Gambling

Does Honduras hold our child?

The day Johnny and I made the decision to adopt, I felt a course was set to bring home a child sometime in the 18 months that followed.  We have proceeded forward in the innocence of that intent... telling friends the good news, allowing our children to share our excitement, painting our son's room.  We did not realize we were gambling, and we may or may not bring home a child.

The last couple of months we heard of delays that we thought might prolong our wait for a referral from the 6 months we were expecting to up to 12 more months.  And although that could still be a real possibility, the first wisps of fear have also woven into our minds regarding the risk we took by entering such a new program:  the delays could be indefinite.  Fellow Honduran PAPs, please do not think I know something.  I know nothing, like the rest of you.  But for other friends and family, this article in September was our first clue - the Secretary General and Director of the group in charge of adoptions were forced to step down and an investigation was begun.  The sum of the many more articles that have circulated since then, with workers on strike, pointed fingers, corruption and lost funds, etc. paint a grim picture.  Sure, some of it we can respect as cultural differences (striking is very common in Latin America), but it still leaves us with few guarantees.

The timing is our gamble.  We would love to bring home a child from Honduras.  But there are other countries with more stable adoption programs with wait times of 12-18 months.  If we start over now, we could still bring him home in the next 18 months.  Not ideal (we are so ready, now!), but doable.  If we wait 6 months, we take a gamble.  50% chance things will turn around and we will get a referral sooner from Honduras, and 50% chance (these are my statistics, folks, based on gut feeling) that we will learn the program is on hold and we have to move to another program.  But, oh yeah, that means we start the 18 more months wait at that point.  And we really can't. 

I truly do envy those families for whom a major life event, like adding a child to their family, does not need the same planning our family seems to require.  But big things, (like needing to eventually go back to work to put our kids through college!) preclude our family from being on hold for years on end.  When I was comparing country timelines at the beginning of our adoption decision, I actually had someone close to me say, "well maybe if a year or two difference in when he comes home is that important to you, you should not be doing this".  And yeah, I get it.  But then, I also don't.  Because no one presumes to question parents who plan the timing of their biological kids.  In families with two parents in professional careers, timing is all part of the balance of doing what is best for our kids.

We are not alone, or special, in this endeavor.  Many other families are struggling, weighed down with hope or despair, depending on the day, as they try to form their family.  We love the other adoptive families who have shared their stories and their waits with us.  We empathize with their heavy investments of emotion, time, and money into adoption.  We have invested $24,000 in this process so far.  We wish we had the financial surplus to not even worry about that part of the gamble, but it has not been without sacrifice.  Regardless, the possibility of this child is worth it to us.

Is there a child waiting for us?  Will we become parent and sister and brother to a child in 2012?  Or 2013?  Or will we lose our window?

Hurdle: Dossier Being Held While We Scurry For More Paperwork

So I just decided that there is no appropriate image for this update, since syringes and cringing children are nothing to smile about.  I felt sorry for our agency, having to deliver the news they dreaded telling us today:  "Your kids need to have lab tests done.  Blood, Urine, fecal".  I feel sorrier for myself having to tell my eight year-old daughter the news; she who still berates me for blood work we authorized when she was three.  She really despises needles.

Our dossier will be held, waiting for this update.  I am assuming it will take a month to get the tests completed and notarized, mail them to our agency, who will get them apostilled and forward them to Honduras.  There they will be translated and approved before being sent to IHNFA to join the rest of our paperwork.  It is hard to imagine exactly where the paperwork is, but I know, because we were too good and too fast at getting it all ready, that much of it will "expire" soon.

I feel like someone caught in quicksand, moving slowly through the motions, wondering if anyone will ever pull us safely up.  Where is our son?  I'd like him to know we bought him a train table this month.

Submission to IHNFA

Our dossier was submitted to IHNFA last Monday, October 3rd (yah!!!!), and then on October 5th our lawyer said she was going over to see them, to make sure the adoption office thought it all looked good and would not need any more revisions.  That was one week ago.

I delayed posting anything because I was dreaming of a headline that said "We are official!  The Secretary General has signed off on our dossier and given us a waitlist number!". 
I dream of this headline a lot :-) 

Last Thursday our adoption agency held their monthly conference call, which is a great time to catch up on the program and find out new news.  They had very good news for us...we knew the agency that controls adoptions had gone on strike, and that the Director and Secretary General were put on leave pending an investigation, and we thought there was a good chance the investigation would add 6 months to our timeline.  BUT, our agency says that an interim Secretary General is in place and signing paperwork.  However, none of the families we know whose dossiers are sitting on the interim SG's desk have been signed.  We will be relieved when we hear things are definitely moving.  Best of luck to the prospective adoptive families that are on that desk already (you know who you are!).  Hopefully this will be your week!

Expected Timeline

Our timeline can be seen by clicking "Adoption Timeline" in our header (I love looking at these from other families!) but the real question our friends keep asking is, “how much longer?”. 

