Gender Preference

My nerves are shot. I just got a call from my friend who has been in the process of adopting from Kazakhstan for over a year. Her dossier has been in country for over 6 months. She is with another agency. Today she received a call saying that her dossier was rejected in country because she had requested to adopt a boy. Apparently, according to her agency, they are no long accepting gender preferences. She has a wonderful attitude about the whole thing and is looking into adopting from Africa, as she just got back from a wonderful trip to Kenya and Tanzania where she really connected with the people, the culture and the children. I believe this was meant to be for her. She is meant to adopt, but this had to happen in order to help her find the child she is meant to parent, who is apparently not in Kazakhstan.

I am very nervous right now, because my documents, which went into translation this week, specify that I want to adopt a baby girl. As you saw from my last post, I would be willing to consider adopting a baby boy, but this is not what my documents say, as my heart has really been set on a girl for some time now. So, after speaking with my coordinator and my social worker, I have decided on my own accord to be cautious and change my paperwork to not specify a gender preference. My social worker said it would be easy to change and that she would get right on it. I will have to have he new home study apostilled again and then sent to Texas. I have a couple of days off this week, so I think I will be able to get it done quickly and resubmitted for translation. In the meantime, the rest of my dossier will remain in translation.

My agency has not made any statements about what is occurring with other agencies right now. This is a decision I have made on my own, as the paperwork has only been in translation for a couple of days. I prefer to change it now than get rejected and then update it. It just all feels too risky. This is all so ironic since I just posted that I knew I needed to be more open to gender than I used to have to be. International adoption is constantly changing and we have to be ready for anything.

I still believe I will end up with a baby girl, but what I really comes down to is that I will end up with the CHILD that I am meant to parent. The question isn't really who I want to parent, but do I want to be a mother? Of course, the answer is yes. So hang in there, friends, I am fine, though my heart goes out to my friend across the lake, who now has to start over again from scratch.