Reconsidering our agency, again.

It's been quiet on the blog front for a couple of weeks. There are two reasons for that.

First, I was at a conference in Washington DC last week for work. It was a great experience (though I'm not sure that John is eager to repeat solo daddy duty -- with a croupy kid, no less -- any time in the near future) but that put adoption conversations on hold. And oh, what conversations we've been having.

That's the second reason for the lack of posts. We received some news that has us reconsidering our agency yet again.

We were feeling quite confident that we were ready to make a decision when I posed what seemed like a minor question to both agencies. "What would happen if we were to get pregnant during the adoption process?"

The answers we received put us into a momentary tailspin as we tried to determine our best path forward. Both agencies have policies about the length of time required between children's entrance into the home -- whether biological or adopted. We completely understand and agree with those guidelines. We agree that it's important for each child to have some time as the only new child, and for the family to be able to bond together and adjust to the new dynamics in the household. This is important for a biological child, but probably even more important for an adopted child who is also having to adjust to a whole new world.

The difference came with the policies regarding what actually happens to an in-process adoption if we were to become pregnant in the middle of it. With one agency, the whole thing is called off and you lose any money you've invested. They strongly believe that you should pursue only one means of expanding your family at a time. That's all well and good, except for the fact that 1) adoption is not cheap, so we're not talking about a small sum of money on the line and 2) we're not in our twenties, so putting an absolute halt to any chance of biological children (i.e., actively preventing conception) is kind of a scary thing to contemplate, even if it's just for a year or two.

The other agency's policy is more flexible. Should we become pregnant in the middle of an adoption, we'd have to pause everything. Any money that wasn't going toward specifics of the current adoption (like the application fee and the agency fee) would be applied toward an adoption in the future. Any money that was specifically for THIS adoption (like the home study fee) we'd probably have to pay again later when we re-started the process.

So now we're talking some more. This also brought up the question of whether we should just commit to only adding adopted children to our family. We do feel called to help a child or children who needs us. Are we being selfish for choosing to leave the biological option open instead of committing 100% to the adoption process? These are the things we're discussing.

In some ways, this is coming up because we're not the typical adoptive couple. Most other adoptive couples fall into one of two categories. Either they are infertile and thus pursuing adoption as their only means of having children, or they have children of their own but are past the point in their lives when they want to add further biological children to their family. We don't fit either profile. But really, if you know us, who would ever consider us normal anyway?:)

So that's the update. It's hard to make decisions when it feels like there's so much at stake.

Reconsidering our agency

So, I get this email last week Thursday:


Subject: not trying to complicate things...

..but look at this:
http://www.allgodschildren.org/adoption/ethiopia/
this is the agency that an acquaintance of one of my friends is going through. today was the first time i heard of them.

after a little digging, it turns out that a few people in our circles have used them or know someone who has. One of the biggest differences is Hanna's Hope. 

Located in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, Hannah’s Hope is a transitional home meant to provide love, shelter, safety, and medical care to orphans waiting to be placed with their forever families. Staffed with wonderful caregivers and supervisors, each child living in Hannah’s Hope receives the best care possible. 

From what we understand, Bethany runs through local state run orphanages. Hannah's Hope allows All God's Children to bring orphans in and give a higher level of care than the state orphanages. 

Thea made acquittance with another family who has adopted a child from AGC who passed along this video link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0cbqnE7QUw

Watching it only made us even more sure we want to do this.


Up next -- the fun of getting all our stuff together. (spoiler alert - it's not fun).


Oh, and side note, we contacted AGC last week Friday and since we've exchanged a number of emails and today the massive fed-ex packet showed up. Although we're pretty sure we're going with AGC, we're still technically waiting for Bethany's packet. These facts are also helping make our final decision to go with AGC.


:)

Deep thoughts on Valentines Day, race

So, Thea and I had our Valentines Day on Sunday night at a local restaurant and we spent quite a bit of our evening taking about our adoption. It wasn't the whole night, but we did spend a bit of time talking about it. It was a little surreal - we're sitting there having deep philosophical discussions while the couple next to us talked at length about computer roll playing games. Really, that happened. To each his own.

Thea and I have both talked, off an on, about what it will be like to raise a child who is a minority. After a lot of time thinking about it, I still don't have my head wrapped around it. I guess it will be a work in progress - from today till the day our adopted child is an adult. Do we raise him/her as if they were just like our blonde hair blue eye Caucasian son? Do we try to prepare him/her to deal with racism - as if we're remotely qualified to do so... It's a tough question.