Our adoption agency says we will receive a referral 6-12 months from the time our dossier is submitted to Honduras.  An adoption referral is when you get “THE call” where you are given a full profile, including pictures, of your child. 

Our agency is one of the best, most reputable in the U.S.,  and that is why we chose them.  However, only 10 adoptions were processed through Honduras in 2010.  Although Honduras says they are open to international adoption (learn more about the country and process here), and the experiences of many families in 2011 show that they are moving the process more quickly, there are a lot of families in the pipeline and it is a very “new” program.  There are only 5 agencies in the U.S. authorized to handle Honduran adoptions, which all must be processed through a government agency in Honduras called INFHA.  We are part of our adoption agency’s pilot program since they were just approved in 2011.  We were the 5^th family to “sign on” for the pilot program. 

When our agency visited INFHA, the officials told them they would expedite the applications of any families willing to adopt toddler age or older children, or siblings.  We have seen families who have only waited two months for a referral when they were open to a child up to the age of 4.  We are approved for a toddler boy, aged 24-43 months.  So once on the waiting list, we do not expect to wait more than 6 months for a referral.  But nothing is certain.  We can only hope.

After we receive the referral Johnny and I will travel to Honduras immediately.  We will stay for a week on that initial trip and will meet our son for the first time.  He will then move from the orphanage to a foster family to wait for a judge’s approval for the adoption.  3-5 months later we will return to the country with our two older children to stay for 4-6 weeks in Honduras.  Our son will live with us during this time while we finish the approvals and paperwork.

We can’t wait!!

Control

I am trying to surrender control.  That is hard for me.  I can be as patient with my kids as the day is long.  But I am impatient when it comes to waiting.  For anyone who has not known me long, let me paint a picture:

When pregnant with my first child, I read every pregnancy book I could get my hands on.  I tracked my daughter’s progress week by week and studied everything the child rearing experts had to say.  I carefully planned my natural birth plan and made sure everyone involved had a copy.  Convinced she would be early, I diligently handed off projects at work and worked late to wrap up things with my team.  When my due date came and went, I walked five miles a day, ate eggplant, pestered older women for any remedy to make my daughter arrive. 

When I finally surrendered, took a vacation day from work, and planned to put my feet up and enjoy a day at home, my water broke the night before.  And my daughter did arrive, four days late, seventeen hours of labor later, with drugs.  And it was perfect because she was perfect.

How does this relate?  Well, even with a definite nine month cycle of pregnancy, with people assuring me, “she can’t stay in there forever, you know!”, I was still trying to control her arrival.  And now, with child #3, we don’t have a nine month window to hang onto.  The window is huge and the wait undetermined.

There are other ways in which the wait during adoption is harder.  When an infant is inside your body you are in control of every morsel that goes into your body, every nutrient that will build his brain and body.  You can take care of yourself and your baby as you wait.  Many nights I lay awake and wonder, “is my son hungry?”.  This haunts me.  It kills us that he waits in an understaffed orphanage that lacks enough resources…  All while the paperwork is processed.   I am not a whiner, but I like to be DOING something to move things in a positive direction.  We are coming, son, we are coming. 

Waiting

Today marks  2 months since our dossier was shipped to Honduras.  Perhaps a strange place to start blogging, so let me start at the beginning.

Johnny and I have thought about adoption for a long time.  We have two biological children, a boy and a girl, and they are the best part of our lives.   We are a happy family with a lot of love to give.  And we want a third child.  We agonized over this decision for a long time.  Have another ourselves?  Adopt?  Leave this issue alone?  For many reasons, some selfish and some not, we decided to find our toddler son in Honduras.

The initial decision brought us so much peace and confidence in our decision.  We cried, we laughed, we gazed fondly at our children and thought of the joy one more would bring.  We were entering this process with open eyes, had read every book on attachment issues and sensory disorders, but still thought , “it will all be OK if we can just bring him home”.   Now there are days when we think, “will we ever bring him home”?

 I will not lie, the last eight months have had a lot of trying moments.  The paperwork was a mountain, but we were organized, fast, and very optimistic.  We found other families on-line who had taken anywhere from 3 months to a year to get it all together.  “Of course we can get it done quickly if we are determined”, I thought.  We hired notaries on Craigslist to come to doctors’ offices where there were none.  We moved meetings and vacations to get the earliest appointments possible.  But then we found out how much is out of our control.  For example, happening to be the family  whose I-600A sits on a Central Immigration Services Agent’s desk for a lengthy summer vacation (it took 78 days to approve) while others got theirs back in 35 days.  Or having to revise our psychological evaluation three times so far because the template changed again and again.  And the financial strain.  International adoption is expensive.

But still we hold so much hope for our future and the future of our kids!  And during the wait, we have met so many awesome families who share our every emotion in this process.  They, along with the reassurances of family and friends, have been a lifeline.

The real wait (the wait for our referral) is just beginning….