Our decision to adopt!

July 22 2006

At Raven's preschool they asked us if we were adopting. They said Raven had told them that we are adopting a baby girl so she will have a little sister. I thought this was funny because I've always wanted to adopt and honestly we went through infertility treatments with both Ryker and Raven and before Raven I looked very strongly at adopting from China or Cambodia. But the IVF procedure worked and we were blessed with our kids! Then a friend adopted from Korea and that got me thinking again. Now our Raven seems to know something we didn't know! So I prayed for a long time and then started researching online. I prayed that either Jeff would come on board with the idea or I would lose the urge. Two equal hearts! So in January of 2006 Jeff said we would look into our options in Feb. I never thought he'd come on board. BUT He decided we would move forward and decided on China. I was SO excited! I was READY to get it started! I had researched so much already and knew what China agency we would go with. They ONLY did China adoptions and were based in CO. I set up the homestudy interviews. We had to have references, physicals and write biographys on our lives starting from our childhood! After starting the process the adoptions from China started getting really backlogged. There was a huge wait. They estimated it to be longer then 2 years for a referral. Vietnam recently reopened back up for adoptions after being shut down for 2 years. I found many people online and learned a lot about the country. So we switched our plans and decided on Vietnam. We also switched agencies to another that did worked with only Vietnam. I was upset when hubby's Dr. wouldn't sign a simple 2-sentence paper that said he was mentally and physically healthy and able to adopt. He wanted him to go back in for a physical. I told the nurse he just had a full physical for his scuba diving certification, but she didn't have any record of it! So it would be 2-months before he could get in for his appointment. I freaked! I told her very calmly that my dr. after only seeing me 1-time EVER signed my paper, and my hubby goes in to see his all the time and I hope they feel good in their hearts that they would be holding us up on getting our baby girl by over 2-months! And that it was silly to not sign something saying hubby was able to adopt. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I got it signed by a different dr. he has seen in the past. Now I have to fax it to our social worker for the homestudy and she will send it to my agency for review then on to the state. Then we wait for our finger print appointments and a week or so after that our dossier will get sent to our agency for authentication and translation. Then we wait for our baby girl to get referred to us. Lots of unknowns right now but we can't wait to see the girl God chose for us!