Panamanian Child

Hello everyone, We are the proud parents of an adopted, Panamanian 6-year old little boy. We didn't go the route of being in the US and adopting overseas. My husband is active duty military and we lived in Panama for 3 and 1/2 years. It was quite a unique experience. We'll never forget it and took many pictures to help our son see his country of birth. We met our son, when I was volunteering at a local orphanage. I visited many of the orphanages and was actually quite appalled. It was a very eye-opening experience. Our son was in what was called a very good orphanage. His bmother delivered him in the hospital and walked out to get food and never returned. He was small, hearing impaired- we didn't know this at the time and wouldn't have cared anyway, had scabies, and well into the 2nd stages of malnutrition when we got him home. We got legal custody of him, when he was 6-months old (on Christmas Eve- what a wonderful family Christmas present) and it took over 2-years to get the final adoption. We won't even go into the imigration part just yet. LOL. We had our share of dishonest attorneys and we had some awesome ones. We actually sat in the court rooms and at the US Embassy for hours on end. I wouldn't trade this experience or our son for anything in this world. We can now look back and laugh about some of the things that happened and look at our son and think of all of the love he's brought into our family. I will give some advice to the families adopting children from Panama. Keep up the faith and hope. There are many children there that need a wonderful home, so NEVER give up. The children there are not listed as abandoned ever, until someone inquires about them for the purpose of adoption. (It's so the government doesn't have to list them as a statistic for abandoned children.) It does take time, because the courts are working in conditions that are considered to be archaic to us. Our court reporter actually typed, word-for-word, (on what looked to be a 1940's typewriter) everything we said. It took forever. In the children's courts, their offices were piled sky high with folders. Some people were very helpful, while others sat back and looked like they only wanted to collect a paycheck. (Gee, we experience that in the US too.) I can help if people would like to ask questions about the country and experiences there. I lived it and would be glad to share some memories.