Korea Adoption on Hold

Well as positive as Dan's medical future is the folks at the adoption agency have to be more careful. They reviewed the letter but unfortunately they cant let us start the process for at least 3-5 years!

The letter you submitted from Dan’s doctor was very helpful. I have consulted with our Ohio Program Administrator, Karen Ristow, as well as the Director of our agency, Lorene Cook. While we are very happy that Dan appears to be doing well, we are unable to proceed with your application at this time. Korea Social Service has a policy about delaying an adoption application for 3-5 years following treatment for a serious illness. I know this must be disappointing for you, but I’m sure that you understand that we must first consider the best interest of the children who we place for adoption. We would not want to have you proceed with a homestudy, only to find out later that you were not able to be approved in Korea . If Dan continues to remain healthy and he progresses as expected for the next few years, please feel free to contact us again to further discuss your plans to adopt.

So for now Korea adoption is off the table (could try another country or domestic, but they all might want to wait). This whole having a baby thing just gets more frustrating every turn it seems. First we cant get pregnant for 2 years, then we finally do and I miscarry, then we decided to start looking into adoption, then Dan gets cancer, then I need surgery for ovarian cysts, then adoption isn't an option for a couple years. And now we move on to in vitro. For those of you who watch Lost on TV, all I have running through my head is "your not meant to raise him" It seems that the island has a plan and no matter what you do it will turn out as intended. So I am not sure what the plan is (not something a goal setter and obsessive planner likes to admit) for my family. Maybe the in vitro will work, I think we have a decent percent chance at it. I preferred the 100% chance with adoption. That was just a waiting game but once you were in you were in. This in vitro experiment seems much more of a roller coaster ride with the added bonus of daily hormone shots to make the ride more fun!

OK, enough rambling from me. Hope everything is going well with everyone. My friend Wade was in a bad car accident a couple days ago, you can read all about it on his blog (link to the side). I am so glad that he is doing better and his upcoming move to Costa Rica sounds absolutely amazing. I wish him the best of luck!

5/6 Update

Update on all fronts!

Adoption - We started last week needing a letter from Dan's doctors saying he was in remission and could go ahead with adoption. We asked Dr. Wood first, 5 days later he called us and after talking for about 15 minutes said he didn't have time to write a letter. Pretty sure he could have just written the letter in that 15minutes, but oh well. I was pretty upset about this all weekend We on Monday we asked Dr. Lewis, who gladly did the letter for us!

Fertility - My follow up meeting with Dr. Grohl is May 22nd. This is a checkup meeting from my surgery. Hopefully at this point we will also talk about when we can start the IVF protocol.

Air Force - This Thursday Dan will have one of his major PhD milestones. He will met with his advisory committee and they will ask him questions about his proposal for research.

Also very soon it will be Lt. Dan no more - May 14th Dan gets a big promotion to Captain Dan!

Nursing - The unit where I work is finally going to computer charting. Because I am the only one under 50 who works there and I am pretty good with computers I have been made Super User for this new system. I get to help train my co-workers and be the contact person between my unit and the computer reps which is kinda cool for me. If I ever get tired of bedside nursing, something in medical information or computer charting actually sounds like fun to me.


So that's all for now, the next couple weeks should keep us all busy. My parents will be in Europe for a couple weeks on vacation, so I wish them a safe journey! Hope everything is going well with the people still following my blog!

Adoption Update

We have been moved to the homestudy list by our adoption agency(FAC)! However before we start the mountain of paperwork that needs to be done they need to receive a letter from Dr. Wood. FAC will require a detailed letter from Dan’s oncologist with specifics on his diagnosis, treatment received and his current condition. He should include future prognosis and any additional treatment he will need. The letter should also include a discussion about the stability of Dan’s health and his suitability to move forward with an adoption from a medical standpoint.

Once we get that letter from Dr. Wood's office and mail it to FAC we can see if they want to move forward or perhaps wait longer to start the paperwork. Hopefully they let us start on the paperwork. Between gathering all the documentation and meeting with the social worker the homestudy process usually takes about 3 months to complete.

We still plan on starting IVF as well but regardless of how that goes I want to adopt a child and provide a good home to someone who wouldn't otherwise. Who knows, maybe we will get lucky and within a couple years have 2 babies to love!

Adoption update

Just thought I would post about the FAC(Family adoption consultants) information meeting we went to last night run by our assigned social worker, Jodi. There were 16 people in attendance, much more than I thought would come. We talked for about 2 hours. Most of the topics were about Korea. A little bit about China & the Philippians which are 2 other countries FAC can place children from. Talked about the Hague treaty and how FAC is already met the compliance's for that.

