Hello to everyone. I hope you enjoyed your weekends.

For me, it was a mixture of so many feelings starting with joy that I got by visiting my parents’ place with all of my children, and of stress and upsetting, because Peng caught cold and had fever. We had to stay at home on Sunday waiting for a doctor to come and check him up. It’s flu. He probably caught cold on our way to my parents’ place. It was a bit chilling, I must admit. In any case, he’s getting better.

It’s so upsetting when children get ill, but flu can be easily treated on early stages. However, there are such diagnosis and conditions that can’t be treated, unfortunately. Many people ask me if it is possible to adopt a healthy child. We’ve already discussed this issue in one of my previous posts. Let’s think what kind of mothers abandon their children: successful and healthy or depressed and with bad habits? I’ve been to a few orphanages and talked to its workers about children. They said that really a lot of children suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome and even drug exposure. Of course, these children may be born with worse health conditions or even mutations. There are HIV and AIDS positive children whose parents didn’t want to take care of them. Most of prospective adopters aren’t ready for taking such a challenge. But don’t be afraid, the upper mentioned doesn’t mean that all children available for adoption have a diagnosis. When we applied for adoption in China, we mentioned that we were open for a child with moderate to correctable condition. We were matched with Peng who had slight developmental delays, speech delays and problems with hearing and his middle ear. He used to have frequent otitis. This wasn’t a problem for us. For us, he is a healthy kid. Perhaps, he will often have running nose or even otitis media. It is curable. He needs and operation of adenoidectomia that is a surgery of removal of adenoidal glands. He just needs to grow a little bit, so not now. By now, we have a flu and very afraid that it may cause another otitis media. Because otitis is treated by antibiotics, every time. And he used to have otitis almost each month. This is not good, but it is treatable.

Hopefully enough, there are people who are ready to become a family to a child with special needs. These children need and deserve special attention. This is an immense work from adopters so I really admire such people. If we talk about countries of Eastern Europe, this problem is especially vital. A lot of people there live below the poverty level so they simply can’t afford providing for a special need child. Moreover, there are almost no facilities for such people in public places, public transport, schools and nurseries. This is an immense problem both for children and grown-ups, that’s why so many people abandon their children once the diagnosis is revealed, so almost always at birth. Life in their birth countries for such children is located in their small rooms. They can’t even go outside. Getting education is almost impossible. Moreover, such children are very seldom adopted domestically. No one wants to take a challenge. The only hope for such children is to be adopted by foreigners who can provide for them, take care of them and give them a chance for a better life. Moreover, you should know that the adoption procedure of such children is much simplified if compared with healthy kids. You will need the same pack of documents, but less time for a match and for the final court decision to be taken. So this will take less time.

Even if one person reading these lines decides to adopt a special needs child, this would be a true miracle. This is not for everyone. This is for very brave and strong people who I really admire. Lots of health to every parent and every child in the world!

Take care!

Hello everyone. Thank you for taking my “thinking out loud” in consideration, for your attention and comments.  If my blog helps at least one person to make up his/her mind about adoption, it would be the ultimate reward for me. I have received a question about disrupted and failed adoption. This was actually a thing I was going to talk about in today’s post.

Unfortunately, not every adoption ends up in taking a baby to a new home. Due to some reasons, adoption may be disrupted. There are many reasons for it. Most often, the reasons for failed adoption lies in agency’s cheating. Unfortunately, not all adoption agencies, lawyers and facilitators act legally and in reality help you adopt. Some may take your money and then just make you wait, wait, wait. I know a family who were pursuing Guatemalan adoption and were waiting for 6 years for a match! They just lost dozens of thousands dollars and lost all hope to become parents. It was heart breaking. These people stopped trusting people. All people. There are agencies that match prospective parents with children who are not and have never been available for adoption. So, please be very thorough and careful when choosing your legal adoption partner. Read recommendations, ask parents who have adopted through this agency. Ask an agency representative to provide you with their statistics report. Read forum comments about this particular facilitator or agency. Please, be very careful.

