The Story Continues

After our attempt at having a biological child failed, we took a few months to re-evaluate and decide what our next steps would be. It took me a months to grieve our infertility and the fact that we wouldn't have a biological child. I just couldn't bring myself to try IVF again. It reeked havoc with my body and I just couldn't do it again, emotionally or physically.

We decided in February 2006 to adopt. It was more important to me to be a mom than to be pregnant. We started the long process of our homestudy, including getting police checks, health checks, financial checks, references from our friends and family and meeting with a social worker to evaluate us. After eight months, our file finally made it's way to China. We hunkered down and waited for a referral and waited and waited. Our 1.5 year wait has now turned into a nine year wait according to our agency. To add insult to injury, the agency now wants to charge us a fee to have our file sit and collect dust.

We decided to proceed with another adoption, hoping the second one would be completed first and first one second so we would still have our two bean sprouts. We started the homestudy process all over again. Again, we waited and waited for our referral. We were told our wait would be eight months. Then it turned into 16 months, then 18. We started to seriously wonder if it was in the cards for us. Everywhere we turned there were more walls and more obstacles. We considered pulling both our files and living child free. Then three weeks later our second agency declared bankruptcy.

It felt like we were being taken for a ride by everyone, by doctors, social workers and adoption agencies. Now we really didn't know what to do next.