Love Will Overcome Adoption Frustrations

By GREGORY J. RUMMO
THE HERALD NEWS, JANUARY 27, 2002
 

I AM SITTING in a small booth in the Market Diner on 11^th Avenue at the corner of 43^rd Street in Manhattan. An order of banana-raisin French toast sits in front of me on the table. Thick maple syrup slowly drips over the crust of the egg-dipped bread. Two immense sausages snuggle up to the French toast and a cup of steaming coffee completes the mouth-watering scene. This little greasy spoon is a waiting room of sorts, located conveniently around the corner from the Chinese Consulate on 12^th Avenue on New York’s West Side where I just dropped off a set of documents—thirteen in all—for authentication in order for us to proceed with our adoption of baby girl from the People’s Republic of China.

Today marks the culmination of a ‘paperwork pregnancy.’ Coincidentally, it’s been almost nine months since my wife and I began this long and arduous process. But the little girl we are hoping for—our future daughter, Rebecca Lee—is still at least another year away, and for all we know, she may not have even been born yet.

The cover story of the March 12, 2001 issue of U.S. News and World report dealt with the ordeal many couples face when they decide to adopt a child. Entitled The Adoption Maze, the article described adoption as an act that “has been transformed from a shameful family secret to a praiseworthy act...[that is] difficult, expensive and potentially heartbreaking.”

To that description I can add lengthy, unnecessarily convoluted and frustrating.

Adoption is a sacrificial act requiring enormous patience. Something as simple as obtaining our birth certificates turned into a three-month long wild goose chase.

Both my wife and I were born in New York City. That meant we each had to obtain a “long-form” birth certificate—a document containing all of the detailed information about our parents as well as the birthing doctor’s signature and the official seal of the Department of Health of the City of New York. A second document, a “letter of exemplification” signed by the Deputy City Registrar, certifying that the birth certificate was indeed a true copy had to be attached.

But it didn’t end there. Next, the two documents had to be sent to the New York County Clerk who certified the registrar’s signature and official position. From his office, the document, now three pages in length, was mailed to the Secretary of State’s office in New York where it was certified.

This process of notarization and certification ascending the political hierarchy was repeated for the rest of the documents.

But that was just the documentation portion of our dossier. We were also required to have a home study; a comprehensive and invasive process meant to assure the adoption agency and the foreign orphanage of the financial, physical, psychological and mental fitness of the adoptive couple.

Both my wife and I were required to write first person narratives about our upbringing from earliest memories. Interviews of all family members including our two natural born sons were conducted. My wife and I were fingerprinted three times. We took photographs of our home—inside and out—in addition to our family in all sorts of situations including recent vacations, various hobbies and family life in general.

This dragged on through the summer until we had everything we needed with the exception of the INS-171H—the official green light from the U.S. government that would allow us to proceed.

Finally, this arrived in our home almost eight months from the day we initiated the process and a mere two weeks from last year’s November 19 deadline for Chinese adoptions.

The US News and World Report article raised this question: “If adoption is so good, why does it have to be so hard?” But love is strong enough to overcome any obstacle—no matter how far and to what lengths adoptive parents must go to bring home their little bundle of joy. The adoption agency we chose, the American World Adoption Agency, supports that claim in its mission statement: “Love for a child can bridge any gap you may now think too wide to cross.” 

Our dossier arrived in China on November 30. Now, all that’s left to do is to wait—possibly for as long as another year. While my wife and I are hoping our daughter will be “home for Christmas” in 2002 a more realistic goal is that we will have our referral by then, and will be traveling to Beijing and then on to Guangzhou in mid-January 2003.

By then, our adoption will have taken twenty-three months from beginning to end. That’s longer than two pregnancies. Quite frankly, that’s too long. n

E-mail the author at GregoryJRummo@aol.com