Once Jerid and I made the decision to adopt, we had to find out where to begin. That was easy enough, the phone book. Open it and you will find a huge listing on the subject. Attorneys and agencies; international and domestic. We decided to go for Lutheran Social Services. We called and set up an appointment. Just as with the infertility, I was so excited that I somehow expected to come home with a baby. But it doesn't work that way. In the initial interview we went over the pros and cons of international vs. domestic adoption and which would be right for us. It wasn't a hard decision for us. We chose international for several reasons.
- Domestic adoptions can take longer than international because typically, the birth mother chooses the adoptive family. The adoptive hopefuls create a book on themselves and wait until a pregnant woman chooses them. This could take 2 weeks or 2 years. International adoptions offer programs where this doesn't happen. You fill out your paperwork and wait in line. Not that this is a quick process, but on average faster than waiting for a domestic.
- Being that the birth mother chooses the family, we couldn't be sure that anyone would want us with Jerid's health.
- We had heard about all of the little girls in China that have it pretty bad. The orphanages have more babies than they can handle, leading to neglect and attachment issues. Once the girls reach a certain age they are forced to leave and their options are limited. Usually to prostitution or factory work. This moved us.
- And I guess if we're all being honest here, that last reason being that if we couldn't make a baby that looked like us, why not just go completely in the other direction. Lay it out on the table from first glance. We adopted.
So. That decision made, which country and which international agency? The local agency only works with us to get started and to do the US government requirements. They are in charge of home studies and fingerprints. (We'll get to all of that later.) We were sent home with about 20 brochures on different agencies offering many different countries, services and prices. Talk about overwhelming. However, many things start ruling out countries right away. The things that we wanted:
- A baby as young as possible
- A baby as quickly as possible
- The least amount of money possible
That's not asking for much- right? And besides, we already knew that we wanted a little girl from China. Oh. That can't happen. According to China's regulations for adoption, both adoptive parents must be at least 30 years old. We were a couple years away at that time. Moving on. India was out because they don't let their babies be put up for adoption until they are 2 years old. Russia was a consideration, but 2 trips were necessary, it was $30,000, (which is about $10,000 more that China) and the babies have a high chance of having fetal alcohol syndrome. Plus, they're pretty strict about people with chronic illnesses adopting. Vietnam wasn't open when we started and the Ukraine adoptions take a long time. That left Guatemala. It sounded perfect for us. It's a fairly easy process, it has the shortest wait time, and they have the youngest babies. Sometimes they are referred while still in the womb. The drawback? $35-40,000. Talk about making a girl sick. So we went back to LSS and whined. The woman asked if we had heard about Taiwan. Of course not. It wasn't in any of the catalogs. Well apparently, a woman here in Springfield had recently adopted from Taiwan. There is only one agency in the US that offers an open adoption program. So she got us the info on it. We contacted New Hope in Seattle, WA. Click. It fit. Babies were on average 5-7 months when they come home, another family with CF had recently adopted, so that would be fine, only 3-5 days spent in Taiwan and only $20-25,000. Yippee! We signed. Taiwan it is.
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