It sure ain't easy preparing for adoption

[This is Murray talking; Donna does not sanction this particular posting:] You know what I’ve concluded after the past few days. Most of you guys out there that had your kids by birth got it too easy. Maybe it was a bottle of wine, or a blackout, or even a snowstorm in January. Then you are pregnant…a few hormonal meltdowns…a debate over whether to buy chocolate or real cigars….and then a few hours of labour. And there you have it…Now I won’t debate you on the work of dealing with an infant and early or late night feedings. Maybe things even up a bit there.
But as far as the point of deciding to conceive vs. deciding to adopt to the point of legal responsibility for a child(ren), you really can’t compare the two processes. Now, many of you know the work we (OK, OK mostly Donna) have done and the patience and heartache we have experienced over the past three years in trying get approval from Ukraine. Now that we are over here we are certainly thankful, but there still is certainly a lot more work to be done. For our time in Ukraine, I suppose you could compare this portion of the process to labour. We aren’t talking 15 or 20 hours, not even 15 or 20 days. We’re talking a good month of meeting with officials, getting papers processed and, of course the best part, meeting and getting to know our children.

In labour there is a midwife. In adoption in Ukraine there is a facilitator/interpreter. And our midwife is “Y”. And she is Awesome with a capital A. She doesn’t need to have the knowledge of a woman’s body; she possesses the knowledge of an incredibly larger and more complex system of bureaucracy, regulation, internal politics and paper pushing: the Ukrainian adoption and legal systems. Every single paper needs to be notarized. Every document needs to be forwarded and run through the system. And Y (the “midwife”) knows the ropes, knows the best ways of doing things, and has the relationships to make it all happen for us.

For example, yesterday in between visits to the kids, Y and Donna and I made trips to the regional inspector’s office, the orphanage director’s office, and lawyer/notary in order to get all the documents ready for the court date. It was a full 12 hour day, making things happen so that she could get back to Kyiv and get things ready there as well. And we came along to sign the papers and do what needed to be done. All in all it was a smooth adoption day thank to Y.