Update on 'The Wait'

Sam and I had a phone meeting with our adoption agency last night. We wanted to discuss why we were still waiting and if it made sense for us to open our age range that we requested. We also wanted to confirm that they have inquired with their Ethiopian contacts that they have Sam and Christina’s file and that they are in fact working on it, and not that they are just inquiring about waiting families in general.

The conversation was…well…interesting. We spoke with the Director of the agency and she heads their Ethiopian program. Sam and I are both in sales, we talk sales, we ask the uncomfortable questions, we ask lots of questions, we control the conversation, we gain commitment, and we don’t give up easily. So I don’t think that she was prepared for all of questions and our persistence. Essentially we were trying to get information to make an informed decision on if we should open our criteria to 0-3 months to 0-6 months.

What we were able to find out is that with changes in May, The Department of State requires an orphan investigation to ensure that direct recruitment of children from birth parents by adoption service providers or their employees is not occurring. This is a good good thing. However, this new investigation and documentation process takes 2-3 months and needs to be completed before they can be matched with a family. The process usually starts at birth when the child is either abandoned or relinquished.

Are you people picking up with what I am throwing down here? If this process takes 2-3 months and we have requested a child between 0-3 months, there isn’t a lot of wiggle room here. The documentation process would have to be done within 2 months of their birth, they would also need to be transported from their care center to Toukoul in this time (and that is assuming Toukoul has openings to take in new children), they would need to be in good health and have all of their medical testing completed, and then finally matched. After thinking about it, it seems that this would be a lot to have happen in just 0-3 months of their life. Not to mention we have requested two children, one boy and one girl.

Our director would not say that changing our age range would to 0-6 months would speed up a referral, and she also wouldn’t confirm that by keeping it at 0-3 months would limit our opportunities to get a referral. It seemed pretty clear to us and that opening our range to 0-6 months can only help. The only reason we requested 0-3 months was because our agency assured us that this would not impact the ‘wait’. Certainly we would want the children as young as possible, but what is the difference if they are 3 months or 4.5 months? The goal is to be parents to healthy loving children. We requested today to change our referral age to 0-6 months. We also added that we were open to triplets.




Kidding about the triplets part.