The next possible reason for adoption failure may lie in adopters themselves. It seems to me that everyone knows that in order to be found eligible to adopt one has to have crystal clear police record, have good income and good health condition. There are people who don’t fit all the requirements for prospective adopter so they forge documents or provide incorrect information. Please, people, don’t do that. All your papers will be checked several times by different institutions and truth will anyways be revealed. I hope that those who read it have never even thought of forgery or fraud. This isn’t right. This is a crime, actually.

The most heart-breaking type of failure is disruption after matching with a child. You already fall in love with that particular child, you imagine him or her entering your home, meeting your family, spending weekends together. Generally speaking, in your mind this child is already yours, but in reality he still isn’t officially yours. There might be different reasons for it. For example, birth relatives may want to renew their custody or parental rights. The law would always be on the side of birth family.

Hopefully, we haven’t met all these problems while adopting our son Peng. But we know we could. We were emotionally ready for difficulties. Perhaps that is why they didn’t happen to us. I really hope that your adoption process will be smooth, but anyways one should know about probable complications.

To cheer you up, statistics show that the amount of disrupted adoption doesn’t exceed 10%. I hope you will fit those 90% that is really a lot. You already know my recommendations: proper choice of adoption agency, being truthful in your reports and records and… have some luck.

My dear Peng and my wife are visiting our pediatrician for a scheduled checkup, so we are a little bit nervous and pressed for time today. He needs to be vaccinated today. I hope everything will go well. Have to go now.

Have a gorgeous day,

David.

Hi, I’m back again and we continue our talk on adoption. From my last post you should already know that the “second name” of adoption is WAITING. Well, yes, it’s not always easy to collect and sign in all those papers for home study and for dossier. It may be stressful. It may be tiring. But as soon as you have been approved, the toughest period of adoption starts. This is a period of waiting. One may wait just a couple of months for a match, others are waiting for years. After a match, you wait for court decision, then for a child’s passport and visa. You wait, wait, wait. You should be ready for it in advance. The reasonable question is: How one may get ready for all this waiting? I think it is a matter of self-esteem. If you expect that your child should be there in your home as soon as you wished, so – forget it. You should be psychologically ready that it is a very long and nervous process.

It may sound as if I’m trying to terrify you. No. I’m a realistic person and I prefer to call a spade a spade. And I prefer to provide other’s with correct information, no eyewash and window dressing. And me personally, I hate it when people exaggerate or twist facts. I call it disinformation. That was one of the reasons why I created this blog.

Ok, now we know that it’s all about waiting. The other question is how to survive all that waiting? They say that there are always two sides of the coin. The same about waiting. You got so tired and exhausted by all that paper work, but now everything is done and you have some TIME to get absolutely ready for your child to enter your home and your life. Yes, yes. Waiting is time, and time is a very very treasurable thing in our life. Ask any young mother what she is missing in her life. She will tell you – time. And you have it… now. Very soon you won’t have it, as soon as your baby comes into your life. So, you have to get everything ready for it. What to start from? Well, you may read books about parenting and adoption, especially if this is your first kid. Believe me, it will help. You may watch video on youtube on how to get on with kids of different ages. Learn some behavioral tips, time management, things to buy. As for me, the sweetest part of our waiting period was getting the kid’s bedroom ready. We made full refurbishment there (btw, most part of it I did myself). We bought new furniture and changed room color. It was a real pleasure for Liz to choose new curtains, rugs and pillows. So, everything was provided and ready for a new member of our family. The next exiting thing to do (mostly, for ladies) is baby shopping: buy everything needed depending on the age of a child. For babies, you will need A LOT of stuff, starting from soothers and nappies and up to baby car seat and stroller. Everything has to be ready in advance. You won’t have time for all these things after placement.

