Our story so far...

We started this adoption journey about a year and a half ago, in April of 2006. Back then we were still trying to decide on international vs domestic adoption, what countries, etc. It seems like a really long time ago now!

We ultimately decided to adopt two children internationally. A lot of research, thought, and discussion led us to China. We applied to a great agency and began the daunting paperwork process, the interviews with our social worker, and all of the various gymnastics required to be approved to adopt from a foreign country. A few months later we were finally logged in.

Somewhere along the line we named our daughter-to-be from China. Here we’ll simply call her “C”. In all likelihood she won’t be born for some time, but she’s already a part of our lives.

As we went through the process, we watched the timeline to adopt from China grow longer and longer. By the time we were logged in, there were 25,000 families ahead of us by some estimates. This process is going to be much longer than anyone could have anticipated back when we first made our decision. From beginning to end this will very likely be a four year process!

We haven’t lost hope. In all likelihood C won’t be born for quite some time yet, but she’s real, to us at least, and we’ll go and get her as soon as we can.

However, nearly a year after our journey began, we started to realize that we could potentially adopt from another country that met all of our same requirements but could complete the process significantly before we brought C home. We re-opened the books on the process that led us to choose China in the first place, and learned as much as we could about what had changed in a year (a lot, as it turned out).

That search ultimately led us to choose Vietnam. And that will lead us to “E”.

We found another great agency and went through the whole life-under-a-microscope process again. It’s not so bad the second time around, especially since we knew more about what to expect.

Now as I write this our dossier has just arrived in Vietnam, hand carried by one of the heads of our agency, and the next step is translation. That will be a few weeks, we’ve been told, and then it’s off to the DIA and we’ll officially have a place on the waiting list. It shouldn’t be long after then that we’re going to be on our way to Vietnam to pick up E!

-G