The update?

[kyburg]

Well, I can't age out of the China program - our dossier made it in before the rules changed.

So - I guess they can keep me waiting as long as they want, but I can't age out. Yes, I talked to the founder - something tells me we may yet end up pretty good friends. The subject matter and urgency certainly doesn't hurt the level of contact required.

She says that they have been assured by the representatives they have to trust, and have been trustworthy in the past, that the wait will be no longer than three years and if things don't break loose right after the Olympics, then some very hard decisions will be made. I have to accept that for the moment - that's all we have.

More and more, though - I'm being pushed toward the Vietnam program for the second one. And more and more, that's feeling Right. Don't ask me why. I have Chinese coworkers. I have Vietnamese coworkers. I'd be fine with it.

I don't want just one. As much as I want a kid, I feel that's unfair to her in every way I can imagine. Just to have us - and nobody else.

Yes, she'll have friends. Family of her own chosing, someday. You have those hopes for your kids - things you had, at least.

But one of the things I'll insist on - that my own family of origin insisted on - is Home is always where a sibling is. At 3:00 in the morning, when nobody else cares - I can call a sib, and the phone will be answered. It may not always be preferable, it is NEVER forever - but someone will pick up the phone.

That's why there's such a push. I have to get through the first one to get to the second...and looking at it that way, time is getting short.

Which reminds me. I need to call my Mom.

Comments

[caitlin.livejournal.com]

So what do I do, then, having no fallback like that of mine?

I mean, I try to replicate that for others...

*shrug* WHo knows how well that tends to work, though.

C.

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

I'm slowly catching up on what you've written (yes, I do look through the journals of those that friend me).

With our daughter, she was such a handful that by the time she calmed down and my wife got past the post-partum depression (which still isn't really passed, after 12 years), we were too old to try for another. Combine that with the increased rate of genetic problems in our family, and ... my daughter is an only, just like me.

Hopefully we can meet Sunday. I'm reading some of your past posts, and you sound like an interesting person.

[anahata56.livejournal.com]

Would it bump you higher up the list if you were willing to take natural sibs right from the git?

Sometimes that works here--I don't know if the same rules apply to your situation, however.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

You choose your own family. That's what you do.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

My own clutter may hamper any efforts this weekend to leave town - keep your fingers crossed!

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I think the only way that would have worked would have been if DCFS had kept us instead of booting us. They place sibling groups - as far as I know, any of the placements we're currently looking at are one at a time only.

[luscious-purple.livejournal.com]

If I may speak up in defense of my status as "only" ... ahem-hem ... we're not all pigheaded egomaniac adults.

Granted, my parents didn't set out to have just one -- I might have been the youngest of five if there weren't so many miscarriages (which I didn't learn about till I was a teenager).

And sometimes siblings turn out so bad that people can *wish* they were only children.

Ten years ago I was in a weekly bereavement group for adults who had recently lost a parent. The two most miserable people in the group were the other two women (besides myself) who had lost their second parent (as opposed to having one surviving parent). Both of them had estranged siblings and that was like a knife through their hearts.

[gallo-de-pelea.livejournal.com]

Also an only child, and for many of the same reasons. (Mom had that RH blood thing.)

It's a trade-off, I suppose. I learned to entertain myself by reading and drawing really early in life, so that's cool.

[drlaurac.livejournal.com]

Yay!
Our China baby is our second baby, or else we would also be looking at a second adoption from another country for the same reasons. India is having problems with infanticide, and I would love to adopt from there, but there are mixed messages as to if they will adopt out to a non-Indian or not.

[redqueenofevil.livejournal.com]

Glad you're in before the cut off.

The whole sibling concept is foreign to me, since I grew up as an only child. I do have half siblings, but didn't know about them until I turned 26. It's just all strange.

[redqueenofevil.livejournal.com]

India will only adopt out to non-resident Indians and resident Indians. We're considering adopting from there, since my husband fits the criteria, although hubby's interested in domestic adoption too.

[moropus.livejournal.com]

My mom has no sibs, her parents are gone and I wonder who she calls for sympathy. I do realize some day she will be gone and I'll still have my brothers. It's good to have close family after your parents are gone. She only has her kids.


May you get a child soon. You would make a great mom.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Congrats on making it in! We wanted to have a sister for Sarah as well, but after we got her, we just didn't have the strength. Every now and then, she asks for a baby brother. (Poor kid, yeah, but if she had one, what would she say then?)

[drlaurac.livejournal.com]

It can be done, though it's a multisetp process. You take guardianship of a baby in India, after par]paper is sumitted that no one hopes to get the baby back. Then you go back to the US and adopt the baby there. These laws go back to around to late 18000s or early 1900s
http://travel.state.gov/family/adoption/country/country_398.html
I'm thinking if I still want #3 after Alex and Lily get settled, I would love a younger baby again.