Use this time for meeting families with children, especially with adopted children. Ask them to share their experience before and after placement, any tips and advices. I have two families whom I’ve met after Peng’s placement. They are our neighbors who are also thinking about adoption. One couple is very young but they already suffer from infertility (I’m really shocked by this, they are just around 30) and the second couple is in their 40s having one biochild and thinking of adopting a toddler or school child. They often come to our place bringing cakes and sweets for Peng. We drink tea and share experience. These are the most sincere talks. I hope that these wonderful people would also become the best parents in the world for a child in need. We’ll see.

The next thing you should think about is your child’s health. After a match, you’ll be able to see the child’s medical file. It’s sad but true: most abandoned children and orphans have minor to severe health conditions. Relevant treatment or surgery will be on your agenda from the first day the child comes to your family. Provide medical insurance for him or her and choose a healthcare provider. Ask doctors about the possible treatments of a particular disease. If surgery is needed, you may need to register for it several months in advance. So, get everything ready.

Furthermore, you already have to determine who’ll take care of a child after placement: if you work, you’ll have to think about your adoption leave or about hiring a housemaid or a nurse. If your child speaks other language, you might think of a nanny who comes from the same country as your child. It might also help him or her to get used to new culture and environment quickly.

If you have a hobby, devote as much time as possible to it now. Firstly, because after placement you’ll have very little time for it, and secondly, because it’ll get you occupied and think less about your waiting. As for me, I used to renew my volley ball trainings. My wife embroiders pictures and clothes. She embroidered three wonderful kid’s pictures for Peng’s new room. Isn’t this sweet?

Now we’re all taken in all that “children’s fuss”. My son has missed much and we use every chance to keep up with that. He has minor developmental delays. He doesn’t take any particular treatment at the moment.  We believe that with proper care and nurtured with love and attention, meeting new people and seeing new places – he’ll keep up with his peers really quickly. 

Our magical weekends

Can’t believe it’s Monday, again. Weekends passed so quickly, but they were so joyful and emotionally saturated. It seems to me that I’m becoming a miracle man! You know why? I’m making dreams come true! Make up a wish and close your eyes. I’ll do my best to fulfill your dream. Joking, of course. However, the idea itself is very interesting. However, I need to master my skills… a bit! Wink.

Ok, to be back to miracles, these weekends I made my son’s dream come true. To begin with, Peng seems to be very connected to nature. He loves animals and he was really crazy when he got to know that we have a golden retriever Elsa at our place. He likes to play with her.

When we were planning our weekends, I mentioned that there is a horse race track just 10 miles away from our place. At this very moment, his eyes enlarged and he asked: There are horses? I said Yes. He started to ask me go there and “to pat a horse”.  Sure, we went there and it was really his dream to come true. He was allowed to come close and to pat a gorgeous silver grey horse named Viking. We were watching it racing and feeding, and brushing. Peng was overwhelmed. He said that he’ll be a horse racer when he grows older. We’ll see.

I hope your weekends were also unforgettable and joyful. Or just enjoyed some peaceful rest. Let’s be back to our adoption overview. I hope my previous posts were informative and useful for you. I’ve already shared my personal point of view as to interracial adoptions. Much depends on where you live and how society will treat your family’s “diversity”. In any case, this is only you to decide. Take all possible options into consideration.

Ok, let’s take that by now you have determined with the country to adopt from, with race, age and gender of a child (optional, of course). Not in every country you may choose a child or even his age or gender. In China, you may choose gender. Males are much quicker and easier to adopt than girls. From my experience, I may say that almost everywhere girls are much more “sought for” than boys. In China, this is especially vital because of specific state policy. If you’re desperate of choosing  a child yourself and you’re about adopting Caucasian, a good option for you is pursuing Ukrainian adoption. it is one of a few countries, where prospective adopter may apply for adopting a particular child/children from an orphanage. One of my friends wanted to adopt two female siblings, Caucasian. At first they were thinking about Russia, but it was impossible because of new Russian adoption policy that prohibits Americans to adopt. I was talking about it in my very first post. They have adopted two siblings girls from Ukraine. As soon as they got to know that adopting siblings in Ukraine is much quicker than one child, they referred to an agency adomir adoption. They came to Ukraine twice and the agency provided them with everything needed: airport pickup, accommodation, interpreter, driver. And the prices were very reasonable. Consultations are provided for free. They took them to three orphanages not far from Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. Our friends met their future achildren and fall in love with them from the first sight. Their agency made everything possible to pursue adoption of these particular children. Hopefully, they did! Now these two gorgeous ladies live in a very big house not far from the ocean shore. I think they didn’t even expected that one day they will have parents and home. And their parents are also extremely happy. And you know what? They are starting a new adoption now!