I think Thea made a really interesting point - when racism enters his/her life, we won't be able to relate. Neither father nor mother will be able to hold that child and look them in the eye and say "I've been there" or "I know what you are going through".

Regardless of how we end up dealing with this, I know for a fact that this process is going to be an amazing opportunity for me to grow as a person, for us to grow as husband and wife and for us to grow as a family. If (for example) Rhys decides to adopt an Ethiopian child later in life he will have a far better foundation to work from than Thea or I. Although he won't be able to tell his son/daughter "I've been there" when they experience racism, he will be able to relate better than his parents -- he will be able to say "I know what your going through".

I think this process is going to make us all better people. 

Answers to a couple of questions

We've received a few questions from friends and family members about our decision. A few people have asked us if this means that we have chosen not to have any other children of our own. We do still hope and plan to add another biological child to our family. We have always planned on having 2 children and adopting a third, and as John mentioned in an earlier post we're conscious of how long an international adoption can take. We decided it would be wise to start the process earlier rather than later. And, if we're blessed with a biological child in the same time frame, we'll figure it all out:)

Others have asked why we chose to do an international adoption rather than to adopt domestically. I think there were several big reasons that led us in that direction. (John can add to this if I'm missing anything.) First, when we considered the needs of children in other countries it seemed that we would be able to provide opportunities to them that they would not otherwise have. While we are certainly experiencing rough economic times here in the US, it doesn't compare with the level of poverty in a country like Ethiopia. Also, many of the children that we might think of when we consider children in the US who could benefit from assistance are not actually available for adoption. They are still living with parents or other family members. I do believe that we are all called to help these children as well, but that help will be in a different form...not adoption. Finally, as John mentioned, when you choose to adopt domestically you do have to accept the risk of the birth mother or father choosing to rescind the adoption. That's something that I don't think I'm emotionally prepared to deal with. For all of these reasons, we feel that international adoption is the better choice for our family.

A choice

Whoever thought John would be a more prolific writer than I am? Man, I need to do some catching up here.

I think that we have decided on a country. After a lot of thinking and praying and talking, we both feel strongly that Ethiopia is the right place for us to pursue adoption. There are a number of reasons for that. On a very practical level, the cost is significantly lower than Colombia. While we will get some assistance from my place of employment, and we hope to still be able to take advantage of the tax credit, we are still looking at a major out-of-pocket expense. We will have more resources to care for a new child if we are able to cut our costs on the actual adoption.

We also had to consider other practialities, such as the amount of time we as adoptive parents would need to spend in country. Colombia requires a stay of at least 7 weeks after the adoption is finalized, in order to help the child become familiar with his/her new parents while still in a familiar setting. I agree that there are a lot of reasons why that's a good idea, but it would be a challenge for our family in a number of ways.

Finally, the age restrictions for adoptive parents are different for Ethiopia. To adopt a younger child (age 3 or under) from Colombia, the older adoptive parent must be younger than 38. For Ethiopia, the parents must be younger than 45. From what we understand, there is also a greater potential for getting a younger child (i.e., 18 months old or younger) from Ethiopia. In our minds, the transition would likely be easier for a younger child. I'm sure we'll learn more about that as we continue this journey.

So, Ethiopia it is. I feel confident in that decision, but I'm still becoming used to the idea of going with a non-Latin American country. When I've thought about adopting in the past, it's always involved a child from Latin America. I did my graduate work in Latin American history, and have always felt a strong sense of connection with the region. (It must run in the family; my grandparents were very involved in missions work in Mexico and numerous other family members have strong Latin American connections.) Unfortunately, most Latin American countries are not participating in international adoptions right now, largely because of issues of corruption in the past. I do believe that we're making the right decision here, though. And who knows, in a few years maybe we'll consider adding another child and Latin America will be a better option.

The preliminary application and initial talks about country.

Well .. the blog is almost caught up to our lives... Earlier this week Thea submitted our pre-application to Bethany. This is the last free step and it gets you some basic vetting. 


I got an email early Monday from Thea asking for my height and weight, salary, other income (we own a rental property), and the name of my cholesterol prescription. Thinking back, I probably should have asked why I was being asked. Glad to hear she didn't take some huge life insurance policy out on me and buy a book on Amazon about how to service the brakes on a Toyota Matrix. 


