I’ve been trying to do more adoption reading lately and Toddler Adoption: The Weaver’s Craft has been my book. It’s not likely we’ll be placed with a toddler, but our child will eventually be a toddler, so issues of toddler adoption still apply.

One section that seemed applicable is about dealing with a lack of reciprocation. It’s a reminder that adoption is not about rescuing a child. No matter their situation, that child has lost something:

Prospective parents need to consider whether their egos can handle unreciprocated love. As one mom lamented, “It was so hard for so long—I was so in love with her, and she was so not in love with me.” Friends and family members say naive things such as, “I bet Johnny is thrilled to be with you after living in an orphanage,” when, in fact, Johnny is violently rejecting Mom. This issue is discussed in Holly Van Gulden’s and Lisa Bartels-Rabb’s book, Real Parents, Real Children. They point out that the benefits of adoption for the child—having a family of his own, being rescued from an abusive home, or joining a family that can economically provide necessities, even luxuries the birth family never could—are so wonderful that we have difficulty understanding how an adopted child could be anything but happy. But the reality is that many adopted toddlers are anything but happy, some for quite a long time.

Parents of adopted toddlers should be able to depersonalize rejection, understand its origin, appreciate the honesty of it, and remain steadfast in their determination to connect with the rejecting child. They need to maintain a long-range perspective, rather than require immediate responsiveness from their child. It may take weeks, months or even years before their love is reciprocated. (page 41)

That last bit makes it sounds kind of depressing, though I included the second paragraph to give some sense of how we are supposed to respond. None of this may apply to us, but it’s helpful to know. Attachment is a real issue in adoption and helping a child grieve what they’ve lost is important. We can’t simply gloss over it.

Yesterday NPR interviewed Dorothy Bode, who has six adopted children in her transracial family and blogs about the accompanying issues and questions. The family moved from the white suburbs to the multi-racial inner-city to better accommodate their transracial family.

And as of last night we’re up to #33 on the unofficial list.

Stories like this aren’t what you want to hear when you’re about to adopt. Both Vietnam and Guatemala have halted all foreign adoptions (though the U.S. stopped Guatemala adoptions after April 1, so it’s not clear how new this news is). Ouch. It’s an effort to make sure children aren’t being stolen and mothers aren’t being coerced. It’s a good thing, but tell that to an adoptive parent who’s been waiting for over a year and has a picture of their referred child on their fridge, just waiting to bring the kid home.

Whenever people freak out at the incredible high cost of adoption, this is one of the reasons I point to. Making sure everything is above board and free from corruption is expensive. Putting protective layers of bureaucracy in place is never cheap.

This is also why we picked Ethiopia. The orphanage our child will come from was set up by our agency, an organization with more than 100 years of adoption experience around the world. They know what they’re doing, and the result is a top notch facility. There’s nothing shady going on in the back corner.

And by the way, we’re up to #38.

At a Cinco de Mayo part last weekend I talked to a couple who are the unofficial grandparents of a child adopted from Ethiopia. The child has a 13-year-old brother still in Ethiopia who the parents and working on adopting as well. When friends ask the mom if she knows what she’s getting into, she responds with, “No, I don’t know what I’m getting into. But I know it’s the right thing to get into.”

While that comment rings especially true with adoption, I think it’s often true in a broader sense. How can we know what we’re getting into half the time? But if we’re getting into the right stuff, it doesn’t matter.

With our upcoming adoption we’ve been paying more and more attention to Ethiopia. So it’s been a bit discouraging to read about two bombings earlier this week and another one last month. And though I didn’t realize it at the time, it’s not a big surprise to see Ethiopia included in the countries facing civil unrest over food prices. They’re also facing drought. It kind of starts to pile up. We really have no idea how incredibly lucky and wealthy we are here in the U.S. (“While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs.” -World Bank Chairman Robert B. Zoellick).

But amidst all the worrisome news, I also came across Lauren’s blog. She spent about six months teaching in Ethiopia and gives a great glimpse into real life in Addis Ababa. That is until she survived a horrific car accident that broke a vertebrae in her back and had to be airlifted to an Israeli hospital. She’s now recovering in Duluth. She also used to attend my church (It’s somewhat morbidly ironic, but another young woman from my church with aspirations of working in Africa recently survived a horrific car accident and broke a vertebrae in her back). Despite her traumatic experience, Lauren’s stories of life in Ethiopia are captivating.

Then there’s Shaun Groves’ story of child sponsorship in Ethiopia. I’ve been unsure about child sponsorship, but it’s hard to argue with a story like that.

It’s just another example of adoption and Ethiopia connections coming out of the woodwork.

Lots of folks have been asking how our adoption process is going, and the answer is the same as it was two months ago: We’re waiting. We’ve been approved, we’ve filled out all the paperwork and we’re officially on the waiting list. We’re down to something like 4-7 months to go.

The only thing to do is wait.

And if it sounds like nothing has changed since my last adoption post, well, you’d be right. Except that we’re two weeks closer.

We haven’t talked about our adoption much lately. Mainly because we’re on the waiting list, and there’s not much to do other than wait. Yeah, we try to busy ourselves with other things, but we’re really just waiting. I think we’re down to 4-7 months now.

And since we haven’t been talking about it much lately, sometimes it’s easy to forget there’s going to be a new addition to our family soon. It’s easy to just settle into business as usual and not realize what kind of interruption that’s going to be. A very welcome interruption, but an interruption all the same.

Anyway, yesterday I was driving around town meeting friends and it gave me a needed opportunity to talk about our adoption. I found myself explaining that we’ve already paid more than $17,000 for the adoption–and I realized how insane that is. Where did that money come from?

Continue reading Still Waiting to Adopt and Where the Money Comes From →