To continue with the back story...
Angry Driver and I decided, after many thoughtful discussions and hours of online research, that international adoption would be the best option for us. A brief inquiry of Professor Google revealed that our thriving metropolis, hereafter known as Blahtown, had an impressive total of 1 local adoption agency. Perhaps naively, we decided that a local agency would mean quick, personalized service with more accountability than some faceless national agency. Our rationale was something along the lines of this: if something goes horribly, horribly wrong, isn't it preferable to be able to march directly into an office and insist on a solution?
I filled out a preliminary online application in June of 2013, and we were quickly approved. I suspect that approval has more to do with a credit check than suitability to parent, but that would be pure speculation. Thanks to the internet, we were quickly set up with an online portal through which direct agency communication could occur. We read about various international adoption requirements, the myriad fees involved, and different country programs. The country was not too important to us since we had no clear mental picture of "our child's" ethnic background. The equation as we understood it was:
Family needs child + Child someplace in the world needs family = Instant happy family!
Here's how the process was going to play out, according to my mind:
1) select country from which to adopt
2) complete home study
3) agency matches us with a child.
4) we go get child
5) child becomes part of the family
6) live life
Those of you with even the most tenuous grasp of reality will recognize at this point that my understanding of adoption was So Adorable, in much the way that a raccoon trying to dislodge his head from a garbage can by crawling around with a garbage can on his head is So Adorable. To put it bluntly, I was an idiot. I didn't know what I didn't know. But, hey, remember Step 1? Step 1 was all about acknowledging the problem, and I was about to acknowledge my problem in a big way.
I'm the type of person who thinks long and hard about every potential decision. I obsessively research and consider various scenarios. Once I actually make a decision, though, I expect instant gratification. I thought long and hard about the IA process; ergo, the process would move quickly once the decision was made. I figured 3-6 months from start to finish, tops.
Here is a summary of how things actually go down:
1) Meet with social worker from Blahtown branch of agency. Be overwhelmed by the number of IA programs, the various program requirements, and the fees involved. Try to lighten mood by responding to the question, "What are you hoping for in an adopted child?" with "We would like to adopt a child who won't murder us in our sleep or torture our cats". Sit in uncomfortable silence while the social worker appears to consider whether or not we are seriously mentally ill.
2) Take 2 weeks to decide that China is the program for us. Tell ourselves that this decision is based on logic: China has a well-established, reputable, straightforward process and, since most children are institutionalized, they really do need families. Secretly wonder whether we chose China because we both know how to use chopsticks, China was often featured on the popular cable television show "Adoption Stories" and, well, things seemed to work out ok for those families, and because we had to pick someplace.
3) Spend the next 2 months filling out a formal application, various checklists, Openness Forms, and consent forms, and gathering documents. Briefly consider joining CIA since process probably involves less paperwork and fewer background checks. Briefly pause in the midst of the interminable process to appreciate the irony that we are paying someone thousands of dollars so that we can gather all this documentation ourselves.
4) Spend the next two months begging our friends, family members, physician, and my employer to give us letters of recommendation. Compile tax returns, bank statements, and proof of health, life, and disability insurance. Request (and pay for) background checks for every state in which either of us have lived since the age of 18. Try to recall every address we've ever had. Realize that Bedouin nomads probably had fewer addresses than we had during our college years. Enjoy it when our agency repeatedly reminds us that there are no guarantees that we will have a child at the end of the process.
5) Begin home study process. Pay $2500 up front. Spend most of process trying to track down Blahtown social worker, who is conveniently never available and doesn't answer the phone or emails.
6) Complete home study process. This is no small achievement since Bean makes every attempt to embarrass us as parents by passing gas and insisting on playing Angry Birds Star Wars on the tablet for two hours in exchange for good behavior. Who says you can't negotiate with terrorists?
7) Begin interminable wait for home study report to be written. Spend many enjoyable hours replaying every word Angry Driver and I uttered trying to determine whether or not we sound like good prospective adoptive parents. Pause at Christmas to learn that Blahtown social worker wants me to have a psychological assessment because I took an antidepressant while in college. Really? It was a public American university at the turn of the 21st century. Wouldn't it have been abnormal for me to not have taken Prozac? Listen to Angry Driver gloat that he doesn't have to have a psychological assessment. Enjoy some measure of satisfaction when I am able to wave the written document that declares me "sane" in Angry Driver's face.
8) Scour photo listings of Waiting Children looking for "our child". Horrify myself (and Angry Driver) when I discover exposé about crazy people advertising on the internet to take unwanted adoptees. Here, now you can be appalled as well:
Horrifying Crazy Adoption Rehoming People
9) Finally get completed home study approving our family to adopt 1 female child or 2 children, ages 0-48 months, from The People's Republic of China. Finalized home study arrives 7+ months after we filed our initial application with the adoption agency.
10) Make the exciting discovery that now we get to really begin the paperwork process. Or, as my new mentors on China Adopt Talk refer to it: "The Paperchase". Remember all those documents we gathered? The letters we requested? The forms we completed? Yeah, we get to do all of those things over again and pay even more fees!
I thought I told these people that I signed up for the 100 meter dash, not the 26.2 mile "fun run".
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