As for us, at the very first steps of our adoption, we were also consulted by this agency. We were pleasantly surprised that they give free consultations on international adoption. And hopefully, china was on the list. They answered our questions and made our idea of adoption more “earthy”. It seems to me that my wife Liz asked so many questions, no one else has about adoption. They took patience answering All of them. The only thing I would like to anticipate is that they don’t contact you at once. It might take time, because they have a lot of applications. So, this is just for patient people. Smile.

Ok, talking further about patience. Do you already know that adoption itself is all about WAITING? If no, I can tell for sure that you know nothing about adoption. And I’m not mistaken. I know from my personal experience that people who start to ask me about our adoption journey, the very first thing they ask is how long we waited? And this question is very reasonable. Unfortunately, it happens when the prospective parents wait for a match or even for court decision for years! Even 5 years is no wonder.

Well, again some patience needed from you. I have to go now, but I’ll go on in my next blog very soon. Take care

It’s a wonderful sunny day here and I have a minute to drop a line. I hope my two first posts were informative for you and you found answers to at least some questions you had.

I still have lots of things to say and to share, so aware: long post ahead!

It seems that the next thing that worries prospective adopters (after procedural issues and health condition of a child) is attachment. Many people ask me: how did you bond with a child who is not biologically yours? Is this possible to love a child who is not made of your blood and flesh? People are sometimes ashamed to ask these questions. Why? Maybe because it reveals their uncertainty? I don’t know. I just know that if a person asks this question, he/she is extremely responsible and sensible and tries to predict all possible complications of the process.

Let me comment. Yes, we’re not blood relatives. We may even have different skin color with our adopted children, but this doesn’t mean that we love them less than any biological parents love their offspring. As well, it doesn’t mean that we never experience misunderstanding or misbehavior. We’re all just humans: the elder teach and educate the younger. You might have heard such a terrifying word for every intended a-parent as RAD: reactive attachment disorder. Have you? This is a thing that frightens a bigger part of people who start to make inquiries as to adoption. I don’t know why but when we talk about RAD, we usually mean adopted children. In reality, RAD may happen in ANY child who isn’t properly cared for, doesn’t get proper attention or experienced severe stresses in his life. So, what is the reason of associating RAD with adopted children? This is mainly because adopted children are much more frequently not properly cared, loved, protected, etc. that’s why of course the percentage of RAD diagnosis in adopted kids are much higher than in biological ones. Hopefully, in all adopted families that I know, RAD wasn’t known to them. Of course, the first weeks and even months after placement aren’t easy for both adoptee and adopters. This is due to the dramatic change in their lives. Time is needed to get used to these changes. Sure, this kid shall be at once surrounded with much love, care and protection, because he also may feel very awkward in a new home, and even frightened. I’m not going to give recommendations here as to treating RAD and so on, because I’m neither a MD nor a psychologist. My intentions is to assure you that RAD is quite a rare thing to happen, and in case your child had no major behavioral disorders before, it’s more likely that your attachment will pass ok. Of course, if you stay patient and surround your child with all those feelings of safety, caring and nurturing that he was striving for.

