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As a new addition to the International Adoption blog, I wanted to take a few moments to introduce myself. My name is Courtney, and I am a married, stay-at-home mom of two beautiful children (two-point-five actually, but more on that later). My son was born to me biologically (and adopted by my husband) and my daughter is adopted from Guatemala. In addition, we are in the very early stages of a second (and final) international adoption; we are hoping to adopt a baby-to-toddler boy from Ethiopia. We just completed our home study visit and are now elbows-deep in the paperwork aspect of adoption. We are delighted to have a second adoption in the works, and I hope to explore some of our experiences at some point later in this blog.
I’m also writing at AdoptionBlogs for the “Guatemala” and “Adoptive Parenting” blogs—the latter of which hosts my first entry, explaining how my husband and I came to choose adoption to further our family. However, an issue I did not discuss in that entry is how we came to choose international adoption over domestic. I believe that adoption in any form is simply beautiful in every capacity of the word—from the brave, strong, loving birth parents to the child’s/children’s adoptive families, bursting at the seams with love, dreams, and excitement.
My son, Bear, was born on May 1, 2006, and by mid-July of that same year, we had already signed with an adoption agency that had a great program for Guatemalan adoptions. We knew—at least through the final months of my pregnancy—that we were leaning toward adoption to add to our family. So, why did we choose to adopt internationally?
It’s not that we felt (or feel) one program is superior over the other—far from it, in fact, since they’re both such an amazing way to add to or build a family. It’s also not because we felt we were “saving” an internationally-born child, or anything of that caliber. The simple reason, cut and dry? We wanted our children to be very close in age; we wanted to adopt a child older than a newborn but younger than a toddler. When we spoke with several agencies that specialized in domestic adoption, most of the popular programs were newborn-focused. Since we knew the time frame was really open as we’d have to wait to be selected by a birth mother, we started exploring international adoption. Just before then, we had learned the list to get enrolled in the classes necessary to adopt through the Department of Children and Family Services was quite lengthy to say the least (not surprisingly, since it’s such a great program as well). In a way, I feel this was destiny knocking at our door, leading us to focus on the possibility of international adoption. After a bit of country-based research, we fell head-over-heels in love with Guatemala. And the rest, as they say, is history.
I hope that, as a co-blogger here, I can share my insight, experiences, and research with those who have adopted internationally or have an interest in international adoption, alongside my very insightful and thorough co-blogger, Mandy. International adoption has been and will forever be something that’s very near to my heart and important to our family, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts in this blog.
Photo Credit: 2009 Courtney O.
