Waiting for Xavier

Exhaustion, I can’t take it anymore. I don’t have a tear left in me. The whole situation with Vietnam is just too worrisome for me to take on a daily basis. There were no worries in May when we started and the wait list was 4 to 9 months long. Now there is a 12-24 months wait with no guarantee that adoptions will continue after September 2008. The only thing about our adoption that has been constant from the beginning is the CONSTANT CHAOTIC CHANGE FOR THE WORSE.

There are 2000-ish families waiting for children from Vietnam and historically never more than 200-ish families matched in a single year. We have no guarantees, promises or even inklings of hope on the grapevine.

If I were to believe my agency, there is NOTHING to worry about “YET”.
If I were to believe the US government there is EVERYTHING to worry about.
If I am to believe my husband Everything will be fine.
If I am to believe my heart… we are in a sinking boat with NO life vests.

I think we all need a little tiny light of hope to show up from time to time… I wouldn’t spit on a ray of hope at the moment.

We are still waiting for a statement from LNI concerning all of this new information, however our case worker has assured me that a formal email is forthcoming. Until then, this is what I have found.

The US government issued an official warning and announcement about Viet Nam adoptions today. The entire text can be found on the USCIS web site but a brief overview can also be found on the Voices for Vietnam Integrity website (listed in my links). It basically sates that potential adoptive parents that haven’t yet filed their dossier with the IAD should be cautious because there is no guarantee that the MOU will be renewed in March regardless of efforts to renegotiate. Furthermore, it reminds PAPs to wait for visa approval via email BEFORE travelling to Viet Nam.
The US Embassy in Hanoi continues to remind parents that fraudulent adoptions and questionable paperwork continues to be a problem and that they are doing everything in their power to reduce un-ethical adoptions through deeper investigations. Causing longer wait periods for visa approvals and more NIODs being issued.

What does this mean to us?
Well I don’t know for you but this long awaited statement reassures us quite a bit. With all of the rumors about un-ethical adoptions and the possible closure of the Vietnam program we were a little worried about the true ethics of adopting from Vietnam. This statement means that we can be sure that not only our agency is doing the best they can, but both the US and Vietnamese governments are following suite. We are happy to wait a little longer if that means that our son truly is our son and not a stolen or sold child. I could never imagine how devastated I would feel if someone stole Kitty from me. Giving your own child up for adoption is difficult enough… I see no need for anyone to pressure a mother with money or even make that decision for her without consent.
We are sad to hear however that the situation in Viet Nam is so dire that the possibility of closure is now more than real. But if that means that child selling or stealing will come to an end in Viet Nam, then maybe this is what needs to be done.

With the wait for news from our adoption agency getting more and more difficult to bear, I need a little project to keep my mind busy. I read somewhere that if you folded 1000 origami cranes, that you wish will come true. So, with that in mind, instead of bugging my agency every week for news, I'm just going to fold paper cranes while I think of our son.

My wish will be that once I have folded the 1000th crane, that exact same month we will get the long awaited phone call from our adoption agency and little Xavier will be a step closer to coming home. It's a little superstitious, but I have nothing else to rely on other then patience... and even that is lacking these days.

So here we go.... Paper cuts and all! Wish me luck.

The Embassy in Hanoi has posted some troubling news, stating that the adoption delays are clear due to immoral practices and “questionable “ documents for children. Chris and I had a long conversation last night about what this may or may not imply. We feel it is probably part of pressure techniques that are being used to force Vietnam to clean up their act before signing the MOU (which I mentioned before, is due in March). Clearly the US knew about any illegal practices in Vietnam before this, and they are only making noise now in order to pressure VN, for what ends we can only guess. Chris and I have decided to calmly wait until March to see what happens. If our agency hasn’t sent out a reasonable amount of referrals to waiting families (we are pretty far down the list so we are not expecting a referral soon) and the US/VN MOU isn’t signed, we will re-evaluate our position and consider other adoptive options.

That said, we desperately want this to all work out. For the moment we can’t imagine adopting a child from anywhere else and should VN close tomorrow we will be clearly at a loss for what to do. LNI does not have a single other program that interests us and we don’t qualify for Korea which is our 2nd choice (LNI does not have a Korea program anyway). We were so happy to be a part of the LNI families, I would hate to have to leave them.

Long before we were married we talked about having a family. For my husband, coming from a traditional French family, adoption hadn’t really been something he had thought about. However, I had grown up in an American family that had been completed by adoption over two generations. Both my uncle and brother are adopted and I grew up knowing that adoption would without a doubt be a part of my family plans.
After meeting my family and some long heartfelt conversations my husband and I agreed that adoption would be a part of our lives too.
Soon after we were married we were blessed with a biological daughter “Kitty” whom is our own little ray of sunshine. Some would think that having the chance to have our own biological children would take precedence over adoption but for us it didn’t. We began to re-discuss adoption after Kitty turned 6 months old. We took some more time to think it over and in May 2007 we contacted Los Niño’s International Adoption Center (LNI) in Texas.
It took us a few months to get the paperwork together, as well as finish the Home Study. Together with LNI & the Social Worker we agreed that a baby boy between 0 and 18 months would fit our family best. We put together the adoption dossier and sent it to Viet Nam for approval. It wasn’t easy to get everything ready for foreign courts living in the UK but we did it with the help of the French, Vietnamese, British and American Embassies here in London.

In November 2007 the IAD (International Adoption Department of Viet Nam) logged our Dossier in and we officially became members of the LNI waiting list.

Xavier Thao Marie Francis will be the name we hope to give our son. Thao after his godfather & Marie Francis are family names on my husband’s side.

After some time and consideration I have thought about moving my adoption blog away from my everyday blog. Though adoption is an important part of our everyday life, some of my daily rants are not really of interest to anyone outside of my family.

Here I hope to reunite our own adoption expieriance with any reliable information I can find about the current situation in Vietnam. I'll try to transfer over any old articles I may have and hopefully start writing more often in 2008.

Anyway thanks for your support.