We got all of our government approvals and officially got our application in at the end of January. Our agency doesn't use the term HSTK (Home Study To Korea), but the date pretty much means the same thing. We're waiting for a referral.

We got news last week that the wait is going to be longer than our agency anticipated, which obviously isn't quite the news we wanted to hear. While we're not the sort of couple that is angsting over the days, of course we'd like a child. We're having a lot of fun being child-free and able to do what we want when we want, but we also like knowing that the parenting stage is coming up soon. Still, I'm not upset that it isn't as soon as we'd thought.

The reason for the expected delay is two-fold. First, other prospective parents are transferring to the Korea program from others (Guatemala, Vietnam, China) that have closed or have significant delays. I'm not so thrilled that these families might bump us back in the queue, but I can't begrudge them an end to their waiting, either. I refuse to think that I'm competing with them.

The second reason is that there are fewer children available for international adoption from Korea because there are more domestic adoptions in Korea and more single women parenting there from the start. That's wonderful news! I would rather never be able to adopt a child than to have families be torn apart or a society be unwilling or unable for whatever reason to take care of its own children. Sure, it's not good news for us, but ultimately adoption isn't about us. It's about these children. I want them to have the best homes possible. I want them to feel like the country they were born into truly wanted to nurture them. I want them to be with their biological parents if that's a good option.

So when my mother expresses her unhappiness that it's going to take longer than we expected to have a child, I have to argue with her. I'd like my child in my arms right now, but I would never, ever want to do that at the expense of others, as much as I can possibly help it. (My mother wouldn't want to either, for the record, but her grandmotherly clock is ticking.) I know I'll feel bad every day that my child's biological parents won't know him/her like I do, but at least I'll know that there indeed was a need for this particular child at that moment in time that we could fill. And I can hope that fewer children from every country every year need help from external sources, not because I think adoption is bad but because in the perfect world in my mind there would be fewer adoptions (international or domestic) needed at all.

So I'm thrilled that Korean society is really changing in tangible ways to encourage more domestic adoptions and more single-parent families. I'm over the moon that these children and their parents have more options for their futures than just international adoption. I'm happy to wait longer, if that's why.

One of the first things I did when we started to look at adoption as an immediate option instead of a future one was to get books from the library and go out on the internet to try to learn more about the adoptive experience. Specifically I wanted to know about the lives of people who were adopted, particularly transracially (domestically or internationally), and how they felt as adults looking back on things. I wanted to be sure that what we wanted to do was okay for them.

What I read was quite a slap in the face. The loudest voices that I found were surprisingly negative. They talked about how hard it was, how all of their parents had failed them, how they don't know who they truly were, how they were forced to give up their culture and possibly their language for another. They were lost, angry, and resentful. I had expected to read about having to deal with racism and identity issues, but I hadn't expected so much negativity about the entire process.

Between the reading and the similar perspectives of many adoptees presented in a video in our agency's pre-adopt classes, mr. contessa and I seriously questioned whether we were doing something wrong. We'd always been concerned about trying to strike a good balance between keeping our child's cultural identity and personal history alive and yet making them sure they were fully a part of our family, and these points of view made us feel like we were just being selfish and naive. Adoption was good for us but not for our child. It would scar them in serious ways. That was unacceptable. Even though we were a bit more optimistic when we tried to process the lives of these people through the lens of a different generation, the racial makeup of our community vs. theirs, and the particular races we were considering adopting, the bitter taste was still fresh in our mouths.

I turned to the experiences of adoptive parents of the past decade to try to sort out what's going on now (since their children are too young to write about it); it's quite different to be the only person of color in a white community thirty years ago than it is to be one of many people of color in a mixed community now. Not that it's simple, but it has to be much easier. The parents were overwhelmingly positive, but I found that I couldn't really trust a lot of them. Some were sensible and seemed to have their eyes wide open and focused upon their children, but others seemed so wrapped up in having the children they always wanted that the experiences of the individual people they were raising were less important. It was hard to see how meaningful their connections with their children's birth cultures were; the parents were more focused on how cute they looked in "native dress." Plus, cute little kids tend not to engender the worst negative feelings. Harder days could be ahead.

