Domestic or China....Social Worker Has Us Thinking

We had areally nice visit with Christine, our social worker. It was nice to see her again. I still can't quite believe we are back on the adoption rollercoaster. Christine was here last Friday. She was scheduled to come on that Saturday but there was a threat of snow so she rescheduled it for Friday night. We talked for almost two hours. She will be coming again at the end of March to actually start the paperwork to get accepted for the China program.

While she was here she asked us which program we were looking at and we said the China Special Needs program. She wants us to think about the domestic program. I guess there is a need for families in that program. But, I am just not sure. I would love to adopt a newborn and the thought of that is very appealing, but we just do not want an open adoption with our child having contact with the birth family. It just wouldn't be fair to Colby who will never have that. I wouldn't mind sending photos through an agency without any identifying info but not a full open adoption. So, that really limits our availability and we would be waiting for a birth mother to like our family portfolio. There wouldn't be a set time frame and there would be a whole lot of unknowns. I just don't think it would fit our family's needs. But I will touch base with Mary who heads up that program and see what she thinks. Maybe I am being too harsh and too quick to dismiss this. I just don't see us as that "lucky" couple who falls into a quick and easy adoption process. More likely, we'd be the family who waits forever and does finally get a match only to have the whole thing fall through and us left standing empty handed in a hospita somewhere. What do you all think? Any experience and words of wisdom?

Thus far, the paperwork has been so easy. I am amazed at the huge difference between this paperwork and what we did for Russia. I'm still waiting for someone to give me a list a mile long of documents that they need tomorrow! But the dossier list of docs looks really small and I could probably get them done within a couple days. So, we wait for the homestudy to be written and we enjoy our days, waiting for Spring to arrive. With Spring...the arrival of new things and new possibilities. Here's to shooting toward dossier being complete for Colby's birthday end of April...