Well, some of you know this and some don't so sorry if this 'old' news...
When we submitted our application last October we had requested a girl. We figured since we can't choose or control ANYTHING else about adopting internationally maybe we can choose to have one boy and one girl. 'Cause of course it was almost beyond comprehension that we could love another boy as much as we love Alexander. But as anyone who has gone done this path knows, you really need to throw any expectations and control out the window and (with some exceptions of course) let it play out as it is meant to be.
Our agency was re-accredited to process adoptions in Russia in Dec 2007. They were basically without accreditation and unable to operate in some regions of Russia for about 1.5 years. When they restarted operations in Dec, well a lot of things had changed, some of which were not really evident until the past couple months. Most importantly for us, we had initially been told that the wait for a young girl referral was 4-8 months. Several families were on the 'list' ahead of us and when we submitted our dossier in March, we had expected a referral late summer/fall. Time passed by and checking in with our agency in May revealed that none of the 6+ families ahead of us had moved forward and no real time frame could be given anymore. More and more rumors came out on the adoption forums that the wait for infant girls was becoming incredibly long...15, 18 mo or 2 years were some of the estimates. However boy referrals were almost instantaneous depending on region and agency. The reason for this many say is that due to a new government financial incentive issued in 2007, increasing numbers of Russians are fostering and/or adopting children and prefer girls. Overall this is really how it should be so it's impossible to be angry at why things have changed. But we decided to wait it out a bit and see what happened over the next month or so with our agency.
But then we received some direct advice (no specifics here for a reason :)) about switching agencies pronto. So we made some calls to other agencies that were reported to still be issuing referrals for girls. However they really ended up saying the same thing as our agency...some even noted they were no longer accepting applications from families requesting girls. So the big decision came...do we wait indefinitely for a girl or switch to another boy? We called our agency and asked about our options. They basically informed us that the Ministry of Education rep was asking our agency if they had any families for boys but there were none. The wait for a referral would be non-existent and we would be first in line. Hmmm - we weren't so much interested in a superfast process but an indefinite wait with the possibility of being in the same place a year from now was not really an option. Why did we ("I") really want a girl in the first place? Wasn't the point of all this to be able to provide a home for a child in need and weren't the Russian boys in obvious need? We had already started talking to Alexander about a sibling...how long should we make him wait?
After some really long consideration we decided, and fairly easily too, that we would be thrilled to have another son and brother for Alexander. So we made the switch and are now in the process of slooooooooooowly updating some paperwork for this. The slowness is due to the fact that we are not ready to travel to Russia just yet!!! We really can't go any sooner than September thus our agency advised not updating and submitting the revised documents until early August. So we shall see how this all plays out!
I hope you haven't bought anything pink but if you have that's OK...I'm sure little Dmitry won't mind a ruffle or two for a while :)
When we submitted our application last October we had requested a girl. We figured since we can't choose or control ANYTHING else about adopting internationally maybe we can choose to have one boy and one girl. 'Cause of course it was almost beyond comprehension that we could love another boy as much as we love Alexander. But as anyone who has gone done this path knows, you really need to throw any expectations and control out the window and (with some exceptions of course) let it play out as it is meant to be.
Our agency was re-accredited to process adoptions in Russia in Dec 2007. They were basically without accreditation and unable to operate in some regions of Russia for about 1.5 years. When they restarted operations in Dec, well a lot of things had changed, some of which were not really evident until the past couple months. Most importantly for us, we had initially been told that the wait for a young girl referral was 4-8 months. Several families were on the 'list' ahead of us and when we submitted our dossier in March, we had expected a referral late summer/fall. Time passed by and checking in with our agency in May revealed that none of the 6+ families ahead of us had moved forward and no real time frame could be given anymore. More and more rumors came out on the adoption forums that the wait for infant girls was becoming incredibly long...15, 18 mo or 2 years were some of the estimates. However boy referrals were almost instantaneous depending on region and agency. The reason for this many say is that due to a new government financial incentive issued in 2007, increasing numbers of Russians are fostering and/or adopting children and prefer girls. Overall this is really how it should be so it's impossible to be angry at why things have changed. But we decided to wait it out a bit and see what happened over the next month or so with our agency.
But then we received some direct advice (no specifics here for a reason :)) about switching agencies pronto. So we made some calls to other agencies that were reported to still be issuing referrals for girls. However they really ended up saying the same thing as our agency...some even noted they were no longer accepting applications from families requesting girls. So the big decision came...do we wait indefinitely for a girl or switch to another boy? We called our agency and asked about our options. They basically informed us that the Ministry of Education rep was asking our agency if they had any families for boys but there were none. The wait for a referral would be non-existent and we would be first in line. Hmmm - we weren't so much interested in a superfast process but an indefinite wait with the possibility of being in the same place a year from now was not really an option. Why did we ("I") really want a girl in the first place? Wasn't the point of all this to be able to provide a home for a child in need and weren't the Russian boys in obvious need? We had already started talking to Alexander about a sibling...how long should we make him wait?
After some really long consideration we decided, and fairly easily too, that we would be thrilled to have another son and brother for Alexander. So we made the switch and are now in the process of slooooooooooowly updating some paperwork for this. The slowness is due to the fact that we are not ready to travel to Russia just yet!!! We really can't go any sooner than September thus our agency advised not updating and submitting the revised documents until early August. So we shall see how this all plays out!
I hope you haven't bought anything pink but if you have that's OK...I'm sure little Dmitry won't mind a ruffle or two for a while :)
2 comments:
so excited to be with you on your journey!
much love jen
So excited for you and your family Laura!!! Having two boys is sooo much fun. Can't wait to follow your journey to your second son.
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