Updates

The hotline for our agency was just updated and they are still saying it is approximately a 12 month wait for a referral for an infant. They also said that things like age, health of the baby and a whole host of other factors could influence how fast you get a referral.

So that being said we have to update our homestudy so we could make some changes to the age of the child we would accept or the health of the child. We have talked at length about this and we are sticking with 0-12 months for an infant or twins. I am not ready to bring home a toddler and if we change to siblings we would need to be open to 0-4years and we can't specify ages within that range. So we could get an infant and a 2 year old or we could get a 2 year and a 4 year old. That is not where my heart is. I want to do the whole baby thing at least once. We are planning to adopt again so we will reevaluate at that time the right thing for our family. As for the health questionnaire we filled out, we are comfortable with how we filled it out the first time and will not make changes. For our second adoption, would we fill it our differently, maybe. We have learned a lot already and hope to learn more. I am not going to go into detail about the health questionnaire as I feel it is a private family matter. I will say though it was a VERY difficult form to fill out.

Also on the hotline we learned that the fee for the Hossana trip has been reduced. The Hossana trip is our chance to meet our little one's birth family or care giver. It will be truly amazing and emotional I am sure. They used to have private drivers for each family and now they have a bus so all the families go together. I think there are pros and cons to private cars versus the bus but either way I will be there. The current fee for this trip is $125 per adult. It used to be $350 per family.

There is A LOT of debate about the cost of this trip and why is it so high since it is one bus and the fee is paid once we are in Ethiopia and apparently there isn't a detailed breakdown of how every dime of that money is spent. Here is what I think. The money we are told is to provide for transportation for the birth family, food and accommodations as necessary and then any other expenses for gas, staffing, etc. I am fine with that answer. I trust my agency and don't think there is anything shady going on. Other may disagree. For me personally, I would pay 10 times that amount to be able for even only a few minutes spend time with my little ones family. To have those pictures and that conversation and to be able to share that with our baby is priceless to me. This is one of the many reasons we selected our agency. I never in a million years would have dreamed this would be possible in international adoption.

That being said there is a chance that no one would show up for this meeting so I have to prepare myself for that. We still will have the life book and DVD which should have some pictures and descriptions of the birth family and where they lived.