We found out in early January that rumours were flying around the blogosphere that the Congo Adoption program in Canada might be closing down. Our agencies assured us that these were only rumours. The rumours made me question my strength and ability to cope with the ongoing uncertainty of international adoption. Would I be able to deal with this kind of “scares” every few months? Should we have opted for the safer USA adoption? I felt helpless as I didn’t know if I could answer my own questions.
Now, if you are currently adopting from Congo, please don’t panic! I don’t want to start any rumours. To my knowledge, there is no moratorium at this time. Our decision was based on what was best for our family.
So over the next few weeks we proceeded to make the switch. It meant finding a new adoption agency, terminating our contracts with our current agencies, changing the course of our home study and coming to terms with our decision. We decided to adopt a child from the USA. We wanted to adopt from the US foster system, but this isn’t an option for Canadians, so we will be adopting privately. This means a birthmother makes the difficult decision of choosing adoption for her unborn child and then, through an agency, chooses us to be the parents. The process is quite different than an African adoption, but not without risk. The biggest one being that the birthmother changes her mind. Now that we have made the decision we are once again hopeful. I guess we just have to believe that our red string will guide us where we need to go.
We have now finished the interview portion of our home study and are waiting for our social worker to complete her report. Once the home study is complete and approved by the province we will be able to submit our dossier to the US. Once our dossier is in the country we will officially be on the waiting list! We’re hoping to officially be on the list by June. The country switch has put us a little behind on our timeline but we are still hoping to bring home our child by the end of 2014. Keep your fingers crossed!
If you asked me questions about our adoption in the last months, please don’t feel I wasn’t fully honest with you. We simply felt we couldn’t talk about the change until everything was confirmed with our new agency. Sorry!