Wednesday 7 April 2010

Welcome - April 7, 2010


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7, 2010


Welcome to our blog!  We are setting this up so family and friends can keep up to date on our adoption process from Vietnam.

Back in June of 2009, R&I met a very nice lady in M's gymnastics class who had adopted a little boy from Tra Vinh, Vietnam.  She is on her way in this month to pick up her second son from Ho Chi Minh City.  We are so excited for her and are looking forward to meeting her new addition.  We were very interested in the process and grilled her for information.  After giving it alot of thought, knowing we wanted to expand our family, we decided to proceed with our adoption plans.  We contacted the agency in August 2009.  They had so many families waiting to adopt, so they put us on a preliminary waiting list.  In the meantime, we had alot of work to do!  R&I met with our social worker on several occasions and we attended a parenting class which was two full weekends in a row.  M had fun with his grandparents those two weekends!  We completed our homestudy in December 2009 and were excited to finally be able to send our documents to the adoption agency and be added to their primary wait list in February 2010.

The next step, after signing the contract, was to send all of our documents to the Adoption Unit of Ontario to be approved.  We were told to expect the wait to be 10-12 weeks.  We are at the 6 week mark now.   Hopefully we are more than half way there...yaaay!  Once we have been approved, our documents will be translated into Vietnamese and sent to Vietnam so we can be added to their official list of waiting parents.  It seems to be that most parents wait 18-24 months to receive a referral for a child and then another 6-10 months to travel to pick them up.  The way it works in Vietnam is, after we receive the referral and say we want to adopt the child, then they put out ads in the local papers to try to locate the childs family.  If no one responds after a reasonable amount of time, then the adoption proceeds.  If a family member responds to say they can care for the child, then the child is united with that person and they start to look for another child for us.  There are so many children in the orphanages that they can't possibly do searches for all of them until a family comes forward to say they want to adopt that particular child.  So, although we will receive a picture and fall in love with it, we have to keep in mind that this process must take place and it is in the best interest of the child if they are reunited with birth family.  Many children are abandoned at the doorsteps of the orphanages due to poverty.  However, that's not always the case so some investigation is necessary.

We look forward to updating you when we receive our approval to adopt from the Ministry!

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