Happy New Year!

Well, 2010 has been a wonderfully crazy year, but we are not complaining. The last two weeks have been especially nuts, but definitely in a good way! I will start with our I-800a approval.....

We got our appointment to get fingerprinted for our approval right before we left town for Thanksgiving. Our appointment was on December 15th, at 8:00am. We got there and got that all done with no problems, and then went home and waited a few days before calling USCIS to try to find out the status of our case. The woman that I spoke with, name Gretchen, was very helpful, and told me that our fingerprints were on the 15th, and that our approval was on the 16th......several weeks sooner than we expected it to come through! Praise God! In fact, that next Monday, we got our approval letter in the mail, so I contacted Gretchen back again and asked her if there was a way to expedite our next step, the I-800 approval. She told me that in extreme medical cases they will, and it takes the process down from 4-6 weeks to more like 1-2 weeks. Well, I e-mailed her the letter that Dr. Dadlani had written a while ago stating that Will's health was fading fast and that it was crucial to get him here NOW, and she called me back 30 minutes later. Her exact words were "That poor baby. I talked to my supervisor, and if you can get us the child study report and all necessary information, I can get it done today. Of course we will expedite it for you. In fact, my supervisor said that we will overnight it to the National Visa Center once it's done so that they can send the approval on to India for you." This woman was amazing! Well, we didn't even have the Child Study report from our agency yet, because they won't send it until we get our I-800a approval and we had just gotten it that day. So, I e-mailed them a copy of our approval, and they sent the report that we needed via Fed Ex. Things were held up a couple of days because of Christmas and offices closing for the Holiday, but we got the paperwork, had our wonderful friend Jim notarize it all, sent it to USCIS, then overnighted it to Tallahassee to get apostilled. Whew! True to her word, Gretchen got it all done the day that she got it, and less than a week later, our approval paperwork was in India and they are now working on our Article 5 letter. That is needed to send to CARA (India's "everything adoption" agency that approves everything for us and ultimately decides whether or not we can have this particular child) and once they get the Article 5 letter, they will begin the process to issue our NOC.....our "No Objection Certificate". The Article 5 letter can take up to a month to get issued, but wonderful Gretchen wrote "expedite" all over the paperwork that she sent, so hopefully the US Consulate will get the message and just do it quickly. Let's pray that happens anyways. And then the NOC is only supposed to take 10-15 days, and shorter even for children with special needs. However, our agency has informed us that about 90% of the time, they reject the dossier for some reason and require more information and then it has to be resubmitted. ARGH! We are also praying that CARA will accept everything as is, and will issue the NOC quickly. Time is crucial here, as Will is certainly not getting any healthier as time goes on. Also, when we received the Child Study Report, there was a lot more information in it than what the agency had originally told us about him. We now know the circumstances of his birth and who his birth mother is, and I feel for this poor girl and the fact that because of social reasons, she had to give her baby to an orphanage. And that was all before there was a family assigned to him, so she didn't even know if he would ever be adopted. With his medical issues, she must have thought that it may have never happened. I feel blessed to be chosen to parent this baby, and we will never allow him to forget the sacrifice that his birth mom made for him. Anyways, I have tracked our UPS package from what went out to be apostilled, and it is out for delivery to us today. I am in the process of getting the last few documents together that the agency needed from us, and then will overnight everything to them to then forward on to India. Yay! Our dossier will travel to the orphanage and CARA while we wait for our Article 5 letter, and then we will get the ball rolling. We were told to expect about 6 more months.....they keep lengthening the time frame that they tell us......but we know that God is amazing and controls all things, and we will travel in His time. I am praying that it is more like February or March, although the agency tells me that this is unrealistic. We'll see. I just don't see us waiting until June, and having Will's health just decline more and more until then. One thing that I found odd was that in the child study report, all of the medical information was from when he was 6 months old, and then the surgical report from July, when he was 10 months old. There is nothing recent......so we don't even know if they have done an Echo or an EKG, or checked his O2 sats, or anything like that. No current length/weight, no idea what he is eating these days, nothing. So, I sent a list a questions to the agency today, and they have said that they will try to find some answers. In their words...."Well, we don't THINK he has had any other surgeries, but we don't really know." WHAT?!?!?!?! I was shocked and enraged by this.....how could you now know, and how is it that nobody is checking more carefully on a baby this ill? I guess maybe I don't understand how things work "over there", but I just feel that the agency should be pushing for more information. It's so frustrating. This will most likely be my last post of 2010. We are going to have another crazy year in 2011, but it will be a great one, as we will get to meet our boy!

Happy Birthday Little Man!!!

We just found out that Will's First Birthday was on October 9th. He's so stinkin' adorable, I just can't believe that he will be our baby! We are STILL waiting for our I-800A approval, but did get some good news.....the adoption agency said that our paperwork should be done and we should be able to travel within the next 6 months.....although we are praying that it's even sooner than that, but either way, we are counting down the time and can't wait to hold/hug/kiss/snuggle this sweet, handsome little guy!

Miracle Received (AKA We've got our money!)

Well, we just had an awesome miracle happen around here. Jeff and I have been stressing a bit about how we were going to come up with the remainder of the money that we owe for our adoption. We didn't want it to hinder us from bringing Will home as soon as possible, but the thought of coming up with the rest of it seemed to be an insurmountable task. Of course it's not impossible for God, and we know that, but knowing it and totally letting go and trusting are sometimes two different things, even though they shouldn't be! We got an invoice from our agency yesterday, and they wanted the second half of our India Country Fee.....so far, we have been able to use our savings to pay for everything, but we have exhausted our account at this point. Well, we contacted Jeff's parents, and they were very happy to loan us the money.....and while this was a wonderful gesture on their parts, we were still wondering how we were going to find it in our budget to pay them back each month, assuming based on the amount that we borrowed that our payments would be pretty high. Well, as it turns out, Jeff's dad informed us that he can't take the money with him when he dies, and it's just sitting there for something like this to come along, and we don't have to pay him back right away! What an answer to prayer, and a total blessing! They really didn't have to do this, and while we knew they were willing and wanted to help us out financially, we never expected them to just hand over the remainder of the money that we needed to complete our whole adoption. It's so amazing, we just still can't wrap our minds around it! Now all that we have to come up with are our traveling expenses.....still a large sum, but not nearly as large as our actual adoption expenses, and we do have a bunch of grant requests out that we have not heard back on yet. We just feel like such a burden has been lifted off of our shoulders.....we have been so excited to bring our baby boy home, but at the same time, sort of dreading the day that the agency would want the rest of their money. I suppose that everyone who is adopting feels this way though, so I am not too surprised. We are hoping to hear something back from Homeland Security soon about our I-800 paperwork.....just praying that it gets through the system very quickly! Other than that, our dossier is done and on it's way to the agency for their review, and then it will be on it's way to India. I don't know how long the process takes once India receives it, because it is different for every adoption. There are just so many variables. We will just keep praying for miracles, that our paperwork will fly through the system, and that God will keep our little Will healthy and strong enough to withstand travel until we can get him home. For now, we are concentrating on the positive....the fact that Will was given one surgery already, that he recovered from it so well, that we were matched so quickly with him, and that the funds needed have become available. God is in the business of miracles, and we are seeing that in every step of our process!

Finally!

We got word from our adoption agency yesterday, saying that they FINALLY received our completed Home Study. Thank you, New York State, for finally getting you act together! We also had a wonderful time watching the video of Will that they sent us.....we have watched it over and over and over again. I just can't get enough of looking at that little peanut! He's absolutely precious. Full of smiles with big dimples, curly black hair, beautiful brown eyes, and cheeks just begging to be eaten. My mother in law told me that we will have to shave his head when he gets home so he matches the rest of the Morgan babies.....haha, every single one of them has been totally bald! He definitely has a mop of bedhead going on, so a trim might be in order when we get him home! Now that our home study is done, we can send our dossier paperwork up to Tallahassee to get it apostilled. That whole process should only take about a week from the time we send it off until the time that we receive it back, and you can bet that I am sending it with a tracking number! If we lose that paperwork anywhere, I will have a heart attack. It then gets sent off to our adoption agency, although they have already received copies of everything minus the home study, and sent the copies off to the orphanage to get the approval process started. They will then send the official, apostilled dossier off to India, where we will have to wait for approval from the orphanage, CARA, and then finally, the Indian government. During this time, we are also waiting for our USCIS approval to come back.....I am hoping that it will not take too long. We have been told that we can expect him home anywhere from around New Year's to next year at this time. I refuse to believe that it will take another year though! That's the time frame that they give everyone, but we were told that our orphanage is very good and tends to push paperwork through really fast, especially in cases like this when there is a special needs child involved. We are just really praying for some miracles. I know that my God is amazing, and He has a plan in store for us and for Will.....and I know that He will do everything in His time, but for now, my prayer is that a miracle will occur and we will be told that we can go get our baby before Christmas. It never hurts to ask, right!? After we get our USCIS approval, our agency said that they will have a better idea of an approximate travel time for us. We can't wait to have something concrete to start a count-down! In addition to the video of Will, the agency sent a short clip of the orphanage, so it was really cool to see where he is living now. It's nice to know that it is relatively clean, and he is being well taken care of. And other big news.....today is the day that we meet with Dr. Dadlani to discuss Will's newest medical report. I am hoping that he can shed some light on it for us, as we don't understand a lot of the medical jargon. I am just thankful that it's all in English, so at least it is easy to decipher! On a happy note....my mom and I took a trip to the Home Goods Store this morning and got a few things to decorate the house for Fall. This is my favorite time of year, and I am really excited to think that by next year, I can but a Halloween costume for my little Will!

Will's surgery

We finally got some word from the adoption agency! I compulsively check my e-mail everyday, just hoping for some tidbit of information. Anything, good or bad, I just want to know as much as I can about this precious little guy that we are calling "ours". Will had his first open heart surgery, and is now back in the orphanage and recovering nicely. We received a HUGE medical report, and have sent it on to our pediatric cardiologist. He and I are meeting next Friday to go over it, and he will explain things more in terms that I can understand. But the bottom line is that Will is doing great, all things considered! The one really scary thing in his report is that his left kidney is severely enlarged, and is not functioning well. I know that people can live with one kidney, but the question remains whether or not he will have to have another surgery to remove that kidney. If it is not causing any noticeable problems, there is no reason to remove it. But we just don't know right now. We are waiting for some lab work results to come back, so the doctor can get a better idea of what is going on and explain it all to us. And some really good news.....the agency is sending us a video of Will!!!! I absolutely can't wait to see it! To me, the thought of seeing this video, of seeing our little angel in action carries the same feelings as the first ultrasound I had with each of my girls. I remember the feeling of awe, when you knew all along that there was a real, live baby in there, but seeing it actually moving just changed my perspective, each and every time. And I that is how I feel now. I have the same anticipation, since all that we have to go on right now is an outdated picture.....it's from 4 months ago, and you know how babies change! I can't wait to see him smile, to see him move around and focus on people. I just need this so badly, to help convince myself that he is going to be okay. It breaks my heart to think of this poor baby going to a huge hospital in a strange city to have his chest cut open, with nobody there who loves him; nobody to hold him and tell him that it would all be okay, that the pain will not last forever. But that is what Will has been through already in his young life, and the one thing that I just keep telling myself is that he is so young that he will never remember this. He's only 8 months old.....and I just wish that I could say for sure that we would have him home before his first birthday, that he will be home at an age where he never remembers not living with us. And I wonder if we will ever get to the point, like we did with our girls, that we can't really remember life without him. We are still waiting on one last piece of paperwork for our dossier to be done. When that is completed, I will feel like we can finally relax. There was a mix up with some paperwork from New York State, so I had to send another request for some documents to them. I sent it all overnight, with postage-paid return envelopes to have it over-nighted back. So hopefully, it will be done in a few days. They'd better not lose it this time! It frustrates me so much that government officials either can't, or don't want to, see how their red tape and beaurocracy is affecting the life of this sick little boy. If I could just call each and every person who stood in the way of us getting our baby sooner rather than later, I would, and I would show them his picture, and tell them what he has been through and what he still has to endure, and beg them to drop whatever they are doing right this minute, and sign off on this paperwork so that we can bring him home NOW. But then I know that even if I could do that for this one boy, there are still millions more out there just like him, and that the rules are there for a reason, and I just have to be patient. Sometimes though, I just want to stamp my foot like my two year old would do, and demand to be given what I want, "right now"! Oh well, I will try to just stay busy and work with the system, not against it. In the meantime, we are getting Will's room ready, preparing the girls for the fact that they will be getting a brother and that Mommy and Daddy will be going away for a week to get him, and that life in the Morgan house is going to get even more hectic than usual for a while. I will post more when I get the video and/or some more updates. Until then, I will try to stay sane!

Dossier Almost completed

Well, it's been quite a while since I have posted anything, and a LOT has happened since then. Life has been too busy to get on here much. Let me go back to where I left off last, waiting to hear if our application would be approved. It was! Actually, it was approved and in the same e-mail, the agency asked us to take a look at a little boy who has several very serious heart defects. We immediately knew that we could not turn him down. However, another family, one further along in the process than us, came forward and said they would take him. So, we figured that God's will would be done no matter what, and this must not be the baby for us. Well, fast forward several months.....it is now August, and about a month ago, we received an e-mail from the agency saying that this same little boy, who's name is Omkar, is available for us again. The other family decided not to take him.....we aren't sure what took them so long to come to that decision, but we'll take it as a sign from God and run with it! We immediately filled out our i800a paperwork and sent it in, and then started the tedious journey that one must go on to complete a dossier. I have NEVER in my life had to provide that much paperwork for anything! It's been a hectic month of paper-gathering and letter-writing, but as of today, we are waiting for the finalized home study to be sent our way (hopefully next week) and then we will be done! Last week, we sent copies of everything that we have to our adoption agency so they could forward it all to the orphanage in India....the orphanage was requiring some "proof" that we are really serious about this baby. We couldn't be more serious! We have named him Will, bought a dresser for his room, and he has a closet full of clothes. How much more serious would they like us to be?! Once the orphanage found out that Will really has parents, they called in a doctor to take a look at him. Our cardiologist told me after reviewing his medical record, and I quote, "they are letting this baby die." He has severe heart defects and is essentially withering away, and there was nothing being done about it. I was furious, scared, sad, and determined all at the same time. No way would we let that happen! Well, our God is amazing, and the orphanage took that information from our cardiologist and got a doc to look at him in India. They are flying him from Pune to Bangalore next week, and giving his heart a "temporary fix". He will receive a shunt, which will act as a straw to allow extra blood to flow through his heart/body. Right now, his oxygen sats are in the low 70's.....people can't live like that for long without having a stroke. The goal is to get him at least into the upper 80's, so he has a fighting chance while we push through all of this paperwork and red tape that we need to get done to get him home. Here is what's wrong with his heart, in the easiest terms I can tell you: He has a double outlet right ventricle, transposition of the great arteries, a large VSD, and pulmonary stenosis. All of this is very similar to a condition called Tetrology of Fallot. In a nutshell, his aorta and pulmonary valve are backwards, so the blood that is flowing to his body is not oxygenated. In addition to that, his pulmonary valve has been so damaged because of this defect that it is closing off, not allowing as much blood flow as normal. The VSD is simply a big hole in his heart, at the bottom between the left and right ventricles. Essentially, the VSD is keeping him alive, by allowing the oxygenated blood and unoxygenated blood to mingle, so that his body is at least getting some oxygen. We don't know his current weight, but we are guessing that he is also suffering from Failure to Thrive. A lot of cardiac babies have this problem, as do a lot of babies adopted from third world countries. So Will has a double whammy going against him, poor thing! This shunt that they are placing does require open heart surgery, but they will not need to put him on bypass (stop his heart) to do it. So, in terms of open heart surgeries, it is relatively uncomplicated. This should buy him anywhere from 6-12 months before he HAS to have his major heart repair, which we will get done here in Florida. He will be treated by the same doctors and at the same hospital that Juliette was treated at. We completely trust them, and appreciate all of their honesty over the past year and a half, both with Juliette and now with Will. At this point in the process, we are waiting for our Department of Homeland Security Immigration approval to come back, and we have to submit the completed dossier to India. The dossier is not a problem since we have the 30-something documents together (finally!) that are required. However, we have to wait on the government to do our big background check, and you know how government stuff goes sometimes! From there, when we get our approval, we will be given a travel time. (Probably about 4 months after our approval.) We are hoping that we can speed things up due to his health concerns, but we aren't sure yet how that will all work. We are just trusting God to do this in His timing.....we have to do that, or we will go crazy knowing that we have a baby out there who needs us, even more so than a "healthy" baby. So, at this point, we will consider it a real miracle if we are able to bring him home around New Year's, but our God is in the business of working miracles, so I don't think we would be surprised! We will keep everyone posted. Thanks for taking this journey with us!

The Beginning

We have just started the process to adopt a baby boy from India, and already it seems like it is taking forever. There is so much to understand and so much paperwork to fill out, and we just want to fast forward things and see the mystery child that will be ours! We are the Morgan Family. We have three beautiful little girls, and are trying to add to our family with a much-wanted, (and needed, if you ask Jeff) boy! Tessa is 5, Adeleine is 2, and Juliette is 13 months old. Tessa is excited about the prospect of having a baby brother.....she was hoping that Juliette would be a boy, so she has been looking forward to this for a while now! Adeleine doesn't understand what is going on, but she likes babies so I think she will be happy with our decision. I'm not sure, however, how Juliette will take things. She is a total Mama's Girl, so bringing a new child into the house may not be on the top of her list of favorite's, but she'll grow to love him! I know it will be a while before the reality of bringing a baby home happens, so she has time to break away from me a little bit. She's been through a lot, so I don't blame her. She is actually the reason that we decided to quit just talking about adoption and really go for it. Juliette was born with a congenital heart defect, and had open heart surgery at four months old. To make a long story short, it's been a crazy, terrifying year, but she has shown us how to be strong and courageous and we can't imagine her without her scars.....they are her "war wounds", and they remind us daily that God does perform miracles. Anyways, we started thinking about her and how if she were born in another country, she may not have survived. She was very sick as it was, and we live in the US where there is so much technology available to treat a kid like her. We have talked about adoption for years, and the talk got more serious as we kept having girls. Jeff is the only boy, to include our cat and dog, so the poor guy can't catch a break when it comes to all the estrogen in our house! We kept saying that "some day", we would adopt a boy, and now that Juliette has reached the point where she is starting to really regain her strength and health, we decided that the time was now. We know that this can be a lengthy process, so we thought it would be a good idea to get the ball rolling while we are still in the "baby" mindset....even though the little guy will most likely be close to a year old by the time we bring him home. We will gladly take in a special needs baby, and at this point, we feel that God is leading us toward seeking out a cardiac baby after all that we have been through with Juliette. These kids are fighters, and they really have a special kind of heart.....even if it is broken! So, that is our story. We already have our home study visit done and are still waiting for some of our background check information to come back so that the study can be completed. Our application is done, and we are waiting for word from the agency to see if we have been approved. We spoke with them for several hours over the phone and they didn't think that approval would be a problem. This is just the beginning, and we are excited for this new adventure and the addition of our little boy to our family, whoever he may be!