Adoption Update

Not much to update, actually, but I'll give a "status report" just so we have a starting place...

David and I are waiting to be proposed two related children under 2 years old from Ethiopia. We are with Imagine Adoption and have been officially waiting since February 25, 2008. We are hopeful that our proposal will come this winter, and that we will be able to travel in the spring, but we know that the timing of the whole thing is in the hands of God (well, and a government official, or two!).

Our adoption journey has been a long one, though. It actually began back in 2003, when, after 4 miscarriages, we decided to apply to adopt a child through our provincial government. We were open to one or two children under three, with a fairly open list of special needs. We completed the required training courses, had our homestudy visits and just as we were waiting approval of our homestudy, we found our we were pregnant for the 5th time! We decided to wait until we were confident in the health of the baby before notifying our worker, just in case our poor track record were to repeat itself. To our grateful amazement, though, this baby "stuck" and so we notified our worker. We were required to put our file on hold until our baby was one year old.

Faith was born October 4, 2004, and was a delightful, "easy" baby. When she was 4 months old, we tried to apply to be foster parents, but were told the "one year old" rule applied for that, too. This frustrated me immensely... They were advertising for foster parents on the backs of buses, for Pete's sake! If we had been foster parents, and then became pregnant, they wouldn't have removed our foster kids! Besides, I thought then, and still do, that a content 4 month old baby would be easier to "integrate" with another child/children than a very active 1 year old. But whatever...

As soon as she was one, we reactivated our adoption file. We had never used any type of contraception after she was born, but I was breastfeeding, and I knew that reduced our fertility. Besides, history had shown us that getting and staying pregnant was not a "given" for us, and we were anxious to add to out family. Time passed, and we didn't hear anything from our adoption worker, nor did we get pregnant.

In the spring of 2006, we consulted the fertility clinic to see why we weren't getting pregnant. We also decided to switch our file from straight adoption, to foster-to-adopt, hoping this might result in a quicker placement. We started our licensing visits (required in addition to our homestudy) and met with our new worker. The RE at the fertility clinic did a hysterosalpingogram to check the condition of my tubes and uterus. This test showed that one of my fallopian tubes was blocked, and that one side of my uterus was "misshapen". And of course, they were opposite sides. So I only had an "every other month" chance of conceiving, and THEN the fertilized egg had to make it ACROSS my uterus before implanting. The Dr felt if the baby implanted on the "bad" side, this could lead to a miscarriage. He recommended IVF, so they could control where the embryo implanted, or to keep trying naturally and hope for a "fluke".

That weekend I went on a prayer retreat, scheduled long before we knew the news the doctor would be delivering. The focus of the retreat was "Healing" and while we spent a lot of time praying for spiritual healing, we also prayed for physical healing. This was strangely new to me... after all, Jesus healed people in the Bible, but somehow I'd never prayed specifically for physical healing in regards to pregnancy. Most of my prayers had been of the "Please, Lord, give us a baby" variety. But this weekend, we prayed really specifically for my tube to be opened, for my uterus to be a healthy welcoming place for a fragile embryo to implant, for my hormone levels to be right where they needed to be, etc.

We also prayed for wisdom and discernment in our adoption journey... Adoption had dug it's way into our hearts big time over the past 3 years, and Dave and I were certain at least one of our children was meant to join our family through adoption... it was just a matter of when, and from where... I had always assumed international adoption was too expensive, we were too young, etc... But friends of ours were adopting a little girl from Haiti, and their experience spoke to us deeply. We had began to consider international adoption as an option...

Within one month of the discouraging doctor's appointment, and the amazing healing retreat, I was pregnant again, this time with our son, Thomas! We were thrilled and delighted, and I had an overall easy pregnancy. During our pregnancy, we decided to go ahead with an adoption from Haiti as soon as we were able after the baby was born. Haitian adoptions take anywhere from 2-3 years to complete, so Alberta Children's Services granted us permission to do our homestudy even though our baby was still young. We completed our international adoption course on February 10, 2007 (when I was 7 months pregnant!) and began our homestudy in October 2007, when Thomas was 6 months old.

At our first homestudy visit, however, our social worker confirmed what we had begun to suspect... Haiti was not a good option for us at this time. The Haitian government has been changing its' requirements for adoptive parents on a seemingly weekly basis. One week we were ok, one week we weren't. I was 27, Dave was 30, and we had been married 7 years. The "official" requirements were both parents 30 or older, and married at least 10 years. We had heard they made exceptions, but only for infertile couples. Which, with 2 young bio kids, we couldn't claim to be. :-) Also, the Haitian side of the adoption process was devastatingly slow. The orphanage we wanted to work with, God's Littlest Angels, wasn't even accepting new applications (still isn't actually). And even once we had a proposal, we were facing a 2-3 year wait to bring our child home. This, if Haitian social services even approved us as an adoptive family...

Our worker suggested we look into Ethiopia. We met the requirements, the children were generally young and healthy, and the process was relatively quick and predictable. And in a country affected by HIV, famine and poverty, there is great need. (though perhaps not as great as we first thought... that's another post...)

We were done our homestudy visits on November 9th, and we got our provincial approval January 15th, 2008. Kidslink/Imagine had our documents authenticated, etc and then the whole dossier was finally received in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on February 25, 2008!! Whew! Like I said above, we're hoping for a proposal this winter, and to travel in the spring/early summer. But who knows...

So there you have it... Where we came from, where we are, where we're going... Any questions? Sorry this got so long... I promise to break my posts up more from now on...

Blessings,
Heather