Just a quick tidbit on us.
I am M, author of this adoption blog, and D is my wonderful husband of several years. We are currently childless, unless you count an adorable, grumpy dutch rabbit. Adoption has been a dream of mine since childhood. Lucky girl that I am, D hopped on right on board when we brought up kids and said, yes, let’s grow our family through adoption. So here we are, ten years together and over six years married, preparing to finally bring a third person in on our wild journey that is life.
A lot of our family and friends have questions, so I am sure that there are strangers out there who may wonder why we chose adoption or be perplexed about our choice to do so internationally. While I cannot give an answer to every question here, D and I are committed to doing what is best for all children, not just our own future child, even if that means waiting several years until we have a match of our own. We are earnestly researching every avenue we can and I plan on sharing most of what we find out with you.
Aside from that, what else can I say about us? We love to explore the outdoors, cook, play board games and read high fantasy and sci-fi novels; I have a certain penchant for mysteries as well. We have a wonderfully supportive family that is making this process much easier on us as we begin to fill out the paperwork and enthusiastic friends who make sure that we smile and laugh through the stress of it all. A million thanks to everyone who is thinking of us and praying for our family through this journey.
The choice to use initials vs. names is to protect our identity as I write about our experiences with the adoption process and, hopefully, parenting in a multi-racial, interfaith family. You will most likely not see many photos of ourselves. However, I will try to share some snapshots as we adventure through this crazy, wonderful life.
Adopting Abroad 
PLease PLease make sure that everything is legal, even in HAgue convention countries like the UK, children are taken illegally and placed for adoption. Please make sure that everything regarding the adoption is 100% as most countries if it is a proper adoption will let you speak to the birth parents. THere is children out there that needs adopting and that is there for the real reasons, but some is not, and the sad thing is it is always the adopters that gets the blame and not the system. you are doing a great thing. but please for the sake of the child, make sure it is all legal. friends of ours adopted a baby and now 3 years later had to hand him back as nothing that was given to them regarding papers where true….. it hurt the child it hurt our friends….
If you have any extra information on what we could specifically be on the look out for, we certainly need that information. We are aware that there are difficulties in our potential adoption (I say potential because we are only still in the approval phase). Especially in our case, there the fact that many of these children are found by the government and placed in the welfare system, with no knowledge of their family tree, whether living or passed on. Sadly, because abandonment as well as placing for adoption is looked down upon in South African culture, there is little hope families will step forward to find lost children.
We are constantly on the lookout online to see if there are any reasons to believe there is corruption or shady dealings with our agencies here at home or with the welfare agency in Johannesburg. So far, South Africa seems to be holding very firmly to the tenants of the Hague Adoption Convention, which we hope will remain to be true over time.
There are things we hope to do, such as testing like with 23andMe where we can hope to find family in the future through matching DNA. We hope that maybe we may be allowed to embrace their bio family as extended family if such a blessing were to occur.
Adopting in South AFrica is a difficult process, more difficult then the rest of the African country. Due to so many children going missing, and parents not wanting to step up. My foundation works with traffic children. The sad thing is when we send SOuth AFrican children home they end up in the adoption lists. I will get more information for you to consider. The child you are adopting will be a South AFrican child or a child from a different African country in SOuth AFrica.
From South Africa itself, from Joburg specifically. Thank you, any information we would be happy to have.
So the child will be a South AFrican citizen just asking as some agency does try and adopt other AFrican children out which makes things more difficult.
So interested to have found your blog! Thanks for stopping by, and for the follow. I’ll be reading your story too… 🙂