So despite being encouraged that life for these kids is quite different from the youths of the previous generation, I couldn't trust the parents who had unequivocal happy happy joy joy messages. Even our social worker told us not to worry about anything beyond the first few years. Nothing's that simple, and I'm not worried about how we'll feel. We'll be happy to be parents, stressed out beyond belief by it, and protective against any hurt for our children, just like every other parent in the world. I know adoption is good for us, but I couldn't set aside my worries about what adoption meant for our child.

So I've been turning to books written by scientists and social workers to help answer my questions. When you look at the data in the sources I've read, it seems clear that adopted children in general do well, bond with their families, trust their parents, and have good self-esteem. Sometimes they rank better than the average biological child surveyed. So despite the challenges that will definitely occur and the issues that are created for a child when s/he is adopted transracially, in general adoption appears to be a good thing. It creates whole people. When you combine those facts with the reality that orphans in Korea or China have already been separated from their birth families and need new homes right this very second, it's even easier to lean toward the positives. It's not fair that many of them currently need to be adopted to another country to have a home, but that's the reality. Living with us is definitely better than being in an orphanage.

I've been coming across more writings from adoptees speaking about their positive experiences. The positive ones are a bit quieter, or maybe I just wasn't looking in the right places. Still, even some of the most frustrated of them still love and cherish their families. While they might want to change the world they wouldn't want to change the fact that they, themselves, were adopted by their parents. That's so heartening to me. I don't think adoption is all pain or all bliss. It's not all racism and loss, nor is it all joy and understanding. It's life. Like everything else in life, it has its ups and downs. It has good parts and bad parts. Hearing people's stories that acknowledge both sides makes me more likely to believe them and to think that we can follow in their footsteps. Will we all be changed by adoption? Sure, but it doesn't have to be all negative. Yes, there are realities of racism and adoptism that we'll have to face, but at the end of the day we'll be a family first. That's worth it for all of us.

Well, the USCIS office was kind of like the DMV only remarkably more friendly. We were there for about an hour, sitting in three different waiting areas as various folks processed us and then having our fingers mashed around on scanners with varying amounts of water until the computer got a good image. At least it wasn't done with ink!

mr. contessa and I remarked that we'd never expected the Department of Homeland Security to have any interest in us (apart, perhaps, from logging our passports on our trips in and out of the country), but now we're in the system. They know our fingerprints belong to us. Cue ominous music.

Damn it, this is totally going to get in the way of me becoming a super-villain, isn't it? Hmph. There goes that career.

We went out for Korean food for lunch at this really authentic restaurant near us as a sort of celebration. Yum! We are planning on taking Korean this winter/spring, so it was fun to look at all of the hangul (the Korean script) on the menu and try to sort out sounds and words. In a couple of months it won't seem nearly so impossible! At least that's the plan...

I have to say it feels good to have another step behind us. Every item we cross off takes us that little bit closer to the end result. Patience. It's all about patience and making note of every time we inch ahead on this long road.

The contessa household is Thanksgiving Central, which means that we host all four parents every year. (We keep trying to invite more people to dilute the craziness, but all of our friends always have family plans, darn it.) It was a great Thanksgiving this year (even if I over-steamed the broccoli a tad... but who comes to Thanksgiving dinner for broccoli, hmm?), but the talk around the table was about one thing and one thing only: our future child. Oy.

Now, don't get me wrong - I definitely don't mind talking about adoption with people I'm close to, and I can chatter away all day about it, but our parents are so ready for us to have our child now that it's kind of... startling. Mostly it's fine, but every once in a while I see the gleam in their eyes and half expect them to start glowing red or something. At least they were great about not pressuring us to have kids before. Now that we're adopting, though, all bets are off.

They want to talk about everything: timelines (which they think are too long), babysitting (which they want to do lots of), integrating Korean culture into our family (which they're doing their best to jump into, my parents more successfully than my in-laws thus far), names (which they're ready for us to pick out), toys (which they want to buy already), timelines again (see above), etc. etc. etc. It went on for hours.

I find I'm already having to put up boundaries. I didn't expect it so soon, what with there probably being a year or more to wait before we have a child, but I'm trying to look at it as me being a pre-mother. I'm getting those muscles ready. For example, when the grandparents started to talk about homecoming I set the expectation that when we come home with our child we will probably have a moratorium on visitors for a few days. The child will be going through a huge transition emotionally and physically (and so will we!), and we want him/her to feel as safe and secure with us as possible. We want to come together as a unit first, at least a little, before introducing more crazy people who will want to hug and kiss and coo. As you might imagine, the grandparents aren't so thrilled about the delay. I half expect to find some of them pressed up against the windows peering in.

