Changes

As many of you have heard, there were big announcements this week concerning adoptions from Ethiopia.

My week started with this notice from the US Department of State announcing a “change in processing time for adoption cases”. A knot of fear the size of a beach ball formed in my gut and I had a meltdown in the car on my way to the office when I called Mark to tell him about it. Tears and fears of the worst kind came pouring out, into and onto the phone, make-up running, sniffles and sobs. Poor Mark!

The next day our agency responded by saying that they don’t perceive this announcement to be a significant change for their families. They have always delivered gobs of paperwork to the US Embassy in Addis Ababa. The embassy has always had the option of investigating further if they found something suspect. This always had the potential to delay the children’s homecoming. We knew all of this but our agency is ethically rock solid, and we haven’t seen anyone experience this type of delay, so we weren’t too worried about it before. Now?  Now we want to believe that these new precautions will only impact agencies like this. The knot of fear in my gut only allows me to believe that time will tell.

Then, throwing salt on the wound, the federal courts in Ethiopia announced yesterday that adoptive parents will now have to travel to Addis Ababa to appear in person for their court date. Previously families only traveled one time, once the adoption was finalized. This goes into effect immediately for anyone who doesn't already have a court date, a.k.a us. Doesn't matter that we have been waiting 9 1/2 weeks for our court date. It is anticipated that this new trip will be for approximately 5 days, at which point families will have to return home without their children, and then go back another 3 to 6 weeks later for their embassy appointment. At that point the children will be allowed to enter the United States and we can bring them home. This is assuming the embassy notice mentioned above doesn’t impact anything.

Knot of fear #1, meet knot of fear #2!

What this means for us is that we will most likely (HOPEFULLY) be among the first to do this – the guinea pigs (I'm ok with that). It means significant added expense, and an unexpected week away from work (we'll manage somehow). It means we might have very little notice before getting on a plane to Ethiopia (I'm ok with that too). It means we will get to meet the boys weeks or even months sooner than expected (clearly I am ok with that!), but only for one day and then we will have to leave them in Ethiopia, return home, and wait some more (ugh, ugh, and ugh). It means this knot of fear in my stomach, now the size of one of those exercise balls at the gym, probably isn’t going to go away for a while.

It also, hopefully, means that disreputable agencies will be stopped. That child trafficking will be thwarted. That idiots people like this won’t have the chance to adopt children and then return them like a pair of shoes that didn’t fit. This needs to happen, and I think these new measures will help.

Side note: If you are reading this and thinking about adopting from anywhere, DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Find a reputable agency. Read about how hard the transition might be. Think about how much your life is going to change and whether you are ready for that. Find a support group. Understand that your child(ren) will very likely have some condition – medical, emotional, physical, developmental – that you were not aware of or prepared for! These risks apply to biological children too and just like biological children, adopted children are FOREVER. OK, stepping down off the soapbox...

You may have noticed that I am a glass half full kind of girl so here’s the good news...

1. WE GET TO MEET THE TWINS instead of moping around CT waiting to pass court! It’s not like that week was going to be a particularly productive one anyway!! And it might...oh, please, please please...happen soon.

2. WE GET TO EXPERIENCE ETHIOPIA, our beloved adopted country, TWICE! We were already planning to go over early to travel outside of Addis. Now we’ll just go to Addis twice instead. Mark has been sending me links all morning to the things he wants to do and see.

3. This change will also, hopefully, make things easier on the birth family, who wants to meet us and us them, but who would have had to make two long, arduous and heartbreaking trips to Addis – once for court and then again to meet us. Now we will all be there for the court date (hopefully!).

4. We are lucky. We can take the time off from work. We don’t have any children (YET) and the dogs will just have to suck it up at the kennel an extra week. Financially, well, I feel a little woozy about that one but we will figure it out. It won’t be easy but we can do it. We are now grateful (gasp) that we have had two years to save for the unexpected. My heart goes out to the families who will have more of a struggle with these things.

Honestly, I am excited - if I would let myself it would be bouncing off the walls excited - about getting on that plane and meeting those boys sooner than later. I would do it tomorrow if I could.

And finally, all of this really isn’t unexpected. Every time something about this hit the media or the big Ethiopian adoption Yahoo Group, I would get a little breathless with panic, because this is exactly the kind of thing that shut the doors to international adoption in Vietnam and Guatemala. I am grateful that measures are being put in place to manage the unethical practices and hopeful that it means adoptions in Ethiopia can continue for as long as there are children in need of homes.

So...deep breaths. No one said this was going to be easy and since when do Mark and I do things the easy way anyway?

Onward…

P.S. If you are reading this and thinking it would have been nice of me to call you with these developments, please forgive me. I am a little worn out by all of it and thought it would be better to give all the details here. Please don't worry about us. We're tougher than we look!