Advertisements
My husband and I have just been offered a little boy to adopt. This little boy happens to be the second child we were offered and than told we could not adopt due to a Panamanian couple interested. Well something happened with that and he was available again. Don't ask me what happened because I have no idea. We hesitated and asked alot of questions and our agency assured us that he is truly available and if we want him he is ours. We prayed about it and decided we would take the referral. Now travel time, our agency tells us April. I have emailed them two times and asked verbally one time about his legal status my emails have not been returned yet so I am waiting on that information. If he does not have his parental right terminated that is one court date and than he will get another for his adoption. This is my understanding. I have been told a referral will take three to six months, the travel time to get the child is truly up in the air and depends on the court and the judge. From my personal experience, it may seem like the wait is terrible, but it is better to have all your ducks in a row and make sure that child is yours and you can take him/her home when you go get them. Panama reminds me a little of here and our foster system, only Panama actually works faster and doesn't leave kids stuck in the system. As I said before this is only my understanding so if someone wants to give other advise I would love to have it:) If you get a referral and the parental rights are terminated you are halfway home, if not you are starting. The bottom line is the work that is being done is to bring the child home. The wait is really hard, but the not knowing what is going on in Panama and with our paperwork to me is even harder. I like things upfront and in black and white, gray scares me. We are truly excited about this little boy and are easily getting attached to him, it was almost impossible not too. If something happens (our agency assures us it wont, but) God forbid I will truly be a nut case and you all will be emailing me in a padded room. Keep us in your prayers, and hang in there. This referral came to us in approximatly three months of having our ppaperwork in the DNA. We are all going to be parents, keep your faith!!!!!
TanyaB
Like
Share
Advertisements
Tayna,
First off, thank you for being so open and informative about what is happening with your adoption. It really helps to have some feedback from people when it is such unknown territory. I wish it had been easier for you up to this point, but I am praying it
goes very smooth from here on out. Good luck with everything, I know you will keep us informed. Know that you have support out here and people thinking of you.
Wendy :)
Hello,
I heard back from our agency and they assure us that we need to be patient and if the timeline is going to change they will inform us of that change, and mostly to relax a bit because it is going to all work out:) I am still waiting to hear where we are at in the court process, but any information is helpful. They truly have their job cut out for them with my husband and myself, we are really really nervous. I can only imagine it must be similiar to a family that suffers a miscarriage, when you get pg again you are scared until the dr tells you everything will be ok, and than inside you pray like hell that everything will really be ok:) My husband and I decided that we have two choices here we can 1. stay nervous and nerotic, or 2. stay cautious and concerned, but allow ourselves to love this little boy. We have chosen to do number two. There is just certain things that are going to drive us all nuts about a new program. Once we have our children and decide to adopt from Panama again we can laugh at how hard it all was and tell all the new memebers of this forum to be thankful for all the firsts on the board. Can you actually believe we may look back at all this and laugh, if we don't laugh at least we can be thankful we survived:)
Keep the Faith everyone, we are going to get our children!!!!!
TanyaB
That's the spirit, Tanya!!! :D
I also wanted to post some words of encouragement I received today from another family who adopted (independently, using our attorney) last summer (2002) from Panama.
She wrote that she is not surprised that our case is dragging on for so long and that the abandonment process which is supposed to take 3 months is now in its 6th month.
But, she added:
"What is amazing is that one day when least expected everybody does what they are supposed to do and all of a sudden you are back in the US thinking that everything that happened was just a bad dream.
Keep trusting (our attorney) and believe me she is a hare among
turtles. Hard to understand? Yes, but that is the Panamanian reality. Don't give up and keep your thoughts positive. I'll keep praying for you."
Every now and then we just need this subtle reminder that things will eventually fall into place, even if it happens several thousand dollars later. (Ugh.) :p
Rebecca
Advertisements
Tanya,
Congratulations. You have been in our prayers after the referral was taken back. It was very scary for us as our son had not had the parental rights terminated yet. I agree the waiting and not knowing is the worse. We received our referral within 6 weeks of our dossier going to Panama. You would think that would be great; however, we have been waiting since.
Dossier submitted: July 11th, 2003
Refferal: August 25th, 2003
Court Date: March 8th, 2004
Our referral was for a 6 week old boy, so we knew the wait would be at least 3 months. It appears that the paperwork is now taking up to 6 months, and then you have to have a court date scheduled.
We are working with our agency (Commonwealth) now because we are told to plan on spending 4 weeks after the court date in Panama. We believe this is so the US Embassy can process all their paperwork; however we are still waiting on clarification on the 4 week window.
Lauri
Referral Received Sep 5th
Court Date Set for March 8th