It's not about them, though; it's about us. It's an interesting internal shift, because although mr. contessa and I have been together for a long time we've always been "The Kids" in relation to the rest of the family. We might host Thanksgiving and organize trips and whatnot, but we aren't the heads of the family. Now it's going to be about us first and the greater family second. If we need time to bond, we're going to take it. (We do, however, reserve the right to call in reinforcements if we're swamped.) If our child's knowledge of his/her foster mother is important then our own comfort and sense of stability that would come with escorting instead of traveling gets tossed out the window. If my mother-in-law continues to smoke then her access to our child will be limited. Period. Our little family unit - really, the child who will be ours - comes first. The rest of the family just has to fall in line. And they will.

If good fences make good neighbors, do good boundaries make good families? I hope so! I know these instincts aren't news to those of you who already have children, but it's a sign of changes in our perspective from people to parents.

There's more to say, but I'm falling over at the keyboard. I'd best head to bed, because I have to get up early in the morning... for fingerprinting!

Our social worker finished our home study a couple of weeks ago (hurrah!), and we sent in our I600-A application the next day. Three days later we had our letter with our fingerprinting appointment times, and we'll go in for the first slot, which is on Tuesday. We're getting there! Once we get the I171-H (pre-approval to adopt an orphan), our home study and dossier can go to Korea for the long (we hope not too long, but the guidelines are 10-13 months) wait for a referral. Then it's a 3-6 month wait 'til the child comes home and is truly ours.

We feel very fortunate that thus far we've been moving faster than the averages. Fingers crossed that the trend continues as long as possible!

Our social worker sent us a copy of our home study today to check for inaccuracies... which means that we might be able to send off our I600-A to the government next week! Just this morning I was lamenting to mr. contessa (should I call him the count?) that since the I600-As only go out once a week on Tuesday mornings we could easily be stuck sending in our stuff on Thanksgiving week, which will just delay things further. I'm hopeful that they might get the FBI fingerprinting appointment letter out in the mail before Thanksgiving... if our social worker gets the home study done in time!

Off to finish up the paperwork! Also, it looks like we'll be traveling to Korea to pick up our little one; as much as we're right about how much harder the transition will be, we simply cannot miss the chance to find out as much information as possible for our child.

The big topic of debate at the contessa household today is whether or not to go to Korea to pick up our child when s/he is available or whether to have him/her escorted to our local airport and go from there. Since the timing for both options is the same, it's a thorny issue, with lots of huge pros and cons, but I'd thought we'd pretty much decided to escort until I got an e-mail from our social worker last night begging us to reconsider. I'm kind of baffled by it, really, because she ought to know by now that we put a lot of (some might say too much) thought into every single decision along the way and she continually stresses that escorting is a great option, but she pretty much badgered us to keep thinking about it. I'm pretty sure if we'd decided to travel she wouldn't be badgering us to keep our minds open about escorting.

Traveling is a great option. We'd get to meet the foster family, see Korea (or at least Seoul), and have a story to tell about going around the world to pick up our child. We're not afraid of traveling in Asia (mr. contessa has been to Japan a number of times), and we can afford to fly at least business class so the lengthy plane ride will be more comfortable. At first we were totally for this option. Then we got some more information.

The reality of going to Korea to pick up a child, unlike China where you take custody for at least a week and a half while you're there, is that we wouldn't take custody of our child until the afternoon we leave for the airport, no matter how long we stay. So even though we should have seen our child a couple of times beforehand the first time we are alone is pretty much on the way to the airport. We'd barely know each other, and our child would have no reason to trust or be comforted by us. We wouldn't know how s/he likes to be rocked or even fed. The first time we'd change a diaper would be in an airport bathroom or at 30,000 feet. The first time we'd make formula would be in the airplane kitchen. The first time we'd try to soothe our child's crying would be in a confined space where I, at least, would be very anxious and it would translate to the child.

