March 2011

March 2011

March was a month of changes in thinking and planning a fun baby shower for a friend who had her little girl on April 20th! She's adorable! Anyways. . .

In my never ending adoption research, blog stalking and reading of posts from various adoption discussion boards, I came across this article. http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/gender/adoption/babybusiness.html

It was very thought provoking and strengthened my desire to adopt ethically. It was a problem I hadn't really been aware of before looking into adoption. This article about the corruption problem in Vietnam was also very good. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/07/anatomy_of_an_adoption_crisis

I had no worries about AGCI's program in Taiwan, or His Hands, another one we were looking at. Since they were both birth mother programs and we would be meeting the birth mother, there was little chance of having the "abandoned child" problems like in Vietnam. But, the mention of Thailand as an example of an ethically sound adoption process brought the country back to my mind. I realized I had dismissed it rather quickly, without proper research, just because one place said it could take longer. We had connections to Thailand, more than Taiwan, and I had no reason, other than selfish ones, to disregard it. I feared that my selfish reasons might be preventing me from following God's leading.

So I began to research Thailand. I requested information from two of the agencies with Thailand programs that I had heard the best things about, Holt being one of them. I learned that Holt's program was currently closed and they anticipated opening in the summer or later. We didn't qualify for the other agency. I told Robby about the Thailand program, and after reading it over, he said he would be happy with Holt's program.

During all this painful soul searching, I also requested an application from His Hands. This is where we had another near miss. I had originally requested information and an application from them in January, but after a couple of emails never got anything back. My wonderful adoption blog friend suggested I check out His Hands again, since it looked like AGCI was going to be a while and she was planning to use His Hands for her adoption. So I emailed them again, only to learn that they were now full and could only put us on their waiting list. We were 12th on the list. If I had followed up sooner, we would have been able to get in while they were still open. According to their time frames, 12th meant maybe a year before we could even start with them. 

(Fortunately for my friend, they had gotten an application a while ago and were still able to get into the program)

So, at the end of March we had identified three programs that we were equally comfortable with and which were all equally not accepting applications. We decided whatever one opened first, which we didn't expect until summer, would probably be it. 

Next: April 2011