Category: Adoption

It is official; the letter was dropped in the mail a few days ago to inform our agency we will be closing our adoption file with them once again.  Again there are a number of reasons why, but the fact of the matter is international adoption is an incredibly expensive endeavor and because of unforeseen circumstances we are not able to afford it at this time.

Randy asked if I wanted to do the classes for the US foster-to-adopt program.  I’ll do the classes if he wants to, but right now I feel completely and utterly defeated.  The last thing I feel like doing right now is starting another process.  I want to just live life a little enjoy each other’s company which for the passed 3 years has revolved around the discussion of adopting, children, and preparation for a child in our home. 

From here on out I hope to recollect my thoughts and spend some time enjoying the things I do have (a husband, a farm, pets, and a home that could use a little tlc).  I would also like to complete some of the things we have been putting off and prepare a schedule for the year.  A schedule an impending adoption did not allow for.  Lastly, I just want to regain the energy it took to be in the process of an adoption…to feel strong and healthy again physically and mentally.

I know this is a let down to not only us, but to our friends and family who have supported us along the way.  Know we are very sorry this didn’t work out also.  A very small handful of friends are the only ones who know about our adoption process coming to an end and fortunately we didn’t tell my parents so nothing will have to be done there which is a relief. 

We will undoubtedly be asked about our adoption and have to answer questions about why it didn’t work out.  This is all part of it, and we are ready to face the music.  It’s such a hard process sometimes and such a financial burden for us middle-class folks.  I hate it for the children.  They are the ones who suffer the most through it all.

Okay, I’m a little disappointed we haven’t received our home study yet.  Hopefully it makes it here this week so we can get it sent off to immigration.  We did get our KBI background checks back and all is well (again) there.

Randy and I took off work early Thursday afternoon, rushed home (we each have an hour commute) to do chores, to hop in a car together and drive another half hour to pick up our medical letters from our doctor’s office to discover…….they did them wrong.

I emailed the letters again today to our doctor’s office so they could redo them and mail them to us asap.  They originally told me they didn’t have email capabilities, so I tried faxing them repeatedly which never went through.  Then I had to rely on the good ol’ US Postal Service.  The post office may be slower than email or faxing, but at least it is consistent.  They received the mailed forms and proceeded to do them incorrectly.  This time around (and considering it’s taken them 3 weeks to sign two pieces of paper) I was given an email address for speedy processing.

Randy and I know this is all part of God’s plan for us and our soon-to-be family.  Maybe our baby isn’t born yet so our adoption will have to be slowed down some?  Like Randy said, “it is teaching us patience.”  It will all come through in perfect time.  In the meantime there are lots of things to plan, purchase, and worry about, and we are doing them all while we wait.

Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

He did it….He finished our medical updates!! After a couple of phone calls the letters were found. They were once thought to be incomplete, but the nurse found them tucked away in our file instead of in the outbox. Yea!

Randy and I are leaving work early to drive over to the doctor’s office to pick them up. We are hoping we can convince the receptionist to fax them directly to our social worker for us. Otherwise, we will have to find a place still open who will fax it for us.

We hope to meet up with friends for dinner after we get our paper work in order. We don’t generally eat out much, but there is an inexpensive burger joint we like to go to on occasion. It’s locally owned and budget friendly. What could be better? It will be our little celebration.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Doctor’s offices are known for their delays, long wait times, and impediments when trying to get things accomplished.  Well, adoption paper work is no different.  We are still being held up by our doctor’s office.  The RN said she would set a deadline for him to have the letters done by Friday (15th).  We were in hopes they would already be done last Friday (8th), but we are at his mercy and are just grateful he is will to do the letters for us.

I will fax our social worker and mail our agency our medical letters as soon as we get them so they can update our home study.

Okay, I finally got through with someone at our doctor’s office to confirm out medical forms we need updated arrived.  I faxed them twice last week and finally gave in and mailed them Monday.  I don’t think the faxes ever went through, but they did receive what I mailed.  Yea! 

The doctor is out of the office today, but the nurse said she would try to get him to do them tomorrow and leave a note to call us as soon as they are ready.  If they finish them tomorrow I will drive over there, pick them up, and mail a copy to Holt that same day.  It’s a 30 minute drive one way, but it doesn’t matter.  We need these letters to continue the process.  We are at a standstill until we receive these, so I will risk life and limb to get them.  If he doesn’t get them done tomorrow we will have to have them mailed to us and it will be next week before we can get them sent to Holt.  Let’s pray he has a slow day at his doctor’s office, on a Friday, in the dead of winter, and has time to type them up for us…..it could happen.

It’s a chain reaction once we receive our medical:

Medical update-Home study update-I600A update-Dossier completion

Each one has to be completed before we can proceed with the next.  We are in hurry-up-and-wait mode!  That’s adoption world.  We are getting used to it and just doing what needs to be done and knowing it will all happen in God’s good time.

