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….