I'd say that this is the start of our adoption journey, but it isn't really. Hubby and I have been talking about adoption for several years. We knew I had fertility problems, and we did want to try to conceive, but we also hoped that our family would be built by both birth and adoption.
So here we are, with one child. M. is our biological daughter, the miracle baby we weren't sure we'd ever be able to have. She has brought immeasurable joy to our lives, and she was worth every difficult moment in the whole process of creating a life and bringing it into the world. We had talked at length about adopting, but when I became pregnant, we put that aside and focused on this tiny new little person in our midst.
We know we want a second child, and now that M is rapidly approaching her first birthday, we're talking seriously about how to grow our family. I had a very difficult pregnancy, with complications both for me and for our baby. While M is overall a pretty healthy little kid - few colds, no ear infections, no allergies so far - she did inherit some medical problems from me that will affect her for a very long time. We are not sure how comfortable we are with the risks to me and to our future child should we attempt another pregnancy.
That leads us back to adoption. We both still want to adopt, and we're planning to spend the next 6+ months figuring out what the heck we're doing and how to best do it. You see, adoption is expensive. VERY expensive. And since I'm a humble underpaid... okay UNpaid... stay at home mom, we don't exactly have $20,000 or more sitting around in a bank account ready to be spent on an adoption. We need time to save the money for the adoption, and frankly, we need to give M a little more time to grow up.
So here is our plan:
*For the rest of 2007, we plan to read and research, talk to agencies and adoptive families, and try to figure out from where we'd like to adopt. We also plan to put away as much as we can towards our future adoption costs.
*In early 2008, we plan to narrow down our list of agencies and country programs and make a final choice.
*By February or March of 2008, we plan to submit our agency application and begin the adoption process.
This timeline works quite nicely for us because by the time all of our paperwork is gathered, notarized, certified, authenticated, translated and shipped off to wherever it needs to go, M will be two years old, and I will be 30. That 30 part is key, since China is one of the countries we're considering. They require both adoptive parents to be 30 or older when their paperwork is submitted.
I have so many thoughts swimming around in my head about this adoption and our plans for our family. I'm happy to have a place to actually jot them all down and gather my thoughts into some sort of coherent form. Perhaps this blog will become a place for me to vent about the adoption process. Perhaps it can be used as a tool to provide information to our families and keep them updated on our progress. I haven't decided yet. Either way, stick around. It's going to be a long ride.