Where our Journey Began...

Jim and I started down the path of adoption about 1 year ago in the summer of 2006. We had tried various infertility treatments over the period of two years which culminated in a single attempt to conceive via invitro-fertilization. It was during this last procedure that Jim and I couldn’t help but ask ourselves why we would go through this intensive and expensive process when we only had a 30% likelihood of success when adoption was an option. When we failed to conceive and after some period of soul-searching, we concluded that adoption was the right choice for us.

Just deciding to adopt is a far stretch from actually doing so. While we had become experts at infertility – follicle production, viability of eggs, motility of sperm, injections, gonadotropin, etc – we were complete novices when it came to adoption. Even though Jim himself was adopted, the process of adopting had changed substantially from the time Jim’s parents adopted he and his siblings. There were closed, semi-open, open, and international adoption options. We read up on each, talked with various people we encountered who had recently adopted a child, talked with various agencies and finally elected to work with Caring Adoptions, an agency managed by a contact from our church, who seemed to apply a very practical, no-nonsense approach and had experience with domestic and international adoption which we valued since we were still struggling to decide which path to take.

We completed all of our paperwork for Caring Adoptions over the course of the fall and submitted our dossier to Caring Adoptions at the beginning of January. We then waited for our home study to be scheduled and focused our energy on scouring every nook and cranny of our home. My Christmas presents that I had asked Santa for – a Miele vacuum and a Hoover steam cleaner – came in very handy! We purchased fire escape ladders for the upstairs bedroom, fire extinguishers, cabinet locks, door knob protectors and socket protectors, assembled John and Stephanie’s crib and changing station – the whole nine yards - to illustrate that we were “ready.” I had members of my team from work come to my house over the weekend to practice ringing the doorbell and answering the door in such a manner that the dogs would refrain from their usual naughty behavior of trying to bust through the door to greet our guests.

Amazingly, the dogs were on their best behavior. I was just returning from a brief walk to relieve some of their energy to find that our social worker had already arrived and Jim was doing his utmost to play the part of host and offer a drink and cookie. Over the course of the introductions, we learned that she had been conducting home studies for quite some time and had even conducted home studies for Hope Cottage, the agency in Dallas from which Jim and his brother and sister were adopted. More on that later…

Consistent with the agency she represented, she applied a no-nonsense approach to the whole interview. She immediately started in to the questions and it quickly became apparent what the differences were between Jim and I. I gave lengthy, introspective responses to the questions while Jim pretty much stated the obvious – I think she was amused, as were we. She asked us to describe ourselves, what we loved about one another (which I couldn’t wait to hear Jim’s answer since he doesn’t often reveal these things!), how our parents raised us, what we planned to do differently from how our parents raised us, how we expected to talk about adoption with our children, the approach we expected to take to punishment and other questions.

At the conclusion of our interview, we took a tour of the house. Fortunately for us, she chose not to investigate the garage, I breathed a sigh of relief because it was still pretty messy. Then she basically packed up her things and started to head out… Jim and I looked at one another and then rushed to ask, “Well, how did we do? Did we pass?” and she quickly responded with a little surprise and humor, “You got and A+!”

January led to February and we were anxious to make progress. We had to make a decision. At a certain point, you reach a fork in the road and have to decide domestic or international, and if international, which country because the process is different for each one. We wanted to adopt internationally because we weren’t comfortable with open adoptions and in the US, the majority of domestic adoptions are open. We thought about China – but the process was taking 18 to 24 months from the time of referral – too long for us. We thought about Russia, but the program there was unstable, all the agencies in the US had recently been de-listed and were required to re-certify themselves. We thought about Guatemala, which really appealed to me because of the foster care system which typically provides better care than institutional childcare, the shorter time frame from the time of referral until the time you bring your child home, the proximity of Guatemala to Houston allowing more opportunity for return visits and the opportunity to visit your child while they are in foster care until such time that the process has been successfully completed and they are ready to come home with you. And to top it off, the idea of Guatemala and what I perceived to be the warmth of the culture just appealed to me.

