F.R.U.S.T.R.A.T.E.D.

Oh this is going to be a venting post, so be warned and wary.

This week we received some very frustrating news regarding the process of the adoption. Let me preface this to say that this is the first domestic adoption we have done and while being very well versed in China adoption processes and set backs we are operating with the understanding that this final adoption will be a)more open and b)more easy to understand and access information. We are finding our assumption to be false......leading to some head scratching but not mass frustration up until this week.

The players are: the state court for which we have a date on the 19th, the lawyer who we are paying lots of money to represent our case and do all the work for us so that this is done well and expediently, the social services agency who do the homestudy and post placement visits and all the reports to the court, us the prospective parents and the child who has lived with us for 5 months now.

The lawyer contacted the ss agency and told them they needed this big, all inclusive report done on our case and that it had to be into the court 10 days before our courtdate. He did not communicate this with us in anyway. The ss agency calls us in a panic and tells us they need to do this in a hurry and that it will of course cost a lot of money, like $750! We asked why it wasn't done before and why after all these many months was this the first that we or the ss agency has heard of this very needful thing?

Well, I must thank God for our social worker because she is amazing and wonderful and has been the entire 4+ years we have known her. Yet again she comes to the rescue at the last moment and pulls this report together, not withstanding a very busy personal life, and without having to interview us again because she knows us just that well gets it all done. We fact check the document and get it back to her with some minor corrections and we think we are good to go......except for the fee or course.

Well now the frustration factor reaches a crescendo. The ss agency contacts us and says that basically the paperwork is complete but that they will not release any of their work to the court until we pay the fee. The next day it is not just this fee but a much larger fee of $1800 for services that they had already performed and services to be performed throughout the course of this adoption. The final tilt was that they wanted all monies up front or they would hold our adoption paperwork hostage thus submarining our court date and putting us into possible jeopardy.

I calmly reasoned with the woman that trying to find $1800 in the next 24 hours was going to be impossible and that it was a little untimely to demand full payment at this juncture when it was never mentioned before.

I wanted to throw a fit but I did not. I need to keep this woman on our side until the finalization.

Then she went for my weak spots and said that all the ss agency was really concerned with was for the best of the children they serve. That if our inability to pay caused us to lose custody of Sweetpea and necessitate a return to her first family then that would be okay. The child would be the same in either family ------------------WHAT!!!!!!!?????? This is from a woman who has read every detail of this case from the moment we first began the adoption process. She knows the intense trauma and hardship that was visited upon our lovely Sweetpea at the hands of her first family and she disregarded it in light of the larger need to get paid on her timeline.

I was undone. I was shaking badly and had to compose myself to get through the rest of the call in order to not say what was on my mind.

I feel so defeated and frustrated today. The echo's of fourth button's adoption sound loudly in my ears when at the final week before flying to China the adoption agency imposed another fee and without payment threatened to implode our union with our soon to be daughter. It seemed heartless then and it seems heartless now.

I just don't get it................and I cannot make that money appear from anywhere.