The next thing I’d like to focus your attention on is bio/non-bio child distinction. Well, I have both bio and adopted. I never distinguish between my children: they are all mine. Hopefully, God blessed me with this joy of parenting. I know that nowadays so many couples suffer from infertility and have to pursue adoption just with the aim of becoming parents and regarding it as the last opportunity. I understand such people but in the meantime it seems to me that it is also not quite right (please forgive me, if I sound rude). One shouldn’t treat adoption as “the last chance”. In this case, you may really have problems with attachment. Adoption should be a mutual desire of a spouse and it should come from the deep of their heart, but not be contingent. IMO. Such people are usually quite hesitant about adoption because they feel that it wasn’t THEIR choice. So please, start your adoption process only in case you know FOR SURE that you want this child and you’ll be able to love him or her with no regard of whether you gave birth to him or any other woman did.

Since my blog is dedicated to international adoption, it would be reasonable to discuss race question. The “trend” of multirace families is gaining more and more popularity among celebrities and common people. Why? Can anyone explain this? I can’t, so would be grateful for your comments as to this question. Share your ideas. In the US, there are families when children of all races are mixed. Perhaps, this is good not to distinguish kids on “color” basis. This is not right. All children deserve having homes and families, and traditionally much more Caucasians adopt children of different races and nations all over the world. The question is how those children feel in more or less Caucasian society? How will children treat them at school? Will they be bullied? Would they feel like “odds”? I think that the answer is more likely to be “yes”.

My son is so to say “odd” as well. But we were not afraid of taking a challenge. He is still quite young to realize that he is different, but one day he will. In any case, I tend to think that coping with his “color” difference would not be a problem for us and for him. However, most of intended adopters I know gave up the idea of interracial adoption mainly because they weren’t emotionally ready for subsequent challenges. Well, it’s their choice and it is a right choice for THEM.

Ok, that’s it!

Greetings to everyone who wasn’t lazy to read this post till the end. To sum up, adoption is a very delicate and even intimate topic to be discussed within the family and taking decision only upon your personal believes, viewpoints and consideration. Much to figure out. Your decision changes lives of a few people at once. So please be very thorough while taking it. 

Hi all who’s reading this.

It’s morning here and I’ve already taken my son Peng to the nursery where he spends half of the day so I have some time to continue writing.

As soon as we determined that we’re going to pursue international adoption, the very next step was choosing a country for adoption.  The very first country we decided to inquire was Colombia. As I’ve told before, my wife is of Colombian origin, so it was quite logical to go back to her roots and to adopt a Colombian child. It took me a few days to surf on the web and to learn details of Colombian adoption process. I’ve found out that currently Colombia has a moratorium on healthy children under 7 and the wait periods are quite long. I’ve registered on a few forums and got acquainted with people who are already in the process. Some of them are waiting for a match for more than 5 years! This information really upset me. No-no, I wanted it to be A BIT quicker. So, Colombia was no longer on our list.

The next thing that was running through our head was adopting a European child. Taking the political situation into account, it was quite logical to pursue adoption from Eastern Europe. It was a surprise for me to find out that Russia has recently closed all adoption programs for American citizens. What a wise decision of Russian government! (sarcastically, of course). As far as I know, a great part of Russian orphans during last 20 years was adopted mainly my Americans. Do you imagine how many children got a chance for better future, having family and are well-cared for? These are thousands of children. Now kids in Russian orphanages don’t have such a chance any more. I’m not sure if Europeans adopt Russian kids as willingly as Americans did. This issue really upset me and I decided to make a more profound research of it. Yes, there was a very very sad case of Dima Yakovlev who was adopted by an American family. His adopted father left this boy in a car on a very hot day for 9 hours. He thought that the boy was at the nursery.  He just forgot about him! Of course, this poor little boy had no chance for survival being left closed in a vehicle on a burning sun. This story is really hair-raising. I’m convinced that this father should have been imprisoned for such a bad care of his adopted child. He wasn’t.

This story was aggressively discussed in Russian society and finally the government decided to prohibit American citizens adopt Russian children. Russians widely supported the decision having forgotten the fact that the majority of adopted children from Russia are placed happily in American families and live happily. Moreover, most Americans were open to adopt children with severe health conditions or special needs who haven’t been lucky to find parents among Russians.

