Referral and what it all means....

I’ve been writing just not about my personal life. I write for work and I write for my Masters degree, but I have been hush about my feelings and emotions in the past few years. I have questioned my faith, my life direction, and my past decisions. Who wants to hear about the struggle until there is a moral to the story or lesson learned or rainbow over the steaming pile?  

I haven’t been sharing about our 2^nd adoption because there hasn’t been anything to share. Every time I heard a blip of news, I wouldn’t share it because it would evoke questions that all had the answer, “We really have no idea.”

“Why does it take so long?”

“Why can’t they just let you adopt her? You’ve already adopted from Haiti once?”

“Is there anything you can do to speed up the process?”

“Why is it taking so long?”

“What is the hold-up?”

“What are they waiting for?”

“Don’t they know she has a family waiting for her?”

See?

To chronicle the past almost 6 years, here comes a snapshot of our family’s adoption story:

I came home from meeting her November of 2012 at the age of about 2 weeks and immediately started talking to our adoption agency about adopting this little girl. There is a stipulation that children under the age of 1 year cannot be adopted out of Haiti so we knew there would be a wait. Of course there would be a wait.

For those totally new to adoption, a family must compile a dossier to present. It is huge, and it contains birth certificates, marriage certificate, psychological evaluation letter, letters of recommendation, doctor visits and health forms from the entire family; all private information becomes public and all public information is stated. Then there must be a write-up from a social worker who comes to your home to evaluate you as a married couple as well as a evaluating the status on the children currently living in your home. Then there are child abuse background checks at the state level and then fingerprints at the state level and federal level (2 different locations and agencies and funds to pay). I’m sure I am forgetting a piece of the puzzle but you get the picture. After the dossier is compiled and looked over, it goes to translation before it can be submitted to Haiti.

By January 2013, Haiti was trying to switch from a Non-Hague adoption country to a Hague country. If you are interested in the politics and why this is even a thing, here’s a link - Intercountry Adoptions. While they began complying with the new regulations, they put us in a queue and would only let each adoption agency submit 1 dossier per month. We were set to be submitted October 2013.

In December 2013, we entered Haiti’s Social Services IBESR (L’Institut du Bien-Etre Social et de Recherches). There was absolutely no news or movement for 11 months (November 2014) when we received an email congratulating us that our family had been approved to adopt a child from Haiti. This is now typically the time when a child’s dossier would begin to be assembled. She's now 2 years old at this point.

I won’t go into the pain, but we trusted our agency to be working on our behalf. I was a part of Facebook groups, watching children get matched and come home in the time we waited. Our biggest obstacle was because we were grandfathered in under old laws as we were considered a “pre-match”with our child; we chose a specific child to be matched with our family instead of allowing Haiti to put our file with an eligible child. One of the new rules was a family would no longer be allowed to “pick’ their child. In a story of blame, I will throw no one under the bus, but there were people involved in our adoption process that were supposed to be working on her papers that didn’t know it was their job. There were others who said they were working on her behalf only to find out later that nothing was being done. There were several thousand dollars paid with no work to show for it. Excuses of, “Well, you know Haiti…” finally caused us to switch agencies in May 2017. While our new agency could make us no promises of a match with our little girl, they were instrumental in what questions I as a parent needed to ask people in Haiti in order to get Amelia’s paperwork completed as a finished dossier.

Bored yet?

Meanwhile, with the new Hague vs. non-Hague country change, we had to fill out completely different paperwork for her US immigration status. That kind of paperwork expires. It fell off my radar and our I-800a immigration pre-approval expired and dissolved. Like it never happened. Nothing had changed in our lives, but we had to start our dossier over. In March 2018, Haiti’s IBESR was asking for our I-800a approval so they could match us! Remember that incredibly long list of papers that we compiled? You got it, all new everything. We scrambled to get it done as fast as we could. Scheduling fingerprints, Dr. appts. and biometrics again. Friends writing recommendation letters. Our social worker was amazing. She came to our home as soon as she could, she rewrote her report and had it submitted as fast as I could get all my part done. Wham Bam Thank you, Terri, we were back with I-800a approval only 10 weeks later (Sarcasm dripping). Our old agency had to help us with this process due to Colorado laws on who holds our dossier information. They were neither quick or helpful. I was kicking myself and so angry. Here we had been waiting for so long and now that Haiti was asking for something we stood there like a 15 year-old boy in front of the girl he likes. Um.Uh.So.Yay. We don’t have it but wait right there. We’ll be right back. Don’t forget about us. Don’t put down that file. It may never get picked back up. Seriously.

Everything was turned in early May 2018. Tracy and I made no family plans this summer. We anticipated a referral ‘any day’. It took everything within me to stay away from the airline websites searching for ideal days to travel for the best price. 12 weeks later – July 23, 2018 – WE HAVE OUR REFERRAL!! Her dossier is matched with our dossier. This is a big, huge step. Now, what does it all mean?

We still have a long road to bringing her home. The referral means that we have been invited to come on a “bonding trip”. It is a 15-day on the ground in Haiti time to meet, play and get to know your child. Typically, this is meant for parents who have never met their Haitian children. Remember what I said earlier. The process has changed. There was a hint that we could shorten our stay, but when it came down to it, there would be more delay in the asking so we are leaving August 4^th and will be with Amelia until August 18^th. I will be more diligent in sharing the next steps of our adoption as they should be coming in months rather than years. I will be blogging while I am in Haiti with her. We couldn’t be happier.