The beginning

Dear friends, family and awesome support!

Please take what I say as coming from my heart with the deepest gratitude and respect. This is the story of our adoption(s).

We started the process carefully and respectfully in 2010. We spent months researching agencies and educating ourselves on the process. We also educate ourselves on Haiti as much as we possibly can, including learning Kreyol so that we can better communicate with our children and in country. We have spent several years in process, met lots of other families, agency reps, crèche directors, government employees in both the United States and in Haiti and are doing everything in our power to facilitate a healthy process for all five of our children as we work to bring our three Haitian children home.

I’m sharing this because we have received so much appreciated support. We have also received tons of comments with suggestions. We truly understand that you all come from a place of love, but we also need you to understand that many comments we receive about what we should or could try to do to bring our children home in ways that are not legal, ethical, or responsible will actually hurt our process and ultimately our children. We want you to understand our story and what we have done and are doing so that you understand why we have not resorted to corrupting this process further by paying bribes or any other methods that some think might result in bringing our children home faster. It is imperative to us that we facilitate this process legally, ethically, responsibly, and in the most loving way possible.

The Beginning:

We started this journey of international adoption two weeks after the earthquake in January of 2010. J and I have wanted to adopt since we started our lives together and we did not take this decision lightly.  For many years leading up to our decision to adopt from Haiti, we investigated programs in many countries and did some deep soul searching through the years. While our decision to adopt from Haiti was certainly instigated by the earthquake, our desire to adopt from Haiti was solidified the more we tried to talk ourselves out of the decision. We spent months weighing the options of domestic v.s. international, contemplated our decision and ultimately after speaking with several experts in the field of international adoption, we were convinced that our hearts had chosen wisely, though we were fully aware that when we made the choice to adopt from Haiti, that it was quite possibly the hardest country in the world with an open and functioning adoption program to adopt from. That said, we proceeded excitedly with every expectation that our quoted 24-36 month time frame for the process would likely be realistic. And as with everything else in our lives, we talked to several experts in the field of international adoption before proceeding. We spoke with counselors and other adoptive families both international and domestic and we pondered the experiences our own families have had with the international adoption world. As many of you know, j is adopted from Kwangju, South Korea, his sister is from Seoul, South Korea and my brother Vijay is adopted from Calcutta, India. So international adoption is a relatively well-known option for adoption in our family. J and I have wanted to adopt since we started our lives together and we did not take this decision lightly.

We initially hired an international adoption expert who we contracted with to guide us through the initial stages of the process.  We would later find that this was mistake number one. We spent months working with this highly recommended and seemingly professional International Adoption Expert. She was to help guide us through the process of compiling our dossier and find us a reputable agency to work with. She and her company wooed us with her post earthquake experience in helping bring home many of the children who left Haiti on humanitarian parole. We applied for permission to adopt internationally from our government by filing our I600A with USCIS in early February 2010 after expediting our first home study We then spent the next five months interviewing five different adoption agencies and several orphanages while preparing our dossier. We experienced the initial struggle in our process when we watched two of the orphanages that we were preparing to work with close and three agencies turned us away because of the changes that were taking place in Haitian adoption. They could not guarantee that the social services branch of the Haitian government would allow adoptions to continue and wouldn’t contract with us.  

Our “expert” was absolutely clueless in the field of Haitian adoption. Looking back, and well honestly seeing the writing on the wall when she couldn’t produce, we were already seeing how involved we would have to be in this process and how much we needed to expand our awareness of the procedures involved. I spent months researching every blog and postings about laws and process. I contacted missionaries and doctors. I talked with everyone I could possibly speak with about the state of the country and wanted to know everything I could about the options for who to work with. I contacted several agencies on my own and did extensive web research. I also contacted the joint council on adoptions and asked if they would be willing to share with me which of the agencies would maintain approval to continue to process Haitian adoptions. We also consulted lawyers. This seemed like dangerous territory, however, and we opted to work with an agency that was vetted and had experience working with multiple countries. I’ve heard nightmare stories about lawyers working in the adoption world. Though there are some fantastic advocates out there working diligently to bring kids home, there are also some who are double matching, and are outright deceiving adoptive parents to scam them out of their money. The result of many horror stories related to private adoptions is often that the children don’t come home. That was not an option for us.

When compiling our original dossier (otherwise known as the stack of documents from HELL), of which is now considered the first of FOUR DOSSIERS we’ve done, we had to gather the following documents. They all had to be notarized, certified and translated into French before they could be considered a proper dossier ready for submission to the Haitian government:

