It's been awhile! Guess you are wondering why the lack of posts. Well, we were stuck for awhile. Deciding on the country from which to adopt has by far been one of the toughest decisions we've ever made.
For us, the decision came down to two countries...Ethiopia and the United States. There were pros and cons to each and both carried different risks. We had a strong pull to Ethiopia but some of the main cons were the probability of malnutrition, the need to leave the country without Hayden twice (Ethiopia now requires adoptive parents make 2 trips...the first to meet your child and go before the courts, the second to bring your child home (usually a couple of months after the first trip)), and the effects of welcoming a baby of a different race into a predominantly Caucasian society. We struggled with the idea of leaving the country without Hayden especially with both of us being on the same airplane. And, sadly, we also worried about others accepting a child of a different race. Todd and I felt that we could handle any discrimination but had to think of the best interest of the child as well. As for the US, we really worried about the birth mother changing her mind which is the case 75% of the time or that there would be a sticky legal situation such as another father coming forward down the road claiming paternity. And, we also thought about how it would be to have a child who might want to meet his/her birth parents down the road.
Our passion for adoption was not in question, but making the decision about which country was very painful. The only way I can describe the feeling is this...I felt like we were on a cliff, ready to jump into the water. We knew we wanted to jump but for some reason we just couldn't make ourselves take that leap. It was a feeling of just wishing someone would come along and give us that push. We discussed and prayed about our decision for months. We didn't really feel God pushing us in either direction so that made it even more difficult.
But, we have finally come to a decision. We are going to adopt domestically! It really came down to the fact that if we adopted domestically we could do it as a family. Hayden will be able to travel with us and this gives us much more peace of mind. We are so excited to move forward in the process now and are so glad to have the turmoil over the decision behind us. There will never be a risk-free adoption, but we plan to just take each day as it comes. We know that we may face hardships during this process, but we also know that God will be with us as we face them. We look forward to seeing the blessings along the way.
Now that we've come to a decision, our next step is to have FBI fingerprints made. We will be traveling to our state police department in Middletown, Connecticut in the next week or so to be fingerprinted. We will then have to mail them to the FBI and await our completed card. It is about a 10 week wait so during those weeks we will be completing the required education courses regarding adoption, creating a scrapbook for the placing agency to use to share our life with the birth mothers, and writing our "Dear, Birth Mother" letter. We'll update more on these items as they happen.
We will continue to post updates as we go and hopefully there will be no more absences from us :)
