Sunday, September 23, 2007

Why China?

Once we knew we were going to adopt, we had to figure out where our child would come from.

We never really considered domestic adoption for serveral reasons. Not being infertile or childless, there were no guarantees that we could adopt easily. We also didn't feel that we had the desire or ability to deal with the potential issues of an open adoption in the U.S.

Of possible countries, a lot of them were quickly eliminated for various reasons. Either we didn't qualify for some reason (already having kids, etc.), the travel requirements were too much for us with small kids, or it was too expensive (costs ranged from under $20,000 to over $40,000).

Really, it came down to China pretty fast for us. And we loved the agency that we found to work with, CCAI. Our timing, though, was not the best.

Right as we were making this decision in December, China issued new guidelines for adoptive parents, eliminating about one third of the people normally able to adopt from there. They gave anyone who would be eliminated until early 2007 to finish their paperwork and have one last chance to adopt from China.

That put us right behind a HUGE rush to adopt from China, and the potential wait time grew longer and longer. Now it is almost two years, and the clock doesn't even start ticking for you until you get your dossier paper work in, something we were about to find out takes a lot of patience in itself.

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