The trip is quite long, and the best flight for us seems to be a non-stop flight from Seoul to New York City, which avoids long lay-overs and an extended travel timeline. However, we don't live in New York. We live something like four hours away. So we'd have to hire a car to pick us up at the airport (with our car seat, which we'd have to take to Korea and back) and drive us home. It's better than taking a puddlejumper business flight, since we'd have more room, more freedom, and no take-off and landing to hurt the little one's ears, but it's still an exhausting ride.

Then we'd finally get home. The cat would be yowling her head off because she missed us, whatever food there would be in the fridge would have been provided by my parents (and while my Mom is wonderful she's not that great at getting exactly what is put on a list), and we'd be tired and strung out from the trip. As often as we fly, I'm not a great traveler even under the best of circumstances, and long flights leave me shaken for days. Then there's the jet-lag for all of us. We're all going to be wrecks. Hell of a way to start a family, right?

I know we can do it, either way, but I also know that the transition to familyhood is going to be hard on all of us, our child especially, and I would feel much better knowing that I'll at least be relatively rested and organized so that when I start the road of sleep-deprivation and bonding issues I'll be doing my absolute best. I feel like I'd be short-changing our child by being exhausted from the trip, and I know I'll feel horrible about myself as a mother if I don't think I'm as patient, caring, and loving as I want to be because I'm so drained. At least some of the three of us should be doing well. I think our crucial first weeks together will go much better if I start out fresh. They'll still be chaotic and emotional and hard and wonderful weeks, but they'll be more organized and less frantic.

On the other hand, this decision doesn't just have short-term ramifications. Although we might be able to get information about and pictures from the foster family even if we don't travel, losing a link to our child's past seems irresponsible at best. I need to do more research, because I know there are families at our agency who are in contact with the foster families through Holt in Korea long after the adoption. If communicating with them and possibly meeting them in a future trip is an option, I'd feel less bad about not meeting them at the moment of placement. If we're going to lose the opportunity to give our child details about his or her early life, though, which they might be desperate for later on, then it's a much harder decision. It becomes a question of a few difficult weeks upfront or unanswered questions down the line.

Every time I go through the pros and cons I come to the same conclusion: escorting would be much, much better for us as a new family, but for my child's sake I don't want to lose the information about and the connection with the foster familiy. Maybe I can find a happy medium.

mr. contessa, by the way, is no help whatsoever. I mean, we've discussed this issue for months now, and we are generally on the same page, but on the other hand he seems to be driven by the thought of how many trips we might be able to go on. He was excited for escorting first because it meant we could go to Asia on our own in the spring to visit Korea and Japan as tourists, and now he's excited for traveling because we could go to Italy in the spring and still go to Korea whenever we're cleared to travel. Unfair! If I'm not taking my extreme dislike of flying into account (other than that it will impact how good a parent I can be), he can't take his love of travel into account, either!

ETA: And a timely link - Finding Zhao Gu, about an adoptive father of a Chinese girl and his search for the person who found her.

Well, that was sort of a melancholy post, wasn't it? I guess I'm having some backlash against the part of the adoption community that is effusive about how they're rescuing children and how once they're home they become Americans and don't have to deal with pesky birthparents and complex birth cultures. That's just not my approach. Sure, we're taking a child out of institutionalized care and giving them a loving family and brighter prospects for their future, but we're still the lucky ones in the equation.

Anyway, enough about that. Now it's all about me! :)

It's my blog, so I feel like I ought to introduce myself a little. I'm in my early thirties and have been married to mr. contessa for eight years. We live in New England in a rural but affluent suburb near a big, multicultural city, and we share our home with a very opinionated little cat (also adopted, though she'd say she adopted us). Despite my username, I'm probably not wearing shoes when I'm blogging; I love all sorts of shoes, but I tend to be in slippers around the house. :)

We've been talking about adoption forever. I've always thought we'd adopt at least some of our children (and in fact would have chosen to adopt all of them from the start had I not had a husband who wanted a mix), and after multiple unexplained ectopic pregnancies it became clear to us that we simply weren't interested in getting involved with the amount of medical interference that might or might not be necessary for having a safe and healthy pregnancy. It wasn't worth it to us to go down that road. Adoption for all of our children was an easy choice.

