Waiting for approval

Although we were approved for the China program, we now have to be approved for the Vietnam program. Our agency is quite large and they have the adoption consultants, etc. specialize in a country, so you will have employees who know their specific country backwards and forwards, instead of having them have to know several countries. That is when confusion is more likely to happen, so having totally different people in each specific program is a very good thing! But now, the Vietnam program director has to approve us for her program. Originally, when we decided to change, she was on vacation, she got back last week, but then we were informed that we needed a note from the doctor regasrding when I was 13 and was hospitalized for viral encephalitis.

Of course, I was notified of this last Thursday, a day and a half before the holiday weekend began. Since it was nearly, the end of the work day, I quickly faxed my doctor's office about my needed request. On Friday, I called and they had received it and the nurse was looking it over. I figured the office probably was not open on Saturday and if they were, they would be extremely busy. Since Monday was Christmas, of course, no one was there and I was so busy anyways with having my parents and cousin over. Today, we decided that we needed some exercise and since the doctor's office is only about a mile away, we walked over there. They had a memo typed up and were just waiting for the doctor's signature. Since we were there, they checked to see if the doctor was able to sign it. He did and it was a very nice letter/note. and said I was completely recovered and that my past condition will in no way effect my parenting ability. It also goes on to say He feels I am an outstanding candidate to adopt children. Hopefully, it'll will meet the appoval of the Vietnam program director. As soon as I got home, I scanned it in to the computer and e-mailed it to her in St. Louis, as well as to the adoption consultant at the regional office by us. She is suppose to be in tomorrow and Thursday, so hopefully, she will approve it quickly and let us know, so we can send the contract and fee to our agency before the end of the year, since agency fees go up at the beginning of the year.

Boy or Girl?

We originally planned on adopting a little girl from China, who would have probably been between 9 months to a year and a half when we received her. The current wait for a child from China seems to be about 15 months or so from when your paperwork is accepted in China and logged into their computer. The wait for a girl currently in Vietnam is 18-24 months and for a boy it is 10-12 months. Vietnam does things differently from China, so I don't know exactly when that time frame starts. We are still learning about Vietnam adoption. I was following Chinese adoptions for quite some time and was relatively knowledgeable about many aspects of it, but then the meeting happened and everything changed.; wait times have also been increasing in China because so many people were sending in dossiers (paperwork that was needed to adopt), which is probably the main reason the new regulations were passed.

But it seems that our best bet for a child would be to adopt a baby boy. Most prospective adoptive parents want a girl, which is probably why the wait for a girl is so much longer than for a boy. We just want to be parents and will love either a boy or girl, so it is looking much more likely that we will request a boy! In China, it is much more uncommon to have boys be put up for adoption, and if they are they often have some special need. Although, it is niot unheard of to get a healthy boy, just rare.

Adoption Change

We have had to make a change to our plan to adopt a daughter from China. Soon after Thanksgiving, we were approved to adopt from China. Well, a week later or less, there governmental agency in China that is responsible for facilitating adoptions on their end had a major meeting and passed many new regulations. If you want to see what these new regulations are they can be found in this post from the earlier blog: http://journey-to-our-chinese-princess.blogspot.com/2006/12/new-regulations-for-china-adoptions.html. We seem to meet all the regulations, but one -- the length of marriage, if there has been a previous divorce. They are giving a grace period of several months for people to get their paperwork in, but since we have not even started it is very unlikely that we would get everything into our agency for them to go through and process and then send to China, by the necessary date that it must not only be received, but also be logged in by the governmental agency there.

We originally went to an informational meeting at what is now our adoption agency back in October for information about adopting from Vietnam. We decided we really loved the agency and decided to pursue a Chinese adoption. The woman heading that meeting told the group, (I think there were 4 sets of adoptive parents) that although the wait was long and increasing for China, if that is where your heart tells you to go, do not be dissuaded, in the timeline of things an extra 6 months or year is not so very long as compared to the length of time many wait to be parents in the first place. So, we decided to follow our hearts. But after this meeting, another person, there told us that with the new regulations, it would be in our best interest to go with a different country. The other countries they work in for adoption, other than China is Russia, Vietnam, Columbia, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan. Columbia can take years and there are lot of sibling groups that are placed, rather than a single child. Ethiopia is extremely new (they were not even approved in the country until just recently). Russia is Russia still very volatile with adoptions and they like many Eastern European nations have a high incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome from pregnant mothers abusing drugs and alcohol, which can lead to many, many problems. This is something we aren't comfortable with. Kazakhstan is part of the former U.S.S.R., like Russia. Although the country has a much lower incidence of alcohol or drug abuse as the majority of the country is Muslim, it also is somewhat volatile, not to the extent of Russian adoption, plus at the same time, it is also a good deal more expensive than China was by at least $10,000 and also required 2 trips to Kazakhstan (one trip to a foreign country is expensive enough but 2 is even more so as you can imagine.

Vietnam on the otherhand is similar to China in cost, requiring only one trip, and has a very, very low incidence of alcohol or drug abuse. Birth mothers although extremely poor, take care of themselves the best they can during pregnancy. The children are well-cared for and are often in foster family situations. So, our decision to change our adoption plans to Vietnam was not that difficult. We are just glad we decided to go with the agency we are now with, rather than the one we were planning to use. Of course, we liked the agency we were going to go with very much, but had we applied to them about the same time, we would have been in quite a bind since they are not yet approved in Vietnam; we probably would have gone with a Taiwan adoption, but I don't know much about that program, so who knows what the cost is and what requirements we might have had to meet.