China
Guatemala
Russia
Vietnam
Brazil
India
Life is very strange. Keith and I had discussed the issue of adoption before we were married. We had agreed that we would have two children and then if we wanted more that we would adopt. Our story, of course, is different.
We were both in our early thirties when we married so decided that we wanted to start our family straight away.
After a year of trying we went to the doctors and a minor procedure told us that we would not be having children biologically without a lot of help. We saw a fertility specialist and made the appointment to have the procedure done when Keith was offered a job across the other side of the country. So much for starting our family.
We moved across country and settled into our new lives. We pondered the issue of fertility treatment but never really committed ourselves to it. Then we contacted the local county agency about adopting. We were told that the next meeting was not until the Fall, which seemed an eternity away. We signed up and naively thought that we would go to the meeting, they would welcome us with open arms, and we would be able to adopt. Wrong! We went to the meeting and the follow up classes, and we learned that they had only placed one baby in the last three years. The news devastated us, we did not really want to adopt an older child, and the agency told us that when they did receive babies that they nearly always placed them with foster to adopt families. Fostering was not something that we saw in our future. The agency agreed to do a home study for us and to place us on their books in the off chance that a baby might come along.
We started to research other options and found out about a parenting class that was run twice a year in another town. We signed up for the six-week class and that was the turning point for us. The class was very informal and run by a lady that had adopted some fifteen years earlier. She had gathered together people who had adopted by all the means possible and they came to share their experiences with us. The class was emotionally draining, packed full of information, and probably the best money that we spent.
I was ready "to pay" to adopt before we went to the class, but Keith had not quite committed himself to the idea. In all of the books that we had read it had said that one partner was always ready to make a decision before the other. Of course we thought that this was stereotyping, but they were right. By the time that we went to the fifth class Keith was sure that this was the way to go for us. It was just a case of making a decision about a country, that we were going to adopt internationally was already established in our minds, the agency that we were going to use, and how we were going to find the money.
The agency was probably the hardest decision of all. We got onto the internet and called lots of the agencies. We gathered information and went to some informational meetings. The meetings floored us. One of them had hundreds of people there. We realized that, like us, most of the people were still in the research stage but wondered how the agency could cope with so many people and still maintain a personal connection. We had heard a lot about Families Thru International Adoption and when we had requested information through the internet from families that had already adopted, the ones that had used FTIA had only positive comments and also used the words like friendly, efficient and knowledgeable. We called for their prospectus and that initial phone call changed our lives forever. We mailed our application back to them and then a month later went to one of their informational meetings.
The main impression that we came away from that meeting with was that the children came first. There were lots of families with their children there and the meeting revolved around them. If the children were being noisy Keith and Sue quit talking until the children had toned themselves down, which was a refreshing change.
Our total experience with FTIA was wonderful. There was always someone there at the end of the phone to offer advice, encouragement, lend me a shoulder to cry on or just to let me vent steam. Our entire process took eight months from the mailing of the initial application to our travel date, which felt like a lifetime but in reality was no time at all.
Maria was eight months old when we brought her home and every day I look at her and wonder how we can be lucky enough to have her in our lives. We are contemplating going back to Russia to adopt another child and you can be sure that we will be contacting FTIA to help us realize our dream.
Keith & Jan
