Answering Questions

I love getting comments. Hint, hint :) and when I announced our dirty little secret I got a couple of questions in our comments section. I was going to email them privately but I decided that maybe other's were interested also. So in a bold attempt to get more comments I decided to post the answers.

The first question was about our old agency and our new agency. I don't know why I was so cautious about identifying either agency. I have been reading several blogs and many identify the agency so I have decided that it is probably ok. Our first agency was FTIA. Our personal experience with them was first rate. They were the perfect agency to have for the paper chase portion of our adoption. They were excellent with communication and had very detailed packets that helped with filling out the paperwork. Since we were only at the application phase of our adoption we were only out our application fee, which was worth it for the help we received. We were just too far down the list to expect a referral in the years time they originally quoted us. Our new agency is WACAP. They have just been licensed in Vietnam and have what they call a pioneer program. The initial process was not as smooth as I had hoped. It took almost a month and several phone calls on my part to get us accepted into the program. Part of the problem was I completed our dossier just days after I sent in the application so I was ready for it to be sent to Vietnam. They had to review our home study and parenting plan, and other agency requirements. I did live through it and in the long run it won't change our wait time.

The second question was about the age of children we are requesting. From the beginning we hoped to adopt twins. When I first talked to the intake person at FTIA, she said it was harder but possible. She told me that we needed to have our home study and i-600 approved for 2 which we did. I believed if we requested twins, and if we were willing to wait we would eventually get twins. After being in the program for awhile I talked to the Vietnam coordinator at FTIA and found out that it did not work that way. They do not maintain a separate list for twins, if twins are available they go down their list and they are offered to the first family approved for 2. So if we were at the top of the list we couldn't choose to wait until twins were available. I then started to ask about other options. Could we pursue a domestic adoption or an adoption from another country while waiting for our Vietnam referral? NO. Since the wait times for a Vietnam referral were getting so long, could we complete our dossier for a second adoption when we got the referral for the first child? No, we had to wait until we had our 6 month post visit. While I understand their intentions behind these rules it just made things seem hopeless to me. We are approaching 40 and I didn't want to be adopting a second child approaching 45. So when I started researching other agencies these were questions I asked. When I asked WACAP about starting our dossier before we had the referral of our first child, that was when I was told that they allow adoptions of unrelated children. We had to be approved by the director and I had to agree to take at least 6 months maternity leave. It is also not guaranteed. If two children are not available than we accept the referral of the first the second request is terminated. We are not allowed to turn down a referral to wait for 2 children. Our home study is written for 2 children 0-24 months. So the answer is we are trying to adopt twins or 2 unrelated infants.

So there you have it 2 very long answers to 2 very short questions.