What's up with the adoption?

A big fat NOTHING!!!! Yep, you read it, NOTHING! Not that it should be a surprise to anyone. When I last wrote about the adoption it was hopeful that an interim agreement would be reached and that some adoptions would be granted. It appears that the interim agreement will not be reached. My agency's contact in Vietnam mentioned that the VN government was going to close adoptions to ALL countries still doing adoptions in VN by May 2010. With that bit of news it doesn't appear that VN would attempt an agreement with any country. I believe the VN government votes on new laws in May 2010, so it is believed that these actions are in preparation for new adoption laws to be voted on and a central adoption authority to be set up. Happy for them. Sad for me. It does seem that nothing will happen until at least 2011.

With that sad. IF they do get a central authority (CA) up and running in time to beginning adoptions again at the start of 2011 my #74 place in line means diddly squat. Apparently in most countries that have a CA it's a first come first serve basis. For example, in China families get their dossiers logged in and that is their date. The CA then processes all dossiers logged in a date range. If your dossier is within that date range you are good to go however; if not then you must wait until the CA is done processing all the dossier within that date range and move on to the next date range. I think in China there can be 50+ dossiers logged within one weeks time. That's a lot of dossiers to go through, match to a child, check, double check then notify agencies of a match. It can take a month or more to process one weeks worth of dossiers. ARG!!!!!!!!

So, the hope would be, to be one of the first few families to get all your paperwork together and get it in. The problem with that is we have no idea what the paperwork requirements will be, so there is really no way to plan ahead the closer it gets to 2011 in order to be one of the first families logged in. I would hope that the VN government would let the agencies that will be working in VN know what the requirements will be therefore all 150+ of us out here waiting can get a jump on things. It took me a day and a half to get my dossier together the last time and send it off the VN Embassy for authentication. It will take a bit longer than that this next time because there will be two of us getting our individual stuff together and the paperwork proving that we are married plus the updated home study and immigration paperwork. Immigration paperwork can take up to 2 months to get.

It's nothing I should be worrying about right now with my races and the wedding coming up, but I've been waiting over 2 years and it's going to be another 2-3 years. It's hard NOT to think about it. In reality, right now, none of it seems worth the trouble and I'm seriously considering dropping from the program. I don't know what I'll do, if anything, to find another way of becoming a mom. I looked into surrogacy (my junk & Tim's junk), but damn it's expensive to use an agency. There is also domestic adoption, maybe I'm being selfish here, but I don't really want to have any contact with the birth parents. I know we have a choice, but I don't believe there are many birth parents out there willing to have a totally close adoption. I can deal with a yearly update sent through an intermediary since that is what is required from us by the VN government, but I think that is all I would want. I know, I'm selfish. Maybe I'm just not meant to be a mom to a two-legged person. I'm a pretty good mom to the four-legged kids I have, so maybe I should just stick with that.