We had basically decided on Guatemala when we learned that the US Embassy had issued warnings about concerns about ethical practices around how children are obtained that are available for adoption. At this point, we basically gave up on the international front and started down the path of domestic adoption. In domestic adoption, the birth-mother chooses the family for her child based on her review of a picture book that each family prepares. Being the perfectionist that I am, I set out to create the ultimate birth-mother book. This took quite some time sorting through thousands of pictures and selecting just a few and then impossibly, trying to squeeze a lifetime into a few pages of 8 ½ by 11 sheets of paper. Finally, in April our birthmother book was ready for review. Our first opportunity came late in April. A birthmother had narrowed down her choice to three books; ours was one of the three. Ultimately, she selected another family.

While the outcome of this first review was disappointing, we were encouraged that eventually, the process of trying to become a parent would end and we ultimately shift our focus to being a parent.

Now that we had completed all the necessary steps to make ourselves eligible for domestic adoption, we reached out again to our agency and asked them to advise us on the international front as we still considered this our preferred path, we were simply confused by what was and what was not available. On May 18th, Jim and I arrived at Caring Adoptions for a meeting where we expected to discuss our options internationally, review the various features and requirements of the adoption programs of different countries and expected to use this information to consider which country we wanted to pursue. I remember being quite emotional on my way to the agency that day, thinking, that I really didn’t want to do anymore research or develop anymore expertise in how to adopt, I just wanted to move past the process and focus on how to parent.

Amazingly, when we arrived at the agency, Pat showed us three pictures of children who were available “now” just waiting for families….

It was a dream come true. We were shown three pictures, one of a boy who was 6 months old, another a baby who was only 15 days old and finally, the picture that touched our hearts of Vilma and Nelson, a sister and brother three and a half and a year and a half old. In less than 6 hours, we made our decision. The children who had touched our hearts – the son and daughter we always wanted – we committed ourselves to them.

I busied myself that weekend buying Spanish language CD’s, Spanish and English language books but the excitement quickly settled as we began to comprehend the volume of additional documentation required by Guatemala. Initially, we thought the documentation we had prepared for Caring Adoptions would meet at least some of the requirements for Guatemalan adoption. We ultimately learned that none of our documentation had been prepared to meet the Guatemalan requirements. At this point, a very focused effort began to grind through all the documentation requirements which included physical medical examinations, homeland security clearance by the FBI, local police and city police clearance, original birth and marriage certificates, clearance by immigration to initiate immigration of an orphan, certificates of profession and income, letters of reference, legal witness declarations, copies of passports… this list went on and on. All documents needed to be notarized, sent to the secretary of state from the state in which the document originated to be certified and sent to the Guatemalan consulate to be authenticated and from there, documents were sent to our agency who reviewed them and sent them to Guatemala to be translated.

We encountered some set backs and surprises. We learned that Caring Adoptions hadn’t reviewed the documents we had submitted in January and, in order to complete our homestudy, required some additional documents including completion of a 9-hour CPR course, delaying the completion of our homestudy. We learned that International Family Services would have conducted our homestudy at no additional cost based on the completion of the documents we prepared for our Guatemalan dossier, so we could have saved ourselves time and money had we better understood the process. The mailing and receipt of our completed homestudy was delayed by three weeks because of a change in personnel at International Family Services that hadn’t been communicated to us or to Caring Adoptions. And, most importantly and heart wrenching, we learned the process would not likely be completed until next summer when we had thought we would be bringing our children home in the fall.

The intensity of the period of time in which we tried to pull our documentation together as quickly as possible, in conjunction with some of the frustrations we encountered with misinformation and poor communication did take a toll on our spirits. But a new ray of hope arrived with news that we were finally able to travel and meet our children.

The conditions that had to be met that would allow us to travel were unclear. Finally, Jim sent a message to our agency contact indicating that we had booked our travel and needed to know how we could contact our lawyer in Guatemala. Amazingly, she said “Great, I’ll make all the arrangements for you.” With that response in hand, we scheduled our flight and began preparations for our trip.