Sheldon on Adoption

1 – Tell me three things about yourself aside from currently being in the adoption process.

I have been married for 11 years this month to my beautiful wife Hilary.

I live for Fantasy Hockey Pools.  I can spend hours tweaking and researching my various pools, and creating the subsequent spreadsheets to analyze any of mundane sets of data.

Our family includes a cute 3 and a half year old Shorkie (Shih Tzu, Yorkie cross) named Zeke.  He has been a great dog for Hilary and I.

2 – When and how did adoption first come up as a possibility for you and your wife?

Hilary and I both knew that we wanted kids ever since we got married, and tried since shortly after we were married to fulfill that goal.  As the years went by, and doctors were visited, we realized that there was a very good chance that we would not be able to have children biologically.  So in the fall of 2006 we realized that adoption was probably our best option for children.

3 – Did you know other people who had adopted?

At the time, we knew of a few people that had adopted, and been adopted.  Hilary’s brother was adopted at a young age into Hilary’s family, although that was a bit of a unique situation.  Other than that, we had no idea how common adoption was, and how many people had been affected in one way or another by adoption.

4 – How did you get started?

Hilary and I started the process off by heading to a local agency, Adoption Options.  There we met with the social workers there, and were given a huge stack of paperwork that needed to be completed.  The paperwork included here was incredibly personal, and required us to think of all areas of the child’s beginning.  What could we accept?  Race? Disability?  What would happen if the birth mother smoked during the pregnancy?  Drank? And many more.  This was required to assist in matching us with a birth family.

We also were required to essentially tell our life story.  Where had we been born?  What family situation did we have?  What were our beliefs?  What would our parents do in certain situations, and then, what would we do in those types of situations?  We spent weeks agonizing over what seemed to be endless details that we needed to think of.

5 – What were your initial fears?

Initially, I personally don’t feel like I had many fears about the process, but that was more due to the lack of knowledge of what was actually ahead.  I wanted a child, couldn’t do it the natural way, let’s pursue the only other way we felt comfortable doing it. 

Looking back, a fear that I probably had early on in the process was the concept of an “open adoption” which is a term for an adoption which allows for some contact between the birth parent(s) and the adoptive parents.  Over the years, we’ve come to grips with this because we feel that this is in the best interest of the child.

Another fear that we had was whether this was the right thing for us.  Was having children something that was meant for us or not?  We felt strongly that the fact that we both loved children, and the fact that we felt we were pretty good with kids, was as good a sign as any that we should be parents.

6 – What sort of hopes did you have at the beginning?

We really hoped that one way or another, the right child would be quickly placed in our arms.  We hoped that it would all work out eventually, and that we could raise an adopted child with just as much love as we would have, had we had a biological child.  Really, we just wanted a family!

7 – Where are you hoping to adopt from? Why?

This question needs so much more explanation that just where we hope to adopt from.  In 2008, after having our file open locally for nearly 2 years, we made the difficult decision of pursuing an international adoption.  At this point, we did not really care all that much where the child would be from, but just that we wanted to adopt a child(ren).  When we approached our agency about this, we essentially had 2 options.  We could adopt from China or Ethiopia.  The issue with China was the age restrictions.  We both needed to be 30 in order to facilitate an adoption from China.  We were not willing to wait the 2 or 3 years that we would’ve needed to wait at the time, so Ethiopia it was.  At the time, we were told that this adoption could be completed within a year.  At the time, we were extremely green on the whole international adoption thing.  I don’t recall knowing of anyone who had adopted internationally, and/or anyone planning to adopt internationally.  We were newbies.

So we hurriedly got our paperwork completed, and in March 2009, our file arrived in Ethiopia.  Between the time we made the decision to pursue an adoption from Ethiopia, and the time our file arrived there, we fell in love with the country, and have begun dreaming about our trip to Ethiopia...  We also started building up a bit of a support base between some people from other walks of life who had adopted from the country.

Then in July, 2009, our lives were rocked when we were told our international agency (our files had to pass through our local agency, Adoption Options, and then through our international agency, Imagine Adoption, before heading to Ethiopia) declared bankruptcy.  It was a devastating blow to Hilary and I, and really tested whether we really would ever realize our dreams to become parents.  Through God’s grace, three days after this announcement there was a movement between many of the families much closer to the end than we were, to try to revive the agency.  By October 2009, the agency was revived, and referrals were restarted shortly afterwards.

So, we chose Ethiopia without as much research as we probably should have done, but we are ecstatic that we did, as we have fallen in love with the country, and look forward to experiencing the culture.

8 – Tell me about the day you received a referral. And if possible, tell me how it was to see the girls for the first time.

The day of the referral is a bit of a blur, and yet, I can remember many points very clearly.  I was sitting down to lunch at work, when I got a phone call from our social worker from Adoption Agency.  She rattled off some information about how they had submitted some paperwork for us, or we needed to complete some paperwork or something like that (honestly, the news afterwards was far more exciting).  After about ½ a minute of that, she said she was looking at a picture of a beautiful girl that had been referred to us.  I kept asking if she was serious (yeah, like she’s going to joke about that)… Then she said, and I have another picture of her sister, and then she explained that we had been referred 2 girls.  I was in shock.  I spent the next couple of hours or so trying to get a hold of Hilary, to let her know.  I had resolved that I would not look at the pictures until we could look at them together, but I caved, and looked at the most beautiful, sad, little faces.  Once I finally got a hold of Hilary, I took the rest of the day off, and we spent the rest of the day sharing our good news with everyone who would listen.  We were ecstatic.

