Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The bump turned out to be nothing major- hooray!

One year after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, an event that changed millions of lives forever, we received the news that will hopefully change ours forever too.

Turns out our speed bump was just that, a bump in the road that we have over come, with a lot of prayers and some patience. I will tell you, now that it looks like we are in the clear, what happened.

When researching the laws for adopting from Haiti, I read that in the case of adoptive parents who have biological children (we have 2), at least one parent must be 35 years old and the parents must have been married for at least 10 years. No problem because I am 35 and my husband and I have been married for 10 years. However, I talked to the wonderful representative at our agency and she told me that I was mistaken. If only one parent is 35 or older, there can be no bio children. If there are bio children, both parents must be 35 or older. That presented a problem because my hubby is only 33. When she told me that my heart sank and I almost started crying. She said the only way around it was if there was infertility and there could be no more bio children. I told her I was not infertile but I should not have any more children for medical reasons. She said that might work but that I would need a notarized letter from my doctor. I frantically called my Dr.'s office and left a message with his assistant stating what I needed and why.

Let me explain a little bit about my medical background. After having my son, I got pregnant with my first daughter. I was very sick during my pregnancy with her and had hyperemesis. I was hospitalized 11 times in 20 weeks. My daughter was stillborn at 20 weeks and we found out later it was due to a blood clotting disorder that I didn't even know I had. A few months later I became pregnant again with my second daughter. I took anti nausea meds and gave myself shots of blood thinners every day. She was born 4 weeks early. I had to be hospitalized after her birth because I bled out and she was in the hospital for 4 days because she was too weak to eat. It was very scary. So, yes, medically I should not have any more bio children.

I was very impatient waiting for my Dr to call back. I kept telling myself that I needed to be patient and trust that God had everything in control. I was just very worried that my Dr might  not agree to write the letter. The next day, I still had not heard from him by 2 so I called his office back and spoke with his assistant. She was very nice and explained to me that she had given him the message but that he had been busy and he would call me back as soon  as he could. So, the wait continued. I tried to put it out of my mind but honestly, the hours dragged by and I sat there with my phone in my hand just waiting for him to call. That was all I could think about. Finally, last night when I was just getting to the gym at 6pm, the phone rang. Almost the first words out of his mouth were, "What do you need the letter to say?" I was so relieved I almost started to cry. He agreed to write the letter as he agreed that medically it was too dangerous for me to have any more children of my own and that adoption was a good option for us. 

I emailed our representative at the agency last night. This morning she called her contact in Haiti to run our situation by her to make sure it sounded good and it sounded like it would pass IBESR (Haiti's Social Services). She gave us the green light. So, away we go! We got the official application for the agency so I am working on that today and hope to mail it off by the end of this week. Wow, we are off and running!

3 comments:

  1. Yay! I'm so glad you explained all of that, I was wondering what happened. Welcome to the lovely up and downs...there will be more fun in the future. :) :)

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  2. Yay! So glad it all worked out. I tell ya, I have been working on our adoption for over a year and I swear every time I hear someone state what the laws in Haiti are for adoptions, they are different. I still have no idea what the real requirements are! I've been told we are good to go, but seriously - can it be that difficult to figure out?

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  3. Thank you Kacey and Denise!
    Denise-
    I agree it is so confusing and hard to decifer!

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