We are very excited to share some family news. We've begun a third adoption! This time we are adopting from Haiti! Are you surprised? So are we! This was not our plan. We did not pursue this, but feel it's pursued us. To explain the third adoption, here are some updates on the first and second adoptions.
First adoption. In April I hired a searcher to find Bear's birth family. I did this with a group of families with children who come from the same region of Ethiopia. In May, he found them. We now have some answers to questions that we have wondered since Bear's referral. I am deeply grateful to have made contact, and finally pass along the message that he is a happy, healthy, cherished son. The need to communicate this to her is something that has literally burned on my heart since he was placed in my arms. I treasure the bits and pieces of his early story that we learned. We have not decided how we will share the information or the photos with Bear, but we know we have them when he is ready. In a strange way, making contact with his birth mother released a sense of undone-ness I've had about Ethiopia.
I know she is alright, and she knows he is alright. We've established a plan for periodic, ongoing communication. There is a freedom in this and a little bit of closure.
Second adoption. We received May numbers but I never posted them. May was a month of emotional processing for Dodd and for me. At the same time that I was searching for Bear's family, there was discouraging news coming from our agency about the Ethiopia program. As a result of complicated dynamics in Ethiopia, our agency closed the program to new families, discontinued the wait list, laid off several employees in the US, and just yesterday we learned that the director of the Ethiopia program, Almaz, whom we respect and one of the most important factors in our decision to adopt from Hannah's Hope again, has chosen to leave. They are preparing wait list families for a 3-4 year wait. The longer wait is being attributed to troubling issues aground in Ethiopia. For the first time I was hearing official word, not just speculation, that there are more families looking to adopt infants than there are infants to adopt. While we long with all our hearts for another child, we don't want to contribute to a supply and demand situation involving children. This does not mean there aren't infants in Ethiopia who legitimately need families, but there are fewer who are adoptable and "paper ready." We have been wondering for some time where this leaves us. With Bear's 4th birthday approaching, our desire to bring home a next child has intensified knowing that Bear is growing up without a sibling, and the gap between him and baby brother/baby sister is widening.
Third adoption. Last year our agency contacted us about a pilot program they were beginning in Haiti. Days after contacting us however, Haiti closed down adoptions and AGCI decided not to continue conversations with prospective families until they knew the status of the program. In April, they contacted us again to let us know the program was active again and they have waiting children. I called to find out more. I did this casually, knowing that we are grafted to Ethiopia. We've lived and breathed Ethiopia for the past 5 years and feel a strong sense of calling to bring home a brother or sister who shares Bear's heritage. But the dynamics I described above have been making us question whether we should open ourselves up to a new direction.
Reflecting now, Ethiopia has been a bridge to Haiti for our family. We have felt a distant connection to the country since Bear came home. He had been home less than two weeks when the 2010 earthquake struck the island. After being in Ethiopia just a few weeks earlier, holding our son finally, and seeing with our own eyes the devastation inflicted by poverty, we were very sensitive to the stories of children orphaned by the earthquake. At home, we were asked so many times by strangers we met at the store, at church, etc. if Bear was from Haiti. My OBGYN, originally from Haiti, spent months in country after the earthquake, caring for pregnant women and infants. She told me hard hard stories of mothers who had given up hope. She talked to me about adopting from Haiti at the time, but we had a brand new baby at home and could not. We made a small donation to an orphanage in Haiti that our Ethiopia travel friends, the Andersens, had a connection to. Since then, we've received updates a few times a year from the orphanage with photos of Haiti and all the children. Every once in a while, I've shared an update with Dodd, especially when a particular little face would get to me. Then one of us would ask the other, "What about Haiti?"
But we knew adopting from Haiti was not something either of us felt hardy enough for. In Haiti, it takes 1-3 years after referral to bring a child home. The years of waiting for Bear, before ever seeing his face, left me pretty fragile. The 3 months of waiting to bring him home after seeing his face were very difficult. The thought of waiting for a child years after knowing him or her seemed almost intolerable. In that time, your child is growing up in an orphanage or foster home. No parent wants this for their child, especially adoptive parents who have learned how critical attachment is in the first 36 months of life. However, as time has passed, I have grown stronger. And as Bear has gone from infant, to toddler, to little boy, I feel more confident in our parenting abilities. We are better educated and better equipped to parent a child coming from a difficult situation. We also learned about Rivers of Hope, AGCI's partner in country. Story after story about the exceptional love and care the children receive, and a woman who runs the home who reminds us a lot of Almaz, whose passion and professionalism we respect so much.
On a call, the AGCI case manager confirmed what I already knew. They are having a hard time finding interested families who meet Haiti's requirements for all the children they have at Rivers of Hope. The requirements are that both parents are at least 35 years old (hate to admit that we more than qualify), have been married at least 10 years (going on 17 should suffice), and have no biological children in the home (got that covered). Although dispensations are commonly given for families with bio children, it appears we have an ideal family profile. (I'm sure that makes some of the people who know us well laugh out loud.)
The case manager also explained that there is no wait list. AGCI cannot pre-refer a child, but they won't accept a new family into the program if there is not a child already at Rivers of Hope who can be referred to that family. Then we heard there are two infants in particular who could be waiting for some time before finding families. I could hardly choke words out of my mouth to respond to this new information on the phone call. While we are waiting in line for an undetermined amount of time for a child in Ethiopia where there are tons of loving families ready to adopt, there are two babies in Haiti waiting and not enough families who meet the requirements to be their parents. But we meet the requirements. Could we really walk away? I was compelled but knew Dodd would never be comfortable with the 1-3 years. We didn't talk about it after the call. However, unbeknownst to me, he was processing. And unbeknownst to Dodd, I was researching my heart out, thanks to some fantastic resources other Ethiopia travel friends, the Boyces, referred me to. It was a week later, when I came home from a business trip, that I asked him what he was thinking. His response floored me. "I'm thinking we should do it!" All I could say was "Really?" And he responded with a steady, gravity filled "Yes!" Then in Dodd's typical way, he gave me several, well thought out, really sound reasons that we should. Then, he quietly left the room. He came back with tears in his eyes and showed me a picture that he'd spent a lot of time looking at while I was gone. It was a baby boy at Rivers of Hope. Dodd went to the agency's website while I was away and this little one got him. My husband who does not make emotional decisions, fell in love. To roughly paraphrase Nelson Mandela, the head and the heart are a formidable combination. I knew at that moment that we were in, and we weren't going back.
So it is with excitement that we begin a third journey to a child. This time it really feels like we are being called to a child. We won't know anything about him (or her) for several months, but we know he's there, and he's waiting. I can emotionally feel his presence out there! We are encouraged that Bear can start his relationship soon with his baby brother/baby sister, albeit a long distance relationship. We plan to take advantage of the waiting time by traveling as often as the budget will allow to visit. We are also mentally preparing ourselves for the ups and downs, frustrations and unknowns that come with being in a pilot program. And we aren't giving up on Ethiopia. We are keeping our Ethiopian adoption active and using the waiting time to see what reforms and changes occur in the coming months and years. I have been working like crazy to get a third dossier and home study completed and have all but one document ready to go. I hope to have dossier and home study submitted, translated and ready to send to Haiti in September. Knowing there is a specific little one waiting provides a lot of motivation to move fast!
If you've read this far, thank you. If you are one of the handful of people praying us through the last few months, thank you. Especially to my sister, Mary Beth, thank you for all your prayers! We feel really good about this, and have had several little affirmations for the decision since we made it. We view this as answered prayer. I am going to attempt to share a lot of details about the process as we go just in case there are others who may be considering??
