Time and International adoption- the biggest con ?

Forgive me for the rambling post. The great news is that we’re 33 weeks and two days. This is what the foetal development web sites say:

http://www.pregnancy.org/fetaldevelopment/week-33
Our other favourite site is the visible embryo: http://www.visembryo.com/baby/pregnancytimeline.html
and this one which you can set up for your own personal timeline:
http://www.pregnology.com/due-date.php?cycle=28&month=1&day=01&year=2010&o1=2&omonth=7&oday=01&oyear=2010

On the personal front I have one week left of work, which is pretty weird in itself. I didn’t realise that it would be such a huge shift in my thinking or being. A few years ago I finished a MBA with a specialty with the aim of working towards broadening my employability and giving me an edge when competing for a promotional position. That was the plan and now it looks like it has changed forever.

We knew that we would never be able to carry our children and 4 years ago we realised that we would never adopt -we wanted to, but with the rapidly declining adoption numbers and significant waiting lists, we realised that we would never get to the top of the list. I am very thankful for the colleagues that i knew in the adoption unit and their frank conversations. They saved us years of waiting, heart ache, stress and anxiety and dollars on assessments, information and education sessions, medical and psycho social assessments that would get us on a wait list to nowhere. This has been confirmed by the latest statistics from the federal government that confirmed that there were just 200 international adoptions last year for all of Australia.

Why do I go on about this? I am angry at the platitudes and false statements continually repeated to those of us who can’t carry children “You can/should adopt”, most recently said by politicians, repeated by the media and others who state this as fact. They don’t know or talk about ten year waiting lists, $30,000 in costs just for assessments, training, and approvals etc that expire in 4 – 5 years only to be repeated again.

No – one tells you of the current waiting/approval list which number easily over 10,000 families across Australia. So, let’s see, 10,000 families across Australia ‘waiting’, 200 international adoptions a year – how many years does that work out to? At best this is the states taking advantage and revenue raising, at worst, a con.

This is a Blog entry from last year, the stats continue to get worse: http://blogs.news.com.au/naughtycorner/index.php/news/comments/the_end_of_adoption_in_australia/

Four years ago we realised the truth about adoption, Two years ago I found out about surrogacy, just over a year ago we were in Delhi and now we are on the cusp of being parents and i am about to take 15 months off to start learning how to be a Mum. We are feeling incredibly blessed and excited about our babies. It's just i never thought it would happen to us. Never thought i would be a stay at home Mum.

Deep breath...