[mommy2fiveplus]

A little background:

Don and I are not married, we have been together for 8 years and have 5 children, 3 bio, 2 adopted from foster care (AS7y,BD6y,BD5y,BD3y,AS18 mos). We have been foster parents for 6 years. WE have no plans to get married, but will consider it if needed to complete an adoption. We are in no hurry to adopt but are exploring international adoption from Africa. I fell in love with the culture and the people while on a medical missions trip (I am RN). We are conflicted as we know the need for adoption of waiting children in the US but are also interested in international adoption.

We thought about continuing foster care until our oldest are off to college and then trying international adoption. We are 27y/33y now and would be around 37y/44y when they are off to college, we are wondering if we would be too old by then. Our last adoption was a year ago, we have been fostering since and we are just trying to figure where we want to go from here. As an aside, we are not needig the baby phase (to be truthful I love toddlerhood and schoolage) although we would not turn down a baby in a sib group and we are definitely interested in a sib group of boys. We kind of feel like each kid in our family needs at least one other kid to relate his/her origins to, so a singleton is not what we are looking for.

Any suggestion?

[erinelway]

Wow, you must be one crazy busy lady! I am not sure what you are asking for here, but if you are planning to wait for 5-10 years and then go with an international adoption, I don't know that there is much point to even looking into it right now. I say this because the countries that are opened or closed to international adoption seems to constantly be in flux. Who knows wha the picture will look like in a few years, or even a year from now.

As for marriage, I frankly don't know how partnerships are viewed in international adoption. A lot of countries seem to be quite conservative and at least a few agencies probably wouldn't accept you as clients because of it. I guess the long and short of it is that the adoption would probably go a lot easier if you were married for a few years!

I admire what you've accomplished at such a young age, by the way.

[2xaround]

Things are 'constantly' changing in International adoption. What is okay now, may not be okay in a year or two years. What I can tell you is that even though you are in a committed relationship and have children with your partner, you would have to apply to adopt as a single parent. That could cause you some difficulty, although it's not impossible. There are many agencies are not longer accepting applications from single parents for their Ethiopia program.

Other than Ethiopia, I'm not too familiar with the process for other African countries. I have a friend who recently adopted from the Democratic Republic of Congo. I don't know how they view single applicants because I only know of couples who have adopted from DRC. I know of one agency who is piloting a program in Rwanda and possibly Burundi in the future. I know Uganda is also a possibility, but I don't know anyone who has successfully completed an adoption from Uganda.

If you want to get started soon you might want to contact some agencies and discuss your specific situation to determine how easy or difficult it would be for you to adopt right now. If, however, you want to wait awhile, I would suggest following some forums and then determine how things stand at that point.

Good luck!