And the Adoption Roller Coaster Begins…

In case you weren’t aware…adoption, especially international adoption, is a crazy roller coaster. Country and agency rules and regulations are always changing, time frames can never be counted on, you never know when you’ll get a referral, when you’ll be able to travel, there are a ton of different individuals and agencies that you are dealing with so there are many places for the ball to drop, and on and on it goes. We got our first taste of this roller coaster last weekend (we went to the beach for our anniversary and I just HAD to check my email on the beach…shouldn’t have done that). The email that I got from our agency told us that families interested in adopting two children must now put that they are open to children ages 9-42 months. 42! That is a huge difference from the 24 months we were previously requesting.

We had prayed so much about one child versus two children and really felt at peace with our decision to adopt two children but this new requirement through a wrench in our plans. When we were requesting two children closer in age I knew it would be more difficult to care for them and meet their unique needs coming from an orphanage, but I believed we could do it. When the children are closer in age they are following similar routines, interested in similar activities, etc. But if we were to get a referral for a 9 month old and a 4 year old…they have VERY different developmental needs. Speaking from an adoption professional perspective I honestly don’t know if any family could give each child exactly what they need when there is that big of an age difference. It’s different when you have a biological child, or another adopted child, that has been living with you for 4 years and then you bring another child into the home.

Soo we talked and prayed about it all weekend and decided to change our request to one child. It breaks my heart to do that but I really do feel like we will be better able to meet the needs of each child better separately. We still plan on adopting another child in a couple of years, but we believe this is the best choice for each child in light of the new requirements.

We had our last home study visit this weekend also and it went great! She is going to work on writing up the home study and should let us see the rough draft in a couple of weeks! We’re moving quickly!!