So far we have managed to get most of our dossier paper work completed.  Our fingerprints were done yesterday for the KBI background check and our Power of Attorney was mailed out to be state certified.  Now we wait. 

We are still waiting on our medical form update before our home study can be updated.  This is our main hold-up as of right now.  We need the home study to update our I600A, so this is a bit of a snag.  I’ve faxed it twice with no response, so I dropped hard copies in the mail Monday.  If we don’t get a reply by the end of the week our plan is to make new appointments with a PA we have seen before in a town nearby.

We spent the weekend priming and painting the nursery.  We used a low-odor, environmentally friendly primer and paint from Lowe’s.  We even looked at a few cribs here and there while we were out.  Randy thought they looked pretty cheap and wasn’t very impressed.  It’s hard to find anything made out of real wood anymore.  We will keep looking.  I don’t know if we will do a lot in the way of furniture.  We are going to try to stay on the low end spending-wise so we can save up for adoption expenses and travel.  We hope to buy second-hand when we’re able and only buy what we absolutely need.  For now we have a rocking chair, a few cloth storage totes for organizing the closet and changing area, and possibly a bookshelf.

Our paper work for our dossier is as complete as it can be until we receive our home study and can send off for our I600A update.  For now we are waiting on the medical forms and then the homestudy before we can move on.

Although our Nepal adoption didn’t work out that doesn’t mean we stopped trying.  We had started the process to foster-adopt through the US.  Something we weren’t altogether sure about, but wanted to get the required classes under our belt and see where it led.  So far it hasn’t been very fruitful, but we intend to try to get all the classes taken so we will be ready on down the road to possibly adopt through the US foster care system.

In the meantime, we contacted Holt to discuss the possibility of reopening our file and updating all our paper work for an adoption from Ethiopia.  This was our initial desire, but too many things got in the way of our decision-making.  Too many things clouded our thoughts, our plans, and our lives for us to see this is where we needed to be all along.  When I ran the idea by Randy I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be….he simply said “okay.”  I asked if he was sure.  There was no hesitation.  This was the right decision for us.  We made the agreement to not look at the financial part of it, not get frustrated when things get tough, and no matter what we will get through it this time.  We have been saving, we have been on a tight budget, and we will save more during the waiting process.  Travel costs are less to and within Ethiopia and the travel time is less (10 days as opposed to 3-4 weeks).  We will speak to our vet about kenneling our dogs and have a backup vet if the first falls through.  We will discuss a detox program with our kinesiologist for when we return to help with all the vaccinations required for us and our baby.  All of the things we had reservations about before…we will adjust, we will plan for, we will deal with.  It’s part of the process, not something to deter us from doing what we are led to do.

I will call Holt this afternoon to let them know we are sure and want to proceed.  We have to update quite a bit of our paper work, redo our KBI fingerprinting and background check, have new medical exams, and a few other things.  However, this is old hat to us!

I’m buying paint Friday so we can continue finishing the baby’s room.  It had been put on hold along with everything else until we knew what was going to happen.  It is a long way from complete, but so is our adoption.  We have no furniture except a beautiful rocking chair passed down from Randy’s grandma.  The rest of the furniture taking up space in there will just have to find a new home here or elsewhere.  We are excited!  We are ready!  Say a little prayer this time is meant to be.

**We aren’t telling mom and dad yet.  We want a referral photo in hand before we break the news to them we will be leaving for 10 days, and they are in charge of our farm!

Just thought I would let those of you know who don’t already.  We are putting our adoption on hold.  There are numerous reasons for doing so, but the big one that got the ball rolling was the adoption tax credit not being renewed at the full amount.  This credit has been around for years, and even though we knew this was a possibility we forged ahead anyway.  Although we didn’t technically need it for the initial adoption, we were hoping it would help us with our second international adoption especially since we would only have one income the second time around.

Second, we really want to pay our mortgage off and become debt free.  As long as I keep working we have the possibility of making this happen in three years.  I don’t know if I can hold out three years to start our family, but we are going to give it a go.

There were little details along the way contributing to our final decision to put it on hold.  The travel time was a bit longer than we had anticipated, and my parents were not overly enthusiastic about watching our farm for that long regardless of the reason.  There were some expenses that popped up for once we were in Nepal that we hadn’t accounted for.  The vaccination list was also a huge, disturbing factor that played heavily into our decision. 

In the end, we decided to put things on hold and see where we are in a couple of years.  The economy is so scary right now.  The health care uncertainty is scary.  The list goes on and on. 

We are going over our options and patiently waiting for the answers we need to make this decision and move on to the next part of our lives. 

We would like to thank everyone for their support while we are going through this process and to our references for doing paperwork after paperwork to appease the agencies.