Most questions were about the wait. We all wanted to hear how long this will take. Jodi's estimate is about 1.5 years from start to finish. ~3months from initial application to formal application, ~3 months to get your home study done, ~ 6 months from study done to referral and then another ~6 months from referral to placement. Course you never know when things will slow down or speed up. Said most kids are 9-24months at time of placement and most are little boys.

There was a couple there from Columbus to come in and show their adoption scrapbooks to us and explain how their adoption went. Their son, Drew, is 2 years old and has been home for like 7 months. He was pretty impressive little guy, very talkative and playful. In Korea the children are kept in foster homes with at most 1 other child so it seemed from my untrained eye that he was fine with all his milestones which is always a concern with international adoption.

FAC knows about Dan's cancer and the treatment that will be required. They said to just keep going ahead with waiting to get to the formal application stage. From there we can just drag our feet getting all the paperwork done for the home study until Dan's doctors can say that he is in remission and can write a medical clearance for him.

I know there is a child out there somewhere for us, maybe a year from now we will have him. By the time our adoption goes through our little boy and Heather's little boy Cole should be only ~ 6months apart in age so that should be fun!

What a week...

One week ago today, life was good. Just had a wonderful Christmas with Heather, Jeff, Cole and Abby. But Dan was having some pain in his groin, thought maybe he had a hernia. He made an appointment to see his PCM Friday morning at 8:00. By noon he still wasn't back and then around 1pm he called me with horrible news. He has testicular cancer, he was to have surgery the following Monday 12/31 and he was scared by how fast the doctors were rushing him around to tests. Just like that, my world felt like it flipped upside down. Thankfully Kathy, Dan's mom, was able to come up for a couple days and help out with both of us and around the house.

So now we are one week out from this news. We are both mentally and physically exhausted. I don't know if it was related to the news or just bad timing but I have the worst cold of my life right now. Since Saturday I have been a constant fountain of mucus with horrible sinus headaches.

Today Dan and I both had medical appointments. He had a follow up CT-Scan just to see if there are any other areas that the cancer might have spread to. The CT results and the pathology reports from Monday's surgery will be reviewed sometime midweek with Dr. Lewis. Its then we will find out if he needs further treatment (surgery, radiation, chemo or perhaps no additional treatment).

My appointment was with the Fertility doctor to have another ultrasound. The cyst on my right ovary is slighty bigger again. Doc said it would continue to grow and it needs to be removed. Wants me to see a Dr. Grohl on base. He will be my new fertility doctor since my current doctor is going into teaching. He said let Dr. Grohl do the surgery because if I let a GYN doc do it they would just remove my ovary and we dont want that. So I have an appointment on base for Monday so they can give me the referral to Dr. Grohl (they wouldnt just refer me on the phone...) Hopefully we can get this surgery done quick so I can get back to training for the half marathon Heather and I are running in April.

The only other update is about our adoption process. Right now we are a few weeks away from the meeting in Columbus that we have to attend. I informed the agency about Dan's cancer. There are lots of medical conditions that they wont place an child into but they said as long as his doctor can write a letter saying he is cancer free and in good medical condition they have no problem going forward with the adoption process. Hopefully those conditions will be met soon! Until then we just wait to be able to start the homestudy, and if our name comes up sooner than Dan is medically cleared they will just let the next in line jump ahead of us until we are ready.

Joys of Paperwork

I wonder as I am now a couple days into the paperwork required for an adoption how many people would have babies naturally if they needed to do this.

The following is my check list for my social worker to approve Dan and I becoming adoptive parents:
1)Request Home Study
2)Fill out ODHS Application for Child Placement Form - this is a 6 page form that asks you basic info like who you are, your job, your pay, what your house is like, where will kids sleep, what school would they go to, what car(s) do you have, do you have pets, do you run a home business, where have you lived for the past 10 years, where have you worked the past 10 years, then 2 pages of 'what kind of child would you consider' regards to age, sex and race and then 4 references
3) Signed Service Agreement Form and $1200
4) BCI Fingerprinting for each adult
5) FBI Fingerprinting for each adult
6) Verification of Training completed in the following areas: The Adoptive Process, Child Development, Separation & Loss, Dealing with Behavioral Changes, Cultural Issues, Adoption Related Issues
7) Medical Statement for each adult to see if we have a serious or chronic illness, sought treatment for mental health issues, any alcohol or drug abuse issues. Any hereditary diseases, did any parent, grandparent or sibling die young?
8) Ohio State Child Abuse Clearing Form stating we have no charges against us
9) 4 Reference letters
10) Autobiography for each adult explaining our childhood, our best/worst qualities, how we met our spouse, their best/worst qualities, how we were disciplined, how we plan to discipline, why we want to adopt, describe our fertility problems, what hobbies we have, what our saddest and happiest memories are and does our family support us in adoption.
11) Financial Statement with last 3 years 1040 tax forms, employer verification letters, bank statements
12) Guardianship Plan for our children should something happen to us
13) Child Characteristics Checklist - this one makes you feel guilty - 5 pages of medical problems that you 'will consider' or 'will not consider'. This is weird, I know if I had a child that had these issues I would deal with any of them, I could do specialized home care with NG Tubes, trachs, etc but even though I could do it, Why would anyone choose to do it? Anyways, I felt kinda bad on this but only put will consider things I feel are easily correctable like some mild speech issues, allergies, mild vision or hearing issues, corrective orthopedic issues. Plus that form is generic for people doing adoption or foster care and alot had to do with older kids not infants.
14)Safety Audit - Make sure everything is safe and infant proofed
15) Fire Inspection - Done by the local fire department - Make sure we have smoke detectors and such
16) Copy of the following: driver's license, auto insurance, marriage license, health insurance, evacuation plan, pet vaccination records, birth certificate
17) Picture of Family and House
18) Fill out form I-600a from the CIS (Citizenship and Immigration services)


