Having second thoughts!

We received some bad news from our adoption agency today. It seems that the US State Department has put out a warning about adoptions from Guatemala. They have found that Guatemalan babies are being smuggled into the US illegally, babies are being taken away from their parents illegally, they have found fradulant DNA tests,etc.. The US State Department recommends that anyone considering Guatemala should look at different options. I have heard all of the above mentioned before. However, the part that worries me the most is the statement they made about adoptions taking longer or maybe even not happening at all.They are calling adoptions from Guatemala uncertain and volatile.I know that other people adopting from Guatemala right now are having a hard time getting through PGN ( Guatemalan Courts). They are making it exceedingly difficult right now for parents to take home their children. Is it only going to get worse? I am not sure if I could take the heartbreak right now of getting a referral and having it drag out for months or even years. My heart and prayers go out to all the people right now who are just waiting to get through PGN. The director of our adoption agency is in meetings right now in Guatemala. They will give us more info as they receive it. I truly trust our agency and know that they are ethical and not involved in any of the illegal activities. However, we are still left with the question - What should we do? As soon as I received the e-mail I immediately started conteplating our options. The one thing I know for 100% sure is that we WILL become parents. Our options are 1. take the "wait and see approach" and see what happens with Guatemala. 2. Talk to our adoption agency about other countries ( China is the only other country I know that we are eligible for because Clinton is not a U.S. citizen) 3. consider a domestic adoption instead of intercountry adoption.

I began doing research on option number #3. As I mentioned before my principal has 2 adopted children. Today I called her adoption attorney who she highly recommends ( he has been doing adoptions since the 1950's and even helped create some of the adoption laws). I explained our situation to his wife ( who works for him). She said," I wished you would have called last week. We had a baby that was full latin american that we had to place outside our agency" It seems that most people who want to adopt do not want " 100% latin american" babies. This statement made me very sad! I talked with her more and it turns out they use the same homestudy agency that we are using. She seemed to think that as soon as we got our homestudy complete and "a few other pieces of other paperwork" that we could be eligible for a referral. She said that if we were open to receiving a latin american baby ( obviously we are since we were going for Guatemala for goodness sakes) that it probably would not take very long at all. I called our social worker - (which by the way we had our final meeting yesterday but found out that we are still missing one of our references so we still don't have the report. The report is complete she is just waiting for the last reference.) to see what the difference would be between an intercountry and domestic adoption homestudy. She said she just had to change the format and we would need to fill out a couple of different documents and it would not be a big deal.

Today's events has me really thinking about what to do. The pros of doing a domestic adoption would be 1. we would be able to adopt a newborn (less worries about attachment). 2. we would not have to go through all the turmoil of not knowing if the adoption would make it through PGN 3. we could probably get a baby sooner than later.4. in the long run it is actually cheaper. The cons of doing a domestic adoption would be 1. We would probably be out our agency fee that we paid ( approximately $5,000) 2. although the way the attorney handles the adoptions it is rare , but the birth mom could always change her mind. 3. we are uncertain when we would actually receive a referral. The wait can still be between a couple of months to a couple of years because the birth mom has to pick us ( which is why I was adverse to domestic adoptions in the first place) I knew with intercountry adoptions you are pretty much guaranteed a referral once you are considered "paper ready".

I am actually thankful that we received this news sooner than later. It has been frustrating up to this point because of all the little road blocks that we have encountered compiling our Dossier. Maybe this is God's way of telling us to be wary. We will wait to see what the director of our agency finds out before we make any decisions. Please pray for us that we make the right decision! I will keep you posted.