Seeing these girls via picture was a surreal experience.  Thinking that these girls would be ours someday gave us such joy.  We had never really expected two children, and I hadn’t really thought through entirely, the different paths our lives would take with a girl versus a boy, so we started dreaming up what we would need for the girls from clothing to bedroom style choices, etc.

9 – What were your hopes and expectations on that day?

Since that day we have tried to temper our hopes and expectations a little until we meet these girls.  We have seen a few friends come home with their adopted children from Ethiopia, and have felt a great bond to them, and are beginning to see many of the positive adjustments they have made.  We have had much time to think about how our children need to develop based on their temperament, and that we should try not to make them fit into a square hole, if they would fit better into a circle.  We have a great many dreams of how this will all play out once they are home, but many of those dreams are so dependent on whether our girls are willing to fulfill.

10 – What has happened since?

Since that fateful day in June of 2011, we have been impatiently waiting.  There have been many hurdles in the process that have slowed the process down.  Essentially, there has been some changes to the entire adoption process which have led to our family being caught in the middle.  We don’t understand all the hoops and hurdles, but we are assured that our adoption is not in jeopardy, and that we will be able to bring our girls home soon.

11 – Do you presently have a timeline for when you will be together as a family?

The timeline is ever fluid, and no one will give us a firm timeline.  Currently we are waiting for a court date which for some people has taken a month, and for others a few months.  Our case is unique in that we have now been waiting almost 16 months, due to all the snags that have hit the process and very inopportune times.  So the short answer is we could find out tomorrow that we have a court date, and given the latest developments in the process for other families, the actual date could be as soon as the end of October.  Once we pass court, which we currently expect to pass on the first try (although stranger things have happened), we would need to wait for Canadian citizenship.  Since the girls have been in an orphanage for so long, Hilary and I have felt the need to start developing the bonding as soon as we possibly can, so we have made the decision to take custody of the girls as soon after court as possible, and live in Ethiopia until the citizenship papers have been granted (anywhere from a month to 3 months, we expect).  As soon as the papers have been issued, we will come back to Canada.

12 – How have you prepared for your future kid/kids, in the house?

We have been preparing for children in our home for years already, so not much changed after the referral.  That being said, we have set up bunk beds for the girls, and painted and decorated a room for the girls.

13 – How have you prepared for your future kid/kids, emotionally?

After seeing many of the struggles from a couple of our close friends with their adopted kids, it has taught us to expect the unexpected.  Emotionally, we are preparing to have a tough time with getting the girls comfortable with us as parents and caregivers.  We know that there will be a great deal of struggles, but we are prepared to fight for our girls.  We feel that there will be many situations that we will struggle with, but we have a great support system of people who really care about us, and also of those who have gone on this road before us. 

14 – What impact has this process had on your relationship?

I think that this process has strengthened our relationship.  We know that we always have that shoulder to cry on, always have the person to vent to.  We have been able to work together to follow our dreams to become parents.

15 – How do you and your wife get through the hardest moments/days?

We are able to talk to each other a lot about where things are at, and what our struggles and frustrations are at the process.  There’s often a lot crying, and venting, but we are again, able to support each other, and know that we both have the same goals of finishing this process.

We also feel very supported by our families, friends, and church in prayer, and know that we have a whole group of people solidly behind us whenever we feel down.

16 – What has been the most helpful thing someone has done or said to support you?

Our families have been super supportive, and just hearing how our nieces and nephews are praying and hoping for our girls has been very helpful.  Such innocent support, and trying to understand that they will soon have 2 more cousins in their midst, has been a huge support for us.

17 – What has been unhelpful?

There have been many comments that aren’t necessarily very helpful such as “How much will the kids cost you?”, and “Why don’t you just adopt a child from here?”, etc.  Most of the time, people mean well, but many of the comments focus on the negatives of adoption, and don’t focus on the positive aspect of adoption, The children will have parents who will take care of them.

18 – If you could have received one bit of advice when you started this all, what would it be?

Do your research and expect the unexpected.  I don’t think we were as educated on the process as we could’ve been, and we definitely did not expect this to take more than 10 years to get to our goal.

19 – What’s the first thing you want to do when you arrive home as a family?

We want to introduce our girls to the world.  I’m sure we will need to spend some time together with just our family to adjust to our new lives, but that day will be such a culmination of years of praying and excitement, that we will just want to broadcast to the world that we are here, and show off our daughters to all those supporters.

20 – At the end of your life, when you look back on this whole process, what will stand out the most?

Sometimes we look back on these 10 or so years since we started our journey for children, and think that we have “wasted” these years.  We have spent the years in a pattern of our lives being “on hold”.  That being said, we have been able to do a lot that we may not have been able to do if we had children in our lives.  We look around at friends and family who have passed us by with regard to their families, and we see the negatives, but choose to see the positives.  We are closer to many of the children of these people than we probably would have been had we had children immediately.

We have also been blessed to tap into the support group that is the adoption community.  We have made a few awesome friends (some of whom we have never actually met), through this community.

We want to be able to look back and say that we made the best of the situation we were given, and we continued to live our lives.  We also want to be able to look back and see that it was all worth it, and the special children that we end up raising, will be loved and honored even more than if everything had gone smoothly from the start.