last new forms that are required, since I would prefer to get everything signed and notarized on the same day – maybe they’ll get them to me next week? I’m going to be dragging one of the notaries from my office all over Silicon Valley in the next week or two so I can get all of my letters (including from two different doctors and five different friends, a bank and the police) taken care of. Poor woman. I don’t think she knows what she’s in for. Well, maybe she does. She’s the one who notarized both my Thai and Ethiopian dossiers, after which she declared, “you know, it really would be easier for you to do this the old-fashioned way.” Yikes. Glad I’m not adopting because of fertility issues.
I do think this will be my final dossier, though. This was a lot easier when I was blindly pulling together docs for Oscar’s dossier, clueless about the fact that programs could close, agencies could lie to you about the child you were agreeing to adopt and/or countries could decide you were no longer an attractive candidate to parent their children because of your lack of a spouse (let alone all the other things I know about international adoption now). Takes a lot of emotional energy to get your hopes up again.
When credit is due…
Maybe in the past I might have been just a teensy bit critical of USCIS. But I’ve got to say that today I’m loving them. I just made a run to get fingerprintted (is that a word?) and door to door it took me an hour. And I don’t work anywhere near their office in San Jose. When I had to do this before, they were just as efficient. Love that office. So there. I just proved that I’m not entirely anti-CIS. Now I’m off to tell my local CIS office to look out for my print results and that I need to switch countries.
Now, I have a question for you. I have a ton of little bites on me. They feel like mosquito bites, but they don’t really look like them. They’re tiny, but they’re incredibly itchy. I have them from my ankles up into my scalp. The only place I can imagine I got them was at this little playground I took Oscar to on our way back from music class. There was some sand that I stood in to push him on the swing. He has no bites (and he wasn’t standing in the sand). We have a playground near our house and I’ve never been bitten like this. Is this normal?
Why I think
the Nepal program might be right for me. I received my information packet from my agency today, which included a whole lot of documentation that I had provided to them previously. Instead of feeling annoyed that I had to complete all this stuff for the second time, I jumped on it. (note that this attitude does not extend to my still incompetent home study agency, which AGAIN is holding me up by failing to send me whatever ridiculous paperwork they’re demanding to update my home study (you know, the one I did four months ago but that they said needed to be redone since they expire in six months and six months is almost up – IF YOU IGNORE THE NEXT TWO MONTHS)). Sorry. Seem to have some residual resentment of them. Anywhoo, tomorrow I’m sending off my paperwork and first big check, and I’m happy about it in the same way I was happy about it when I started the process for Vietnam. I think this might bode well.
The process
I’ve had enough PMs from friends and acquaintances asking about the adoption process in Nepal that I thought I short-cut my responses by posting (lazy, hmm?). Here’s what I know.
The Nepali ministry overseeing international adoptions has issued a notice that informed the world that adoptions could start again. In response to allegations of corruption in the past, new reforms have been put in place. Referrals will be issued from a central authority and not from the individual orphanages (I love this, by the way). A limited number of agencies have been approved to work in country. Each of those may submit dossiers for 10 families each year. This may sound like a small number, but when you look at the State Department’s statistics on the number of children adopted from Nepal in the past, this limit multiplied by the number of agencies authorized, keeps the total number of children who may be adopted in the same ballpark as before (a little lower). It is an extremely small country.
The ministry has stated that if a family has a child in the home, the newly adopted child must be of the other gender. This means Oscar really is getting a sister. I’m torn here, both because I’d be inclined to ask for a boy and because there always is a demand for girls, which can prove to be more than simply problematic, but a rule’s a rule. Also, you apparently cannot alter birth order. This means for us that Oscar is getting a little sister. Again, same concern about asking for an infant/young toddler girl, but I figure that by the time my dossier actually gets logged, maybe I’ll be asking for an even older child, since Oscar will be that much older. I think this is going to be a slow-moving program; no one I’ve talked to thinks otherwise.
Couples who have been married at least four years and single women between 35-55 may adopt. There’s a lot of other info out there regarding fees, etc., which I don’t find all that interesting, so I won’t regurgitate it here. The full text of the terms and conditions released can be found here, although I’m betting only the very few of you actually adopting from there will read this (it’s a little dry).
The drama
has already begun. Less than a week after the Nepali adoption program reopened, allegations of corruption (at least potential corruption) abound. Of course it was going to happen; it just is emotionally draining. The one thing that is making me feel better is that THIS time I chose one of those ethical adoption agencies. You know, one of those Hague accredited types that gets touted by people as one of the good agencies. FAR more important to me is that it’s one (or perhaps it’s the only one) that has flat out said that this is a pilot program and that if things don’t proceed appropriately, the program will be over. Fine by me.*
I don’t mean to imply that my agency is more ethical than any other. I’m not in a position to make that assessment. Frankly, I don’t know if anyone is. The reason I mention ethics is that I’ve been a client of an agency that had, shall we say, a less than sterling reputation. I’ve listened to/read many allegations against them. I’ve experienced a lot of stress as a result. Adoption is a stressful endeavor. I don’t want/need my agency’s reputation to be a source of stress again.
* I note that I would not have this attitude had I not just adopted from Vietnam. Two things contribute to this. First, I already have a perfect child at home. While it’s important to me to add to my family, I’m far more relaxed about it now. Second, I know there are other options out there. Not a lot of options for singles, but there are some, and if “irregularities” occur in this program, I would truly prefer not having any part in them.
On an unrelated note, I’ve decided to try to include a photo with my posts. Reading to Oscar has shown me that stories with pictures are far more interesting than those without. I’ll spare you the narrative of describing what’s in the photo (e.g., there’s a horsey in front of the mountains)…
The decision
When we last spoke about my adoption saga, I was slowing things down a bit. I was highly stressed about Oscar – his physical health and his mental well-being. I was extremely worried about the economy and the impact adopting a second child would have on my career. I was very uncertain that Ethiopia was the right country for me. Not because I didn’t like it, but because Ethiopia has appeared to struggle with the concept of whether it wants to adopt its children to single mothers. In the past couple months, they’ve apparently come to a decision. They’re still allowing adoptions to single mothers, but it appears that the number of women each agency will be able to get through the process each year will be significantly restricted. As I’ve said before, that’s entirely their right. I just completely disagree with it, and while I still could adopt from there (I’m already accepted into a program and my agency doesn’t have that many singles, so I could make it through the process), I don’t want to be in a program that would prefer to not have me be a participant.
Where does this leave me, you ask? Well, the other concerns I had earlier seem to have dissipated. Oscar is doing better, and my concerns about the economy, my career, etc., while still present, are less worrisome to me. I’m fairly certain things there will work out as they should. It became pretty clear to me over the holidays that I don’t believe our family is complete just yet. We’re great for now, but I do believe we’re missing a member. So, as a result of all that, I’ve moved from my agency’s Ethiopia program into another. As of yesterday afternoon, I am in a program to adopt from Nepal. Nepal? Yes, I know they’ve had some significant issues in the past. Yes, I am wary of these. And yes, I am entering this program with not a little trepidation in starting a process in another country that has had corruption-related problems in the past. All that can be discussed another day.
For today, though, I’m just happy (relieved, actually) to be in this program. I don’t think this is going to be a quick process, nor do I think that it’s going to be all that smooth, but in the end I am certain it will be worth the struggle. I leave you with the following photo, which I find an appropriate depiction of where I am right about now in this adoption. What I would give to be a clueless first time prospective adoptive parent again…
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Etta’s Hats
Where I’ve Been
