What you wished you would have asked...

At least one agency will try and dissuade you from asking for healthy children under the age of 5. They have not received many referrals lately for that age group and healthy children. They say that all the children they received for referrals were special needs. You're more likely to receive referrals of 5-10 year olds through this agency. The questions to ask - how long is the wait for one child? how long is the wait for a sibling group of 2? 3? How long is the wait for the age group of 1-5? 5-7? 7-10? How many special needs have you received as referrals from Poland in the past year vs how many were healthy?

I'd be very careful, no matter what any agency tells you, about expecting a quick referral of a singleton or 1-2 kids under the age of 5 with "no" issues from Poland. There are lots of reasons for this, mostly because Poland adopts its own children, esp. young ones. The climate has changed in the last 1-2 years, too, to favor EU countries for younger children over USA for international adoptions. If you look around at the blogs and discussion groups, you'll find that the wait time for younger children can be long, usually at least 2 years for 1-2 kids under 2. Sometimes it's not, but most often today it is. It used to be different. If you're speaking to an agency, too, make sure you ask the last time they placed a child from Poland and how many placements they do a year. Poland adopts roughly 50 children to the US each year, most in sibling groups of 2-3, most over the age of 5. That means that any agency adopting singletons under 5 isn't placing a high volume of children. And then there is the issue of "special needs," which can be defined in many ways within the adoption community, including *any* adopted child. Let's face it, kids who are being referred internationally from Poland have already been up for adoption in their home country and have not been adopted for whatever reason. This means they've been through some stuff, including different placements in foster/orphanage care, abuse/neglect in their homes, etc. They're unlikely to be 100% okay in every way. That doesn't mean that you can't find a healthy child, just that you should be aware of your own boundaries and needs in terms of what you might be able to accept/fix, and how much flexibility that will give you in accepting or declining referrals.