Whew! Once all that is done then we get to meet the social worker in our home for some one on one and group interviews. Then the social worker writes up her report and weeks later we turn it in to the adoption agency... We then begin more paperwork.

Changing to Korea

Ok, when Dan and I came to the decision to start the adoption process we knew that we were interested in Asian countries mainly. When we had 2 friends tell us stories of China adoptions and that made us feel good about choosing China as our country but after seriously researching this over the last week (I am talking spreadsheets and reading tons of websites and joining about 5 different chat groups) I think that I feel better with Korea. We both want to stay with Asian countries over South American or African, so our choices were basically: China, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan or Thailand.

Here is a simple comparison of the 2 countries (China and Korea)

Average Age of Child at placement: China-10-14 months, Korea - 9-12 months
Gender: China mostly girls, Korea slightly more boys than girls
Average total cost: China $22,000, Korea $25,000
Care of Child: China mainly orphanage, Korea foster care after first couple weeks in an orphanage
Medical Care: China - depends on region, orphanage. Korea - excellent medical care on par with USA standards
Average Wait from start to finish: China - 22months-36months, Korea - 14-18months

Really after looking at that breakdown, and alot more factors I wont bore you with, Korea just seems like a better option. The wait is shorter, the babies are kept in foster families instead of large orphanages so developmental delays are far less common and I think a couple thousand more dollars is worth it if you look at long term success and health of the child.

Both programs are very stable and that's also a key factor for us. So we are now looking into agencies and talking to people online who have used various agencies so we find a good fit for us. I have also been reading alot of blogs. My favorite one so far is listed on my links section (A holding pattern) Here is a post that really sticked out to me. It describes when the family was about to get their adoptive son at the agency office in Seoul and the foster mom who had been raising him (her 5th foster child but 1st one where she met with the adoptive parents):

At 1:45, we left to walk the 2 blocks to the H01t Korea office. This would be the last block we would walk as a mere couple. The last door we would walk through.

When we arrived, Munchkin was in one of the ground-level playrooms with his foster mother and the social worker. It seemed like they were wrapping up some paperwork. We took final photos together. His foster mother gave us even more gifts - more outfits for Munchkin, all his favorite toys, and a music box. Over the course of three days, she had given us so many gifts that I was profoundly embarrassed. I wish I had brought more gifts for her.

His foster mother was so sad. Tears ran down her face, as she silently stroked Munchkin's cheeks and gave him final kisses. She was worried, and gave us lots of final instructions. Make sure we put cream under his knees. He loves bath time. He needs a bottle in 1 hour, about 5 oz. He doesn't usually cry unless something is wrong. Make sure we have umbrellas and a hat for Munchkin when we go to the airport on Sunday. Make sure he is bundled up when we go outside. She cried. I cried.

Not every foster parent is going to be like that obviously but if given the choice I would want my future child raised by a family than an orphanage. That ended up being the major factor, plus the shorter time frame that made us switch from China to Korea.

Adoption

I have always felt that even if I could have a child or children naturally that adopting a child would be a wonderful experience. I have spoke with a co-worker of Heather's who has adopted 2 girls from China and Dan has spoken with a co-worker who recently adopted a boy from China. They both were eager to meet with us to answer any questions we had and describe the process. They both said it was a wonderful and amazing experience and that was really nice to hear. Susan, Heather's friend, highly recommended the agency they used so today I contacted them about information and an application. The time period is very long from start to finish, over 2 years, so we are going to get started!

The adoption agency is http://www.lavida.org/