Hello there!
I decided to start this blog to document our Guatemalan adoption adventure. I'm not sure if it will be just me, Erica, posting here, or whether my husband Jeff will contribute.
We live in Northern Virginia, and our families live primarily in New York State and the Washington DC/Baltimore area.
We've suffered from infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss. We had no idea what was in store for us when we started trying to build our family back in 2001.
We've been through a lot - more than we knew we could handle. Thankfully, we're still here and mostly in one piece. And we're most of the way through the "paperchase" to adopt from Guatemala.
We received our immigration approval to adopt from Guatemala on Friday, November 4th. We have a few more documents to collect that need to be sent for "authentication" and then we will have our "dossiers" complete, and ready for a referral of a child (or two)!
It's very exciting because we decided to adopt two children at once (hence the name of this blog), building our family in one spectacularly difficult process, rather than torturing ourselves once and then going back in a year or two for a second child.
I joke about torturing ourselves, because the paperwork process is mind-boggling, but really, compared to the years of infertility treatments and miscarriages, it's been a cinch so far. We've always wanted at least two kids, and why not adopt both at once? A wonderful local friend gave me the idea, when she and her husband adopted two beautiful, amazing children from Kazakhstan. Because of our pregnancy losses, we have no faith that we'd ever be able to have a child the conventional way, and we are so grateful that we can adopt. The children from Guatemala are adorable and healthy and we have a large support group locally for people who adopt from there.
Please feel free to ask me questions about the process, and if you have any friends suffering from infertility, I would love to share my knowledge about that, too. I've learned so much in the past few years, and if I can help anyone, it makes me feel good that something positive can come from our difficulties. Reading blogs about people who are adopting while we were going through infertility treatments helped me to see that I can have hope again, and that adoption is a wonderful way to build a family.
I'll post more when we get closer to referral...
We live in Northern Virginia, and our families live primarily in New York State and the Washington DC/Baltimore area.
We've suffered from infertility and recurrent pregnancy loss. We had no idea what was in store for us when we started trying to build our family back in 2001.
We've been through a lot - more than we knew we could handle. Thankfully, we're still here and mostly in one piece. And we're most of the way through the "paperchase" to adopt from Guatemala.
We received our immigration approval to adopt from Guatemala on Friday, November 4th. We have a few more documents to collect that need to be sent for "authentication" and then we will have our "dossiers" complete, and ready for a referral of a child (or two)!
It's very exciting because we decided to adopt two children at once (hence the name of this blog), building our family in one spectacularly difficult process, rather than torturing ourselves once and then going back in a year or two for a second child.
I joke about torturing ourselves, because the paperwork process is mind-boggling, but really, compared to the years of infertility treatments and miscarriages, it's been a cinch so far. We've always wanted at least two kids, and why not adopt both at once? A wonderful local friend gave me the idea, when she and her husband adopted two beautiful, amazing children from Kazakhstan. Because of our pregnancy losses, we have no faith that we'd ever be able to have a child the conventional way, and we are so grateful that we can adopt. The children from Guatemala are adorable and healthy and we have a large support group locally for people who adopt from there.
Please feel free to ask me questions about the process, and if you have any friends suffering from infertility, I would love to share my knowledge about that, too. I've learned so much in the past few years, and if I can help anyone, it makes me feel good that something positive can come from our difficulties. Reading blogs about people who are adopting while we were going through infertility treatments helped me to see that I can have hope again, and that adoption is a wonderful way to build a family.
I'll post more when we get closer to referral...
posted by Erica at Monday, November 07, 2005
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4 Comments:
Hello?! Is this thing on?
It's on! It's on!
Hi Janet! Thanks for stopping by! Yes, we switched agencies to "For This Child". They're really good to work with, haven't heard anything bad about them.
Hi Erica and Jeff. Found your blog on bloglines. I hope you don't mind the comment. I'm a prospective Mom-To-Be of a Guatemalan baby. I'm a bit ahead of you in the process (just entered PGN) so if I can answer any questions, just let me know.
I'd heard good things about your agency :)
Julie
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