Belief letter that states that we raise our children with Christian values. Ten Year Letter – explaining that though at that point in time we had not been married for ten full years, that we have been co-habitating and raising a family together. Addresses for each of us for the past 20 years. Arrest record for myself (long story about being a stupid teenager). FBI background checks for both myself and J. Health History for both myself and J. This included some ultimately ridiculous testing that frankly if we shared the extent of, no one would get past this stage in the adoption process! Seriously. A surgeon’s letter explaining every surgery I’ve ever had for Crohn’s Disease as well as his recommendation that J and I would otherwise be expected to live normal and healthy lives.  IBESR letter asking for permission to adopt from Haiti. Local police and fingerprinting reports for myself and J as well as background checks for crimes against children, DMV records and arrest records for every state we have lived in as adults: North Carolina, Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. A Hague training certificate proving that we had completed the biggest snooze of our lifetime; and were informed of all possible horrors of adopting, and raising institutionalized children. A psychological profile on both of us individually as well as documented sessions with us as a couple ensuring that we were stable and responsible parents worthy of adopting a child/children. Three non-family referral letters.  A power of attorney document allowing the orphanage lawyer/director to represent us in the Haitian courts and to the government. Birth certificate for myself and J’s naturalization document (the naturalization document alone is an excellent reason to re-adopt your child once they come to the states – because they will receive a birth certificate - as losing your naturalization document is something to throw yourself on the floor and cry about).  A full home study, including updates required for moving, changing jobs, blowing your nose, and changing your hairstyle. Approval of your I-600a application, otherwise known as the 171H doc (for the record, this should be typeface BOLD but its not and you have to squint and search the entire document to find the numbers and letter at the very bottom of the page before you can rejoice in excitement because it is the LAMEST piece of anti-climactic paperwork you receive until you recognize its inconspicuous nature contains the KEYS TO YOUR ADOPTION KINGDOM), which is confirmation and approval of your formal request within the U.S. government to adopt abroad. And translations of ALL OF THIS into French. Phew. I’m sure that was annoying to read. Trust me, compiling it all once made me want to stick a pencil in my eye. Doing it four times made me certifiably crazy.

It took us six months to find a reliable agency that was ready to work in Haiti post-earthquake. Once we returned our application and were officially contracted, we were happy to take our huge stack of documentation (six months in the making) to the agency. We expected maybe a few tweaks here and there, but were confident that the past six months of document prep would advance us to the referral stage by the end of the summer of 2010. Instead we found out that of 26 bullet items on the list of the dossier prep guide, we couldn’t fulfill a single one of them because all of the guidance we had paid for was completely wrong. Our first (recall it was expedited) home study was also completely wrong. Sham #1 and #2 had already taken place for us. Our “International Professional Adoption Expert” and our home study agency had both failed us. We were crushed. We fired our “expert”, and shed many tears. Due to the fact that we had just sold our house and were about to spend the summer traveling due to the relocation, we couldn’t complete our second full home study until we were completely relocated to Pennsylvania.  We also found out that our good old American Uncle Sam government had LOST our file. In the months after the earthquake there was a department set up to handle the chaos of Haitian adoption. It is called NBC, or The National Benefits Center. Somehow our documents were lost in transit to this office. We spent months trying to locate them. Each attempt to find them was replied to with an explanation that they had received our request and would get back to us. It normally only takes about 3 months to receive approval. It took us 11. We didn’t get our approval notice until January 2011. This is important because you can’t submit documentation and request a referral from an orphanage until you receive your approval from the US government to adopt. Well, unless you have special permission from your orphanage or work independently, which we were not and did not have. So we had to wait the 11 grueling months while our tax dollars were spent on incompetence.

After a summer of trying everything I could possibly do from several southern states, I found a new home study group, scheduled all new doctor’s appointments and psychological testing for a second full round of dossier prep. In August of 2010 we expedited another full home study and prepared the finishing touches on a second full dossier. By December 2010 our dossier was ready and as a family Christmas present we all blew kisses into the package and sent it to our agency. In late January we were informed (while waiting anxiously for a referral) that four of our documents needed to be redone because our agent simply “forgot” that they were outdated. When documents need to be redone, it’s not as simple as it might seem. They not only have to be notarized, but they have to be certified by the state and translated into French, sent back to the agency and then sent back to Haiti. The process to update a document can take approximately a month. And it costs a ton of money to send documents. One single piece of paper cost us $58 to send to Haiti. AND  “Overnighting” a package can take up to 8 days. So as of February 2011, we again blew kisses into our package and sent it back to the agency to send to Haiti.

Then we waited. And waited. And waited.

In late March I contacted our agency to find out when we could be expecting a referral. Though we were aware that our documentation had been delayed, we had been in communication and our agency promised that we would receive a referral as soon as our documents were in Haiti. Recall that we had been working with this agency for 9 months at that point, and had already spent a year trying to adopt from Haiti. I was informed in Marh 2011 that there were “no children in (our) your age range available” and we were told to wait. We couldn’t believe that there were absolutely NO 5-7 year old little boys available. It was crushing. So we started talking with more agencies to determine if we needed to work with another orphanage and another agency. We spent a month interviewing and found two other orphanages prepared to send us referrals if we chose to work with them. Upon finding out that we were prepared to make a switch, our orphanage and agency indicated that they had a child that they were preparing documents for, and his name was Djedly. We knew nothing about him. But we knew that we must wait. So we waited for six more long and agonizing weeks. One Friday in May I was at the zoo with Leo and I received a phone call from our agency indicating that we had received a referral. They told me that we needed to send a $1,500 retainer before they would send us the referral. I was taken aback as our contract stated that this fee was due upon agreement of the referral. However, they insisted that we pay the money up front. I was so eager to see his little face that I pleaded with J to pay it. And three hours later I sat on the couch waiting with my laptop in my arms for J to come home so that we could open it and see our son together. May 19, 2011 we received our son, Djedly. His documents were sparse and were not translated, but I was absolutely smitten with looking at his little face. I imagined, based on next to nothing that I knew about him, what he was like, and what his story could possibly be. And I wanted him sitting right next to me on that couch. I couldn’t imagine waiting a minute let alone months to meet him.  We were told that we had thirty days to agree to the match. But he wasn’t yet 5 years old. He would be turning 5 on May 29 and we couldn’t agree to the match until he was the requested age in our home study. Another wait. But on his birthday, May 29, 2011 when he turned 5 years old, we had a small birthday cake and we signed his referral acceptance document and we sent it to the agency. We had already said yes in our hearts. But it was official.  This child would be our son.