Adoption is NOT easy!

Many of you have been asking me for updates lately and wondering why I haven't posted on the blog. Truth be told, I really didn't want to post here until I got the referral, which should have been a while ago. I was actually told on 6/30 that the absolute latest I would get my referral would be today, August 11th. Needless to say, I am once again the exception to the rule and all hell has broke loose in Korea on the international adoption front and Joe and I are lucky enough to be one of eight families that were soooo close to receiving a referral, but not close enough.

Being the Internet geek that I am, while researching on Korean adoptions last week, I came across a forum entitled "Bad Bad News for SWS Families." I immediately called Joe over to the computer and said, "You'll probably want to be here with me while I read this one." I read the message aloud. The basic jist of it was that this girl had just received a phone call from her Social Worker informing her that SWS in Korea is going to stop accepting homestudies until November and that there was legislation passed in Korea trying to promote domestic adoption & slow down international adoption.

I continued my Internet search because I wanted to find this information from a viable source being that my agency had not yet notified me. It wasn't long before I found an article in the Korean Times with more information. The article made everything make more sense to me. I mean, I knew Korea had slowly been attempting to phase out international adoption by implementing yearly quotas for the number of children going overseas, but I was not at all prepared for what I read because I knew that Koreans' views of the importance of blood ties and family name were not a thing of the past.

What I got from the article is that Korea does not like the fact that Koreans look down upon adoption and that they have to rely on people from other countries to adopt their children. In order to increase the number of domestic adoptions, Korea has passed legislation which will allow single people to adopt a child. They have secured 87.8 billion won for adoption-related proects next year. The government will grant a monthly allowance of 100,000 won to Koreans who adopt a child until the child's 18th birthday. It will also grant 2 million won to cover the mandatory adoption fees. They are also making the age requirements for adoptions much more lenient for those interested in domestic adoption. The limit on the number of adopted children per one family, now standing at five, will also be lifted. To raise people's awareness that adoption is another form of growing a family, the government will also allow two weeks of adoption leave starting in 2007. To enhance people's positive view on domestic adoption, the government will also mention good aspects of adoption in school curriculum. All good and fine -- right?

Actually -- this is what what is killing us -- in order to reduce the number of overseas adoptions, the government plans to pursue a ``domestic adoption-first'' system, aimed at trying to match children eligible for adoption to Korean parents first for five months. Whereas before children would be sent overseas at five months of age, now they will not be eligible for a REFERRAL until they are five months old. This means that the earliest babies can go overseas is at about nine months of age instead of the typical five month olds that join their adoptive families.

Now that I better understood what this legislation entailed, I was still confused as to whether or not this would really affect me, Joe, and our baby who I envision growing older each day in someone else's home. I was upset that I had to find this information out on my own (rather than from my agency) and had a hard time sleeping that night. The fact that we hadn't yet received our referral at that point was unsettling, especially considering the two couples we became close with through the process had received their referrals two weeks after their paperwork was sent to Korea. I didn't understand why SWS had implemented changes already (if that was in fact true) if the legislation wasn't to be implemented until 2007.

Naturally, the first thing I did when I got to work the next morning was call my agency. The Korea Program Coordinator seemed surprised that I was aware of this legislation and said that I shouldn't believe everything I read on the Internet and right now it was considered a rumor, although she was aware of the "rumor" as well. I called the other agency I'm working with and they were able to confirm that SWS is going through changes in order to slow the international adoption process, one of which was to stop sending homestudies over to Korea until November, but that she hadn't yet received details on what was going to happen with families like ours who were next in line to receive their referrals. She, like me, figured we'd be "safe," but that perhaps the referral would just take a lot longer to get here, and that the baby may be older upon his/her arrival. She told me that there are major recruitment efforts in Korea right now for foster parents because there's no place for all of these babies to go! It's very sad.

I call my agency weekly for updates but am always given the same speech. "We haven't yet heard any further news from SWS, except for the fact that you are one of the families that is guaranteed to receive a baby. We cannot, however, give you a timeframe." So, the baby that was intended for me may be going to a Korean family right now, which is fine, as long as s/he is going to be in a loving home. More than likely though, my baby is just growing older each day, and growing closer to his/her foster parents. I'm happy that we are one of the families that is "safe" according to my agency, yet I wonder why my process was unnecessarily delayed on our end, why my paperwork couldn't have made its way to Korea a week earlier, why, after having the longest standing, most stable international adoption program, has Korea decided to implement this legislation NOW, why my agency, though not legally required to, is the only one that has decided to implement changes NOW (even though I chose them because their timeframes have been consistently quicker than other agencies), why it happened when it was our turn, finally, to become parents. I think sometimes that God is trying to tell us we are not meant to be parents. But I know it could be worse, and I keep reminding myself that all of these delays are happening for a reason. There is a baby out there that is meant to join our family and if it means waiting the rest of my life for it to finally happen, so be it. I just hope this is not going to result in hundreds of babies being born and having no foster families to go to.

Adoption is not for the weak at heart; I'll tell you that much. In the meantime, Joe and I are trying to make the best of our child-free days by doing things that would be a lot harder with a little one in tow.