I did a lot of research about agencies and programs and whatnot before deciding on our agency, whose ethical stance (despite it not always working in our favor) for the welfare of the children was one of my greatest deciding factors. They're also established, respected, non-profit, and have solid partners in each country. After sending in our application and starting up the home study process we had focused in on international adoption and had narrowed down our preferred countries to China and Korea, ultimately deciding on Korea. There are adoptees from both countries in our family. We're more comfortable with the amount of medical and background information available from Korea and the process itself, as well as the slight but real possibility of having some contact with the birth family down the line. It was a treat that our choice also gave us far less paperwork and a much shorter wait, but that wasn't why we picked it.

We're currently waiting for our social worker to finish up our home study and for Holt in Korea officially to pre-approve us so that we can send in our I600-A, which is already filled out and sitting in the other room. Our goal is never to be the side of things holding up the process, although it's definitely hard to wait for people to do things in their own time. We hope by or before mid-January to have our dossier to Holt, and then we begin the wait for the referral of our child... and then we wait a few months more before he or she comes home. We're going to be very good at waiting by the time this process is finished! :)

We're excited, as you might imagine, to have a child, and I'm excited and nervous at the same time about the prospect of including another culture in our family's traditions. Fortunately we've always had Asian art in the house and have eaten Asian food of various sorts, as well as having a number of very good Asian friends in our lives over the years, so it's not like we're starting from absolutely nothing, but it's important to me that we pay more than lip-service to Korean culture. I'd like what we teach to be authentic, meaningful, and full of context. We're also talking about learning Korean, ourselves, and we are tentatively planning a trip there in the spring. I don't want our family to be overwhelmed by Korean culture to the detriment of the rest of who we are, but just as we have combined mr. contessa's Italian heritage with my Dutch one in our food and celebratory traditions so will we add Korean pieces as well. At least that's the plan!

I had planned to kick off this blog with a post talking about our particular journey to adoption, but I've been thinking a lot about loss and adoption over the past few days. It seems as good a place as any to start, because one of the unfortunate truths about adoption is that it, too, begins with loss.

Let me just say that I'm still working through my feelings on these topics, so please be understanding of my rambling. I'm not an authority on any of it, but I'm thinking a lot.

All members of the Adoption Triad - the birth family, the child, and the adoptive family - have their own losses as part of adoption. I as an adoptive parent think that I have it the easiest in many ways. Although by choosing adoption mr. contessa and I have also made a choice not to have biological children (since we think it's better for our own particular family not to be blended, which is a very personal choice specific to any given family), I am not overly feeling the loss of biological children. I had always planned to adopt in some way or other so while I do wonder what a child would look like with my genes and mr. contessa's that's more of an intellectual curiosity than anything. That doesn't change how I feel about adopted children. A lot of adoptive parents do have to feel the loss of biological children, though, and no matter how wonderful and truly loving parents they will become to adopted children they have to deal with the less positive feelings first, too. It isn't a reality to be minimized.

The loss that I am feeling most strongly is more the potential redefinition of what family means. In my life, family is not only biological but also chosen. My cousins by adoption are no less cousins to me than the ones born of my father's sister. I have close friends who are like siblings to me; I'd give up a kidney to save them, I'd trust them with my life or that of my child. They will be the aunts and uncles to my children in as real a way as my biological siblings would be if I had them. They're family.

However, I worry that our children won't feel that way. Sure, a lot of what they'll think will be shaped by what we say and do over the years, and I know I'm thinking way ahead about that, but I'd always expected that our biological children would remain close to us, emotionally if not physically. It's a mainstay of how mr. contessa and I live our lives; family is the core of everything. So even as we've gone off to college or gotten jobs family's still been important. Part of what I've lost in adoption is the (quite probably false) sense of security in feeling that my children will view our family much the same way. Certainly we will teach them our values, but it seems like some measurable portion of adopted children feel like they've never belonged in their family and are in seach of something else. My personal, I'm sure relatively naive, belief is that a lot of that feeling of outsiderness has more to do with either where/how they were raised and the common worries shared by their particular age groups than being adopted per se, but it still concerns me that I will love, support, and nurture my children and give them this great family only to have them reject it when they get to college. I know it's a lot less simple than that and that our attitudes will be key in making sure that won't happen (and I really don't think it will, when I'm being logical), but that's my biggest loss right there - the assumption that my children will love my family and want to be a part of it. I was probably foolish to think that biological children would feel that way, given what happens every day in families, but that our adopted child can and will feel like an outsider in his or her own home at least once and will blame that on not carrying our genes makes me less than 100% sure that the family we're trying to build will actually happen.

