One Year Later = One Year More

February marked the one year point from when our adoption dossier was submitted to CONANI to adopt a child from the Dominican Republic.  At that time, we expected the wait to be a year to a year and a half.  In February, we called our adoption counselor, Inna to get an update.  Unfortunately, the only news she had for us was that she expected the wait to probably be another year, so now we are looking at maybe Spring of 2019.  In a way, it is better for us as we will have a bit more time to save money, but it is also frustrating.  We have no idea of how many other families there are waiting ahead of us or what the hold up is.  Inna informed us that most of the children available for intercountry adoption are actually from Haiti and two things must occur in order for those children to be eligible for adoption.  First, Dominican citizenship must be established and then all efforts to adopt the child to a Dominican family must be tried, which usually involves rejection from 3 Dominican families before a child is eligible for intercountry adoption.    We are happy to adopt a child of either Dominican or Haitian decent.  We would really just love to have a second child and a sibling for our daughter.  We feel we have the resources and the desire to raise another child in our home.  We had to get our homestudy updated and our USCIS approval extended, so we have until April 2019 before we will need to get matched without any further updates or expenses.  So we wait, but life goes on and we keep ourselves busy.  I have been studying Spanish and enjoying it a lot.  Even before this adoption, I've always wanted to learn Spanish, so it is fun for me.

For this adoption, I have been much more patient.  Maybe it's because the promise of motherhood has already been fulfilled with our daughter Anjali, or the second time around, you just understand that things always take longer than expected.  Ultimately, I feel that a child will come into our lives when the time is right and as they say in espanol, vale todo- it's  all worth it!  You are worth the wait, my child!