Disappointment

We found out today that we will definitely not be bringing our son home this summer. That is has been the stance of our agency lately, but I was holding out a little hope as long as I could. Now I keep replaying the past few weeks in my mind, trying to figure out if anything could have been done differently.

This all started when our agency gave us the choice of filing our I600 paperwork in the U.S. or the DRC. This was a surprise because all along we were discouraged from filing in Congo, but our agency received some vague information from the US Embassy. The Embassy has to do orphan  investigations in the city that the child is from and they planned to go to our child's home city in June. Our agency told us we may or may not have a better chance of being a part of the June investigation if we filed in the DRC. Doing this would have required one of us to make an extra trip to Congo for a few days. This was never much of an option because we did not get our yellow fever shots early enough (you have to get them 2 weeks before travel). So, all of this was brought up to us very last minute and they gave us very vague information. Based on this we decided to go ahead with the original plan and file our paperwork in the U.S. Now that the investigations are complete, we have received confirmation that our son's case was not included in them. It turns out that those families who did file their I600 in the DRC were included. Nobody really knows when the Embassy will return to that city to do more investigations, but the estimates are at least 6 months.

How could things have gone differently? Maybe if our home study agency was more efficient and did not take 7 whole months to complete our home study report, then we would have been farther along in the process by now and our I600 would have already been approved (although we may have been matched with a different child). If we had received our yellow fever shots earlier along in the process, then maybe we would have taken the extra trip to Congo. Our agency gave us absolutely no guidance about when to get our shots until it was too late. It's so aggravating to think that if just one or two things happened a few weeks quicker, we would probably be bringing our son home this summer. Some things cannot be controlled, but I do feel the Embassy and our agency let us down somewhat.  There is no reason why the Embassy could not give accurate information to our agency more than 2 weeks in advance about who will be included in the investigation. Also, our agency used different terminology every time we spoke to them about our child's chances of being investigated. They went from "we just don't know" to "he will not be included" after it was already too late for us to do anything. They also should have given us guidance on our required vaccinations earlier on in the process.

So, because of the decisions and actions of many people, our baby will probably spend another 6 months without a family and adequate medical care. There is nothing we can do about it except pray. I pray that we will really not have to wait 6 months for them to do another batch of investigations. I pray that our child will remain as healthy as possible until we are allowed to bring him home. I pray that corruption or civil unrest will not force the adoption program in Congo to close before our adoption is complete. The DRC is a unsettled place; a lot can happen in 6 months. So, we are just in wait and pray mode.