Obviously I think this is the least of the losses experienced in adoption, and I feel rather selfish talking about it. The worries will probably diminish as we raise our children and get to know them and their relationship to us. I feel pretty certain that our values will translate and that their explorations of their identities (which we all do as we grow up) will include them being contessas through and through. Still, right now it's a tangible concern to me. I'm not worried about our children preferring their birth parents, but I'm worried about them not feeling like they're a part of us. I want to be sure I do everything in my power for them to be fully themselves in all ways, from following their passions wherever they lead them and learning about diverse cultures to totally feeling like contessas as well as the children of their birthparents. Sheesh, that's all?

This post was brought on by a number of posts in recent days (a good starting place is by Third Mom) by first/birth mothers talking about how unhappy they are about their adoptions. I feel for them, truly. It's horrible to feel that you could be doing a better job than the adoptive parents or that you were pressured to give up your parental rights when you actually could have had other choices. It breaks my heart to hear the pain these women are in. Although we are adopting internationally, where the expectations from the moment of pregnancy can be quite different for the birth mother than they are here (i.e. they may never have thought it might be an option to parent the child), I cannot fool myself into thinking that birth parents from another country feel any less pain. Slightly different pain, perhaps, because of their different situations, but I can't imagine giving birth to a child and not thinking about him or her forever, even if that child's life may have many more opportunties elsewhere. That's a loss that they must carry around each and every day.

Adopted children have losses, too, of course, and those are the ones I've read about the most in books and online. They're disconnected from their birth family and in the case of international adoption also birth culture, and there's a lot they have to sort out at all ages. Transracial adoptees know they are adopted every time they look in the mirror or at a family photograph. While we'll try to cushion our own children's experiences as much as possible and give them an open environment in which to explore their birth culture and express their positive and negative feelings, there's no way getting around the reality that they are not only not with their birth family but not in their birth country. It's only natural for them to wonder 'what if' quite a bit in their lives or to feel different from their non-adopted peers. Whether it's curiosity or raw pain, it can't be easy.

One of the reasons we chose Korea as the country of origin for our children is the amount of information that's available. Not only will we have some medical information about the mother and lots about the child from his or her birth but there's the possibility either immediately or down the line for the birth family and the child to reconnect in some way. There is a trend for more openness in Korean adoption, which I think is only to the benefit of all involved. mr. contessa and I are really positive about it, and even if the birth mother chooses to have a closed adoption if nothing else we'll have more answers from the beginning than we would in other international programs. It doesn't remove the losses, but maybe it helps a bit.

People have written lengthy books on the issues of adoption and loss, and I'm not trying to re-create them here. However, as I sit here as a woman waiting to become a mother through adoption let me just say that among the many unfairnesses of the world that I rail against daily, the fact that adoption must always begin with loss is one of the most painful to me right now. It's horrible that a joyful event - a family getting a child and a child getting a family - must be underscored with loss as well. They can't be divorced. The joy that I will feel having my new son or daughter fall asleep in my arms (please, let him or her sleep!) will be at the expense of some other mother not holding that child, quite possibly never holding that child again. It's an unfair situation, for the families and for the child, who should only be greeted with delight and love.

Do I think we should stop adoption because it hurts so many people? No, I don't, because the world isn't perfect and there are children who need homes. (There are families who want children, too, but in my opinion they shouldn't be driving the adoption process - otherwise it's too much like child trafficking. I'll post something longer about my thoughts on adoption ethics at some point soon.) There are many birth families for whom adoption is unquestionably the right choice, and it seems obvious to me that it's better for children to be in a loving home across the ocean from where they were born than in an orphanage across the street. According to a number of studies I've read about, adoptees ultimately are just as happy and have just as much self-esteem as non-adopted people, so I believe in my heart that adoption can be positive for all involved.

Nonetheless, it's a bitter pill to swallow that adoption, even in the best of circumstances, always has to have loss tied up with it. We're going to celebrate the arrival of our children with great joy (and trepidation, as all parents must feel with each new child!), but I know there's going to be a part of me that will be aching for the birth family and my own son or daughter at what it means for them, too. As I celebrate what is and will be, I grieve for them, for what might have been in a different world. In that way, though, I also honor them. Since life isn't fair, that's the best I can do.