Thea wrote me back: 

I said we were interested in China, Ethiopia, and Colombia, that we had a preference for Colombia and explained why [Thea speaks Spanish], asked if our ability to bridge the language/culture gap would help as we near the age limit for a younger child there, and also said that we might be willing to consider a sibling group as long as they were under age 4 and from Colombia. Also minor medical problems are ok. We should hear back from them in 2 weeks. Also, I've been thinking a little bit, and I guess I wouldn't be heartbroken if we ended up with a slightly older child (2-3) from Colombia? I don't know...what do you think? My number one preference is still for a younger child, but with Colombia, I'd at least be able to communicate right off the bat and maybe help w/ the language transition?

Me: 

I'm open to an older child.. do we maybe have some resources we might not think of right away .. maybe there is someone in church who speaks Chinese or Ethiopian.. 

Thea: 

yeah, I guess I'm just anticipating the moment when we're going to have to choose one location over another and if going w/ Colombia means we'll end up w/ an older child, then we'll have to decide how we feel about that. We need to figure out if we'd rather a) have a younger child or b) adopt from Colombia. In your mind, what's the higher priority? I guess I'm 50/50...with a slight preference for Colombia

Me: 

I'd say
60% younger child
40% older child from Columbia

Later the next day Thea got a phone call from Bethany and they said we had preliminary approval for all 3 countries. She was told to expect a packet in the mail in a week or two. 

Up next: Second guessing our choice of agency & settling on a country (hint: it's not Columbia)... 

Our info meeting and a few surprises

Already on my 2nd post.. To be fair, this blog won't be updated daily once I get it caught up to where we're at in the process. 

So.. after talking it over as a couple and deciding we were interested in international adoption the next step was to visit a local adoption service for an info meeting. Most places around here have these monthly and a couple weeks ago we attended one at Bethany Christian Services. It was what you might expect - bullet points on power point slides with lots of pictures of cute smiling kids. What I didn't expect was the woman running the seminar knew each child by name and their adoption story. We shared this meeting with one other couple, a nice pair who seemed to maybe a little younger than us. 

Sitting here now several weeks later a few items stand out in my memory as surprising. First was the great variance in the requirements between different countries. There can be a significant difference in:

• cost.. (tens of thousands of dollars difference)
• length of the adoption process
• length of time the adoptive parents have to spend w/ the child in his/her country before they can come home
• age of the parents
• age of the child(ren) being adopted
• adoptive parent's heath requirements (did you know that if you or your spouse have ever been on an anti-depressant some countries won't let you adopt)

Beyond that, I was also surprised at the success rate for domestic adoptions. I'm pretty sure this is a state-by-state law, but in Michigan the birth family has significant rights to rescind there choice to give up their child for adoption. Even though this was an international adoption meeting I asked the presenter what the success rate was for domestic adoption; last year within their group only 50%ish of all their domestic adoptions stuck. Wow! I can't even begin to imagine going through all this, even as far as bringing a child home, to have it all fall apart. 

Also of interest was the fact that the meeting bolstered my already present concern about connecting with an adopted child. Mainly, the presenter said that a lot of these kids have a hard time bonding with males because they've spend much of their lives with women. This issue still worries me and I foresee it being a part of my blogging for the duration of this process - especially once we bring a child home. 

Another thing that both Thea and I were surprised by is (I want to phrase this carefully) that the children who need "more" are often paired with parents who have "less". Lets put it another way, and I speak in broad terms here - don't take this as absolutes. It seems the most desirable adoptive children and healthy, younger and solo (i.e. not in a sibling group). It seems the most desirable adoptive parents (it varies by country but often) are healthy, younger, and infertile. So it often leaves sibling groups, older children and kids with mild to severe health issues to be adopted by older, less healthy people who already have kids. Our presenter herself adopted a (I'm guessing, honestly I forget) 5 year old girl from Russia who was wheelchair bound. Mind your, our presenter was old enough that her own kids were all grown and out of the home.

Based on Thea and my age and the fact that we're not infertile and we don't want this to extend for a decade, we'll have to carefully choose our criteria. It's possible we'll consider sibling groups, an older child, or maybe with a health issue. 

One thing that I haven't talked about a lot yet is being worried about cost. This is because Thea works at a Christian organization that has great adoption benefits. Depending on the cost of the process (again, it varies) we're hoping her benefit will cover a chunk of the cost. Frankly, this benefit is making this adoption possible. The prohibitive cost of this process probably stops many families from doing it. The couple we shared the info meeting with seemed shell shocked at some of the numbers and I'm glad that with all the many things we're going to deal with in this journey Thea's job takes one of biggest off our shoulders.

That's all for now.. Next up -- the preliminary application.