Update on Plans

Hi all,

Unfortunately, we now have our plane flights back to the UK booked for
early this week. Yesterday, we had to kiss our babies goodbye, which
was pretty much as awful as we thought it would be.

Our overall timeframe should remain the same, the only real change is
that I will be at home (rather than in Addis) for the bit in the
middle. Our completed paperwork was submitted to the Ministry of
Womens Affairs here on Friday, and we are now waiting to be allocated
a court date. We may find out our allocated court date sometime in
the next two weeks - once we know what that date will be (likely to be
around sixish weeks from now) we can make plans for our return.

We are finding the thought of this long separation very hard. We know
that most people who adopt from the UK need to go through this, but we
were hoping to avoid it, and really weren't prepared for how hard it
would be.

We know that some of you have been praying for us and for our babies,
and we appreciate it more than we can say. We have found this sudden
change of plans difficult to deal with (obviously!), and we have very
much appreciated support from family and friends.

We are really dreading going home to an empty house, since I (C) had
thought that next time I went back to Reading it would be with two
wriggly bundles. I also feel extremely stupid since I said all my
goodbyes for three months and will suddenly be back again in less than
three weeks! No teasing please, unless you want to see me cry.
Although you will probably all see me cry anyway.

Lots of love

Caroline and John

Change of Plans

Hi all,

 

The last few weeks have been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster (obviously) and it seems that we've come to an unexpected dip.  Most of you know that I (C) was planning to stay out here until we could bring the babies home with us. We were both very keen that I would stay and get to know the babies, cuddle them as much as possible and make sure they were okay.  However, it seems that this isn't going to happen. I would really like to stay, but the orphanage director has told us that it won't be possible, and I will have to go home next week with John.

 

This makes us incredibly sad.

 

We are very encouraged by the fact that the babies have started to put on weight, but it is heartbreaking to think of leaving them and being unable to see them every day, and not to know whether they are continuing to do well. I'm sure you can all understand that nobody wants to leave their children on the other side of the world!
 

In the next few days, we need to change flight plans and see as much of them as possible. We know that their nannies are taking good care of them, but we really don't want to say goodbye.

 

Lots of love

 

J&C

Gobez!

Gobez means 'good job!' in Amharic, and if the nannies here are to be
believed, it's what you say to a baby when they have drunk a whole
bottle of milk or done something else spectacularly clever.

Well, both of our babies get a big 'Gobez!' this week because they
have both gained 100g! Baby boy is now above his birthweight for the
first time ever. We are hugely relieved. They continue to make lots of
eye contact, and today we heard BB do some pretty convincing
screaming... so we know their lungs are in good working order too.

This is a huge load off our minds - they are still tiny, but it is
wonderful that they are growing.

Lots of love

C&J

One Week In

Hi everyone,

We wrote the post below on the 14th. We've found that it is much
harder than we expected to access the internet here, so we're having a
lot of trouble sending any updates or replying to emails! Since we
wrote the post below, we've been able to see the babies' weight charts
over the last six weeks. Baby Girl has grown by a pound (she started
off at 2.1 kg, but is now 2.6) , but Baby Boy is still only just back
to his birthweight (2.5 kg). Today (as mentioned below) is weigh in
day, but it hasnt' happened yet - we are really praying for an
improvement.

****************************************************

We've been in Addis a week now and are enjoying being here, one of our
favourite things is making it back to our "home" part of town. We
have made it across the city on a few occasions on the blue and white
minibuses which represent free enterprise transport in Addis. The
cost effectiveness of this form of travel (one birr each, about 5p)
and the sense of satisfaction in successfully navigating across the
city via it makes up for the complexity of it for us and the
discomfort of occasionally being compelled by desperation to ram
oneself into an already full space, without the ability to say much
more than "thank you", obviously not always the most appropriate term.

The minibuses are invariably well used blue and white Toyota Hiace
vans with two highly skilled operatives: the driver, obviously a very
important role but requiring the particular skills of being able to
drive as fast as possible and overtake as many other minibuses as
possible but yet be able to stop at any point to pick up a new
customer, preferably without losing their lead on the competition; and
the lad who mans the side door, leaning out shouting the destination,
(Bole Bole Bole!) constantly touting for custom and fitting customers
in all whilst avoiding being crushed by the sliding door when the
minibus makes its sudden stops.

We've today managed to sort out a document we required from the
British Embassy, not particularly easy as we found that we didn't have
the documents they wanted but we managed it on the second attempt
having been able to collect some papers from the orphanage director.
Needless to say we didn't combine the stresses of obtaining this
document with the complexity of travelling by minibus, we know our
limits- we got a taxi, and it still took the whole morning.

We weren't able to see our twins on Sunday so this afternoon's visit
was much anticipated (by us). Baby boy was in a determinedly sleepy
mood so I felt a little hurt when accused by a nanny of deliberately
waking him up. All the evidence clearly pointed to the fact that,
despite my best efforts, he was still not awake. Baby girl woke up,
drank a whole bottle of milk, went back to sleep and still he wasn't
awake. However my persistent singing did finally pay off and once he
woke up C, again with much persistence, persuaded him to drink a
significant portion of his milk quota. We had a good time but all too
short. Wednesday is weigh-in day. We are hoping that all our coaxing
with bottles over the last week will show some improvement in their
size.

Love to all,

John and Caroline

We're here!

(This was written on 11 Sept - we've only just been able to send it).

Well, we've arrived. Was it really only three days ago? It's hard to
know where to start, except with the obvious:

We have met the babies! They are delightful. Both of them are swaddled
very tightly, and wrapped in two layers of blankets, so they really
look like a log of fabric with a face. