Trip Decision

We are still torn as to what to do about travel. We can make one long trip which we could be in country 7-8 weeks. Or make 2 trips.

Prospective parents are required to have a minimum 14 days of personal contact with the child before formally submitting an adoption application. This means that we must stay in the town where our child is living and visit her on a regular basis for 2 weeks. Once the bonding time is completed, we can formally apply to the court for adoption. We then can chose to go home and come back a few weeks later, or stay the entire time. I am not sure Milon can take that much time off from work! We are of course are bringing my 2yr old son. I wouldn't be able to leave him for even 2 weeks! My problem is I know myself well enough that I am not going to want to leave her in an orphanage with no contact with me for 4-6 weeks! Kids change so fast that even in a week I could miss something new she has done! Plus, It is a great time to bond with her before taking her away from everything familiar to her! My mom has offered to go over with us and stay so that might be an option also. Or Davis and I will just stay.

Choosing to Travel Blind

The preferred method of child selection is to travel to select and meet a child and interact and have a bonding period with the child before deciding to adopt that child. You are typically shown one child at a time and from what I have heard you only have a few minutes with each child. The intimidating part of traveling blind is we won't know how many baby girls we will be shown. All we know is they at least have 1 girl that meets our age and medical criteria. We chose this method over a referral because we would like to interact with the child rather than just have one picked out for us. We could potentially have to sacrifice age (meaning she might be a little older than 1yr) but we feel being able to interact with her and having the feeling that "She's the one" out ways age.