Waiting — Badly

One of the peculiarities about adoption is that the intensity of the waiting waxes and wanes. When you are waiting for one particular document to reach your agency so that your paperwork can go to Ethiopia, you can be almost jumping out of your skin with impatience.

When you hear it will be months till you get your referral, you settle down, and can sometimes go hours (days?) without devoting much thought to the adoption. That cycle repeats over and over until finally you get your child home.

We are waiting very– um– intensely here today. Our court date in Ethiopia was scheduled for today. We are hoping to get news very soon that we have passed and that the girls are ours. By Ethiopian law, once the family’s case passes court, the adoption is final and legal. This is a very big deal.

With our other adoptions, I don’t remember being so keyed up about the court date. But over the past year or so, I’ve been hearing of more and more families who had to go through several different court dates before they pass.

There are a variety of reasons. A living member of the child’s extended family may not show up at court. A piece of paperwork from a previous orphanage may not be done right. Recently I even heard of a family who needed a second court date because a single stamp from a previous government agency was missing. I am so much hoping that every bit of our paperwork is complete.

I have to confess that the family size issue is also still rumbling around in my mind. I blogged awhile back about the possible changes in Ethiopian adoption law restricting non-special-needs adoption to families with fewer than 6 children. The government official that our agency spoke with agreed to allow families already in process to complete their adoptions. They’ve allowed other large families through since then, and our agency is very optimistic that it won’t be an issue with us either. But still, I will be so glad to hear the news that the girls are ours forever.

Incidentally, there have been differing reports from different agencies about the family size issue. Some agencies are already treating it as the law. Other agencies say they’ve heard nothing official about any new ruling and so they are still accepting applications from large families. The director of my agency (Adoption Advocates International)thinks that our agency probably heard the ruling first since they place the largest number of older children, which typically tend to be adopted by larger families.

Time will tell what happens with the large-family issue. And with our case in court today.

I’ll keep you posted on both issues.

More about waiting
Surviving The Wait (silly)
Surviving The Wait (really)

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