This situation took me a while to figure out. Who’s right, who’s wrong? Why should prospective parents pursuing adopting a Russian child be stopped by the government because of a crazy guy who did a TERRIFIC thing and has no excuse? Even this very guy whose name is Miles Harrison publicly asked Russian government not to judge ALL Americans through the prism of his story.   

Moreover, my further exploring of Russian adoption process lead me to a conclusion that Russia nowadays has a very complicated process for international adoption for all foreigners no matter Americans or not. Currently, Russia allows international adopting only by France, Italy and Spain citizens. What a variety!

It’s very sad when authorities decide for those children that it’s better for them to spend the rest of their life in orphanages or boarding schools rather than being taken to a foreign family where kids are welcomed and will be cared for. It puzzles me.

Such limitations make those prospective adopters who were pursuing Russian adoption to regard other post-soviet countries that doesn’t have bans for international adoption. The next possible option was Belorussia and Ukraine. These two countries are neighboring Russia, have very similar culture, religion and language, and children there are also Caucasian. Of course, I’ve made an inquiry as to international adoption in these countries as well. Belorussia currently has a ban on international adoption for foreigners but for Italian citizens. Ukraine also has certain limitations on international adoption but hopefully not as strict as in neighboring Russia and Belorussia. These limitations mainly refer to healthy kids under 5 – these kids would rather be placed in Ukrainian families. From the other hand, adopting a child of any age with health condition or a child 5+ is no problem in Ukraine. The process of adopting such children will be simplified and much quicker. The same refers to adopting siblings. If you’re open to adopting a “conga-line” of siblings, you’ll be welcomed in Ukraine. By the way, if one kid of a sibling group is at least  5, others may be younger and more importantly – healthy.

You know, it seems to me that child’s health is probably the most discussed topic considering international adoption these days. And it is quite understandable. Unfortunately, not all the people are ready to place a child with special needs, HIV positive, or with Down syndrome. Most families want to adopt a child with whom they will be ready to lead an ordinary way of life with no considerable limitations. Herewith, correctable health conditions are usually no problem. Yes, for some countries this is a real problem, because all healthy children are placed domestically. Since we were also searching a child with severe health condition, we made a great research in order to find those countries who allow adopting healthy and young children.

As you already know, our choice of a destination country was China. Firstly because I have Chinese roots. My grandmother and her family came from China to the USA many years ago. And even though the connection was almost totally lost because no relatives were left there in China, I regarded adoption of a Chinese child as a great chance to reunite with this culture. Legislature is also quite reasonable in China. Especially if you want to adopt a boy – welcome! There are much more boys than girls available for adoption so it’s quite possible to be matched with a baby boy as young as 3 months old. The strictest Chinese regulation regarding prospective adopters is total family asset. In other words, you need to earn well to be found eligible to adopt from China.  China has minimum income requirements of $10,000 per family member currently in the home (including the child to be adopted), and a minimum $80,000 net worth (total assets). So, if you put up with that, welcome to China.

Hopefully, after collecting all the documents and completing home study, we were found legible to adopt. It was a MESS of papers and forms to fill in. Fortunately enough, we dealt with a highly professional agency that guided our adoption process and made it much easier and clear for us. It took 18 months from the time of dossier application to bringing our son home. This time was a combination of hope and fear, and waiting, waiting, waiting. When you’re waiting for the call, it seems that minutes are stretched to ours, days to months. You count every moment. And when finally we received the call telling that there’s a match for us and we may come to meet our son, this was something so special, so delicate, so thrilling, that I even have no words to describe it. It has much in common with that feeling I experienced 23 years ago when I got to know that I’ve become daddy. After that very moment, time began to fly much quicker and all that paper work paled into insignificance. So many thoughts were running through my head. And my wife – she was overwhelmed with emotions. Our flight to Beijing was quite long and tiring and we both were figuring out how this first meeting will pass. This was a cutting edge of emotions. When we met Peng, my heart squeezed. He had that terrifying rough haircut and was dressed in closes and shoes that seemed to be two sizes smaller than needed. But his eyes sparkled when he saw us. He was a little bit embraced and didn’t know what to do or to say. In any case, he was very sincere. He just told that he wants home. A wish of a child is above all. We did it. We took him home. He now has everything he wants.

