Surrendering....Again: The Ninth in the Series on Infertility, Miscarriages and Adoption
After realizing, very clearly, we were meant to adopt this little girl that was brought into our world, our life was quite a whirlwind for the next month.
Adopting is a complicated process with many moving parts and it doesn’t make it easier when you are a foreigner, living in a different country than what your passport states and you are adopting a child from a different country than where you are from and where you reside.
The first step was in getting the US Embassy to support our case, which they did by signing a letter of approval which jump started our ability to get our daughter in our care. About a month later, after what was probably an equivalent of 6 months worth of work, we welcomed Elena Kathryun to our home!
What should have been a joyous day proved to be heart wrenching because it was that very embassy who initially approved our adoption and catapulted the process to begin, that told us they were no longer supporting our case. We were told that adoptions in Singapore were being investigated and although our case was likely not a problem, we would have a very long road to haul if we wanted to continue down this path.
What? But they were the ones that approved our case initially! If the Embassy hadn’t signed off on our letter we never could have even started the adoption process. They had reviewed all our paperwork and everything was fine. If they wanted to start looking into adoptions in Singapore, fine, but start with a case you hadn’t already approved and where the baby wasn’t already in the house!
We were told that very likely citizenship for our baby would be impossible and we would not even be able to bring her home as a tourist. We were suddenly made to feel like criminals during what should have been the happiest time in our lives. What were we supposed to do next?
I won’t go into the hundreds of letters, phone calls, lawyers and trips to the Embassy we made. I won’t go through the details of our emotions of anger, fear and sadness. Why was this all so hard?
So now, time for the hardest thing about this process. I wasn’t able to bond with my baby. I have to say, the day I gave birth to Grace a light switch of a new kind of love ignited in my body. I hadn’t felt it before and it sparked in me a new way to live. For her. I expected this same ignition of love to occur the moment I brought Ellie home, but with the controversy and stress of her citizenship, I just struggled. Although I didn’t give birth to her, I felt I could relate to mothers who had post partum depression. It was a deep guilt I felt because I couldn’t connect to her the way I had, immediately with Grace.
Finally, one day in the midst of all the chaos, we went to church. We hadn’t really been to church since moving to Singapore almost two years before and in the US our faith was scattered, at best.
It was that day when I knew, I just knew, I had to wait on God for the answer.
So we stopped. We stopped writing letters, making phone calls and fighting the Embassy. We just loved on our kids and embraced the family we knew God placed together.
A funny thing happened when we gave up control. Kind of like the moment we gave up control on that day in 2004 when we went through that crazy IVF moment trying to conceive our first. (See the 5th entry in this series)
The week we “gave up” trying to fight we came across an obscure law that was signed into effect in 2000. It stated that “Any US Citizen who adopts legally in the country of which they reside can automatically have their child receive citizenship after 2 years of legal adoption.”
We were in. We casually educated the Embassy on this law and they acquiesced, that this was all we needed to ensure citizenship would be inevitable. We just had to wait a couple more years.
It was that same week we had a photo shoot to take family pictures. It was our first time being photographed as a family and it was at that session when that light switch came on. Ellie, Grace, Peter and I had such an amazing time with the photographer and our baby girl, who I had such challenges bonding with, loved on me and cuddled me in only a way a child does with her mother. I knew, right then and there, that I was her mom, that she was my daughter and that no one would separate that bond. I loved her with all my heart and soul.
Our family was complete.
Adopting is a complicated process with many moving parts and it doesn’t make it easier when you are a foreigner, living in a different country than what your passport states and you are adopting a child from a different country than where you are from and where you reside.
The first step was in getting the US Embassy to support our case, which they did by signing a letter of approval which jump started our ability to get our daughter in our care. About a month later, after what was probably an equivalent of 6 months worth of work, we welcomed Elena Kathryun to our home!
What should have been a joyous day proved to be heart wrenching because it was that very embassy who initially approved our adoption and catapulted the process to begin, that told us they were no longer supporting our case. We were told that adoptions in Singapore were being investigated and although our case was likely not a problem, we would have a very long road to haul if we wanted to continue down this path.
What? But they were the ones that approved our case initially! If the Embassy hadn’t signed off on our letter we never could have even started the adoption process. They had reviewed all our paperwork and everything was fine. If they wanted to start looking into adoptions in Singapore, fine, but start with a case you hadn’t already approved and where the baby wasn’t already in the house!
We were told that very likely citizenship for our baby would be impossible and we would not even be able to bring her home as a tourist. We were suddenly made to feel like criminals during what should have been the happiest time in our lives. What were we supposed to do next?
I won’t go into the hundreds of letters, phone calls, lawyers and trips to the Embassy we made. I won’t go through the details of our emotions of anger, fear and sadness. Why was this all so hard?
So now, time for the hardest thing about this process. I wasn’t able to bond with my baby. I have to say, the day I gave birth to Grace a light switch of a new kind of love ignited in my body. I hadn’t felt it before and it sparked in me a new way to live. For her. I expected this same ignition of love to occur the moment I brought Ellie home, but with the controversy and stress of her citizenship, I just struggled. Although I didn’t give birth to her, I felt I could relate to mothers who had post partum depression. It was a deep guilt I felt because I couldn’t connect to her the way I had, immediately with Grace.
Finally, one day in the midst of all the chaos, we went to church. We hadn’t really been to church since moving to Singapore almost two years before and in the US our faith was scattered, at best.
It was that day when I knew, I just knew, I had to wait on God for the answer.
So we stopped. We stopped writing letters, making phone calls and fighting the Embassy. We just loved on our kids and embraced the family we knew God placed together.
A funny thing happened when we gave up control. Kind of like the moment we gave up control on that day in 2004 when we went through that crazy IVF moment trying to conceive our first. (See the 5th entry in this series)
The week we “gave up” trying to fight we came across an obscure law that was signed into effect in 2000. It stated that “Any US Citizen who adopts legally in the country of which they reside can automatically have their child receive citizenship after 2 years of legal adoption.”
We were in. We casually educated the Embassy on this law and they acquiesced, that this was all we needed to ensure citizenship would be inevitable. We just had to wait a couple more years.
It was that same week we had a photo shoot to take family pictures. It was our first time being photographed as a family and it was at that session when that light switch came on. Ellie, Grace, Peter and I had such an amazing time with the photographer and our baby girl, who I had such challenges bonding with, loved on me and cuddled me in only a way a child does with her mother. I knew, right then and there, that I was her mom, that she was my daughter and that no one would separate that bond. I loved her with all my heart and soul.
Our family was complete.