[jsmink]

My husband and I are looking to adopt in Poland, but we are not sure where to start or if our expectations could be met. We are looking for a healthy girl between the ages of 1 to 4. We already have two children, so we are not looking for a sibling group. How realistic is it for us to find what we want?

We have also read about using and not using an agency and are not sure about that. Any recommendations? If you would like to name an agency or facilitator specifically, then could you PM me.

[MenloAve]

Relatively helathy with no major medical issues, just learning delays from an orphanage and issues that result in being placed in the orphanage - or healthy/no issues?

[jsmink]

We are looking for no major medical issues. Minor medical issues that can be fixed are ok with us. We do understand that there will be some developmental and emotional issues to face.

[MenloAve]

We are currently finalizing the adoption of a 3.5 year old girl that is relatively healthy with some developmental and emotional issues to face. Health wise is there isn't anything to "fix" just some vision issues and maybe things related to premature birth. So it is possible. We are very excited to be home soon. If you have some more detailed questions feel free to PM me.

[momraine]

If you are of Polish descent it will help a lot for adoption in Poland. It also helps to be Catholic. Otherwise the wait for a young healthy child could be long.

[jsmink]

We started looking at Poland because I am part Polish. My mother's parents left Poland during the war and came to America and my mom speaks Polish. I was raised Catholic, but I don't really go to church much. I wonder how they verify that? Thanks everyone for the info so far.

[MenloAve]

One of the main adoption agencies is obviously not Catholic and they get referrals so you don't have to be Catholic. They won't check if you go to church.

[hylo]

Don't worry about the Catholic part. I'm Jewish and just adopted a sibling group of three. No one asked me anything about my frequency of visits to a Church (zero...) nor my religious beliefs (none).

[Mom2_4]

Hi Hylo,

You adopted the magic number 3. Trios or triblings as they are sometimes called are considered hard to place within Poland. The unspoken rules are a bit more bent for those of us who are willing to take on 3 or more kids.

Hi JSMINK,

An individual girl, especially a young healthy girl under the age of 6 or so, is usually placed with Polish family living in Poland. In Poland it is the exact opposite of China. In Poland, your youngest girl is the one that will take care of you in your old age. People in Poland adopt more girls than boys because of this cultural preference.

The challenges that MenloAve tells us her new daughter is facing is a pretty common in regards to individual children who are allowed to be adopted internationally from Poland.

The wait is usually long for individual healthy children of either gender under the age of 8 or so. My question to you is

Which here is the important factor ~ that you want your adoptive child to be no older than 4 year old girl? Or a boy 4 and younger would be fine with you?

Or are you interested in retaining birth order with your existing children? For example, we said that we were interesting in adopting siblings who were younger than our bio child.

Our request went in just before he turned 8 and his siblings came home after he turned 10. Our wait was about 2 years.

As for the Catholic thing ~~One of the three referring entities in Poland is Catholic and they very much care but the other two entities not as much.

Hi MenloAve,

Did I meet you at house party in New England last winter? If so, I’m glad that you finally got to meet your daughter in person.

Take care all!

[mschaefer]

We also adopted children under 4. We request 1-2 children younger than our bio son who was 4 at the time. Our twin daughters were ~20 months at referral, ~25 months when we met them and ~27 months when we brought them home. As already pointed out "minor" is often different for different people. Our daughters spent 2 years in an orphange and certainly had very typical post-institutional behaviors. It is often hard to discern which delays are related to institutional living and which may be due to other causes so you need to be prepared to deal with issues that may not be "fixed". For the most part our daughters are doing great -- most people can not tell what "needs" they have. We would consider their needs "minor": M gets speech therapy and occuaptional therapy; E gets physical therapy. M had elevated lead levels that we did not know about until returning to the US -- she is likely to have learning disabilities and will need help in school, yet is also very bright, but can be a challenge as her auditory processing issues often result in behaviour issues. E had eye surgery due to ectotopia (lazy eye that drifts out not in) and may need another surgery later. She is very verbal and social but took and continues to take longer than her sister to bond and can show up the best of them with tantrums.

They are perfect in our eyes, but we also don't like to paint unrealistic expectations for others who are looking to adopt "healthy" children.

Good luck.