What Does it Take to Adopt a Baby in this Province?

Patience. Patience. More Patience. Some dollars to throw at the problem. Oh yeah, and patience.

Our journey to adopt began before we even had the Gaffer. One very short-sighted and pessimistic gynecologist told me I would never, under any circumstances conceive, and if I did manage to do so,  a fetus would never develop in my damaged uterus.

Choosing not to believe him, we began the infertility trail. But I couldn’t put all my eggs in one basket, so we also began the adoption process.

At the time we decided to go the private domestic route.  This, the fourth child to bless our home, would already be different from the other three in that he/she would not be the biological child of Mr. Husband and his ex-wife. Our baby would not look like the others, go back and forth between houses like the others and would have a different mother than the others, so we decided that through domestic adoption, we may adopt a baby who at least was born in the same country as the others.

Just as our homestudy was finished, my body did the "impossible" and The Gaffer was conceived.

Her traumatic birth was a blessing of modern medicine and provincial health care, but also ensured that she would be my one and only biological child. By the time she was 6 months, I knew she may be the only one to come from my body, but she couldn’t possibly be the only baby I ever raised.  It took me 6 months to raise the subject with Mr. Husband, but by the time The Gaffer was 1, he was just as ready to add once more to our family.

This time, our minds were more open, our concept of family even wider and we decided to pursue international adoption.  That was 3 years ago…

• We were not eligible for China, because Mr. Husband has 4 biological children, so we applied for Korea. 
• Three months into the Korean application process, we got a phone call informing us that Mr. Husband was about to age us out of the program at his next birthday (45) and we had to withdraw
• Vietnam was recommended to us, so we began the application process, even though the country had been closed for international adoption for 10 years. The programme eventually re-opened, but became flooded with applications and then closed again with our application still in Canada
• disillusioned with international, we switched our focus to domestic
• for domestic it is suggested that you register with as many agencies and licensees as possible
• we registered with two who were not optimistic with our ability to be successful – apparently mothers who choose not to parent are becoming less and less in number and those who do choose adoption for their babies prefer younger families with less children
• we tried to apply for two other agencies who required weekend long courses before they would accept our application
• in June we applied for the course, changed our weekends with the kids, found care for the Gaffer, canceled Friday afternoon work commitments and found out two days before the course that they had made a mistake and over-subscribed and they had no room for us
• and no more courses were going to be offered because the law was going to change January ’08
• I cried, cried, and cried some more…the director of the course-canceling agency suggested that international adoption may suit our family better and suggested a new agency
• Why not?
• We submitted our documents and received provincial approval to go ahead, just as all our documents necessary for shipment overseas expired and we had to start again
• new interpol checks, new police checks, new physicals and HIV tests, new bank statements and employment notices, new certifications of marriage certificates, passports and birth certificates
• it is January, we are missing one document…Mr. Husband’s birth certificate…which we seem to have lost in the last three years of document hell

Meanwhile….girls have abortions, babies are left in stairwells, seemingly psychotic crazed media favourites parade their fertility and children lay dying of AIDS, poverty and dehydration all over the world.

All I have left is patience.  Patience and that tingly feeling that all will be well. Just one more hump and all will be well. I have been saying that for the last two years, but this time I am starting to believe it.