[minibus]

For us, we didn't really care about newborn vs. older child. I've heard that is the major sticking point for a lot of people who choose domestic over international. For us, it was about two things - one of them silly and one not. The silly one is that we have four cats, who we didn't feel comfortable leaving alone for 6 weeks or more - we made a commitment to them when we adopted them, too! (The countries we were looking at have very long in-country stays.)

The non-silly one is culture. We didn't know if we would be able to raise a child to get to know his/her culture appropriately if he/she were from another far-away country. This applied to our domestic situation, too, as we have most contact with DH's (Caucasian) family, and my (Asian) family is a a couple thousand miles away. For this reason, we also decided to limit our domestic search to Amerasian and Caucasian children. We were looking at eastern European countries internationally and realized that we couldn't raise a child of that heritage in a culturally appropriate manner.

Best of luck to you in your decision! It's a difficult one, but will give you a lot of direction once you make it!