Welcome to Our Adoption Journey

So—you got our link to the HugheyBaby blogsite!

My Little Bro, AKA Adan, and his lovely wife, Emily, were kind enough to set this up for me. It’s not that I couldn’t have done it myself—but seeing as how Adan thought it was a good idea, I thought it was an even better idea if he did it for me. There are few ways I can exert my big sister powers these days, since pinning him down is no longer an option! I think, however, that Emily played quite a role in moving things along. So, thank you, Adan and Emily for being great sports and helping us get this blog started!

I thought this would be a good way to share our adoption journey with family and friends who are interested in staying updated—in case you haven’t heard much about the process we are in to adopt a child from Ethiopia.

This past spring, Joel and I decided to take the leap in beginning our family and pursue adoption. Obviously, this is a very personal decision we came to after some months of soul-searching and then deciding to pursue the path that we felt God ultimately led us to. And this, in our minds, is only the beginning of our family—the rest of the story is yet to be revealed—we look forward to whatever means God gives us in growing our family in the future.

About 7 years ago now, when we lived in Ethiopia, Joel and I used to stay at a guesthouse in Addis Ababa, the capitol, while on respite breaks from the heat and challenges we faced living in Gambella. While there, we watched several European families pass through, getting acquainted with their newly adopted Ethiopian children. It was amazing to get a glimpse of families in the midst of this transition as we shared in what felt like intimate moments---sitting at the common dinner table, eating dinner together and observing new mothers and fathers attempting to communicate with their often older adopted children.

Outside of that experience, we also have felt for many years a personal affection for Ethiopia’s people and culture. While in college, Joel spent a month in Ethiopia in 1996 on a mission trip—and I later made an Ethiopian friend that same year, while studying at Daystar University in Kenya, named Kinday—who I “adopted” as my own brother and still keep in touch with to this day—he now lives in Boston.

The heart for adoption, however, really began before that. Looking back, I vaguely recall thinking about being an adoptive parent one day—not really imagining it becoming a reality but thinking, as we do with so many things, “one day, I’ll do that too.”

So, here we are!

Adoption agencies refer to the process for adoptive parents as a “paper pregnancy.” Interestingly, one adoptive mom at my church told me that her doctor informed her that an adoptive mother can gain 25% of the hormones of a pregnant woman. I’d really like to research that further, but I can vouch for the heightened sense of emotion and growing excitement with each step that draws us closer to receiving a referral of a child in the months ahead. We have requested an infant girl, so this may impact our wait time but not by too much. From start to finish (and we began at the end of July) they (our adoption agency) told us that we should be willing to wait at least a year but that it has not been taking quite that long.

The “paper pregnancy” basically amounts to a paper trail—complete with home fire inspection, home health inspection, interviews with a social worker to be rounded out by putting together a dossier of various legal documents to be sent off to Ethiopia. Some of the hoops we are required to jump through are specific to the adoption process in Maryland. Each state has different requirements, and Maryland apparently has a more rigorous process than some other states.

We currently are nearing the end of our homestudy and just recently had our interview with our social worker. A couple more documents and completion of 10 hours of required parent preparation training, and we will be gathering the final documents required for the dossier.

I expect that we will have everything completed by at least the end of November (if operating in task-driven mode) or January (if sidelined by Thanksgiving Turkey and Christmas), after which point we will begin the waiting process.

It’s difficult to project when we will get a referral, but we don’t expect anything sooner than March—and that would seem soon!

This is probably enough information for now. For anyone out there who wants to join us in our journey in some way, I recommend reading a fantastic book I am currently reading called “There Is No Me Without You,” sent to me by our adoption agency. It’s written by an American journalist who is also an adoptive parent—and tells the story of a remarkable Ethiopian woman who rediscovers hope and life after the loss of her husband and daughter by fostering multiple Ethiopian children, many left behind by parents who died as a result of AIDS.

More to come!