When we came back home, we faced first problems, which were not actually problems but inevitable part of such a dramatic change in our lives that now were united into one. We devoted as much time as possible to him. We tried to explain everything in a very simple way for him to understand how he is living now. He changed a lot. He started to smile. He loves hugs. Sometimes he can’t get of my neck like a little baby monkey is riding on his dad. And this is so sweet of him. 

Truly speaking, I don’t know even where to start from. This is my first blog ever (and believe me I’m not that young) and it seems that there’s so much to say.

In December 2015, our family has extended: we brought our adopted son from China home. On this very day, a new page of our family life started. This was an end of one journey and the beginning of something really new for us all, a step to the unknown.

I don’t know if our son Peng will remember that day when he was taken from an orphanage and took a long and tiring flight to his new home. I’m sure he will remember despite he was just 3 years old at that time. It was an extremely emotional day even for me and wife who already have two children. You know, adoption is something very specific. This process is even more gentle than giving birth to your own child: you feel even more responsibility. Despite being so young, this child has already experienced such losses and stresses in his life that I haven’t even imagined in my 53.

It wasn’t really my intention to start this blog. When we were waiting for referral and matching with a child, a lot of our friends and friends of our friends started to put us questions regarding adoption process. Some people wanted to adopt but were hesitant because of the lack of TRUE information from people who have recently adopted or are in the program.

So my wife and I decided to start this blog in order to compile all the knowledge and experience we have accumulated during our two year adoption journey and to share this enormous stock of our experience with those who really need it.

Unfortunately, when one starts the topic of international adoption, a lot of stereotypes and vagrancy arise. This is quite understandable. Adoption is not a process one is involved in each day. Even if someone is ready to start the process, they may get frightened with all those tons of papers that has to be collected, for checkups and finally for all those terrific things that are usually told about children available for international adoption.

I am here to ruin stereotypes.

Today I’m going to explain a little bit about procedural issues and how it really looks like.

Ok, my wife and I are both slightly over 50 having our two biological children who are already grown ups and live separately. Having been left alone in our big house, we have realized that something’s missing and that we still have much love to give and care to provide to the one who really needs it. At that time, thinking about adoption for us was like for a bear to think of online shopping– we simply had no idea of what it is and what we shall do. Learning the issue on the web made no result. It just made my head explode with all that mess of information. A real chaos! The only thing we knew for sure is that we were going to go internationally. You may ask why? ok, let me explain. We are a family of mixed nationality. My wife is of Colombian origin and I am American with a mixture of Irish and Chinese roots. A great mixture, isn’t it?

International adoption has a number of pluses. The main thing for us (but the perhaps the worst thing for our future child) is that all adoption are final. No one of his family members will ever come to seek him or to lay a claim on him. Is it good or bad for you – decide.

The other thing is a wait period. Unlike domestic adoption which is a real roller coaster, wait periods in international adoptions are quite predictable. It depends on the age and health condition of an adopted child. If we talk about domestic adoption, the truth and the law will always be on birth parents’ side. What does it mean? This means that birth mother may change her decision to give her child for adoption any time she wishes. That is why prospective adopters call it emotional roller coaster. Do you wish to take a ride?

International adoption is the best option for those who are eager to adopt a toddler or elder child. It’s almost impossible to adopt a newborn or a baby. For me and my wife Liz, our perfect age was 3+. We didn’t feel that young to wake up in the middle of the night and change nappies. We used to go through this all already… twice. Moreover, we were not going to raise this child with no revealing of the secret of adoption, so this was ok for us.

And the last but not the least, international adoption provides you with more certainty in successful adoption. Once your referral is approved and you were matched with a child, you are almost guaranteed to adopt a particular child.

So, this is my personal overview of international adoption basics. Don’t judge me too strictly – this is the first time I’m writing a blog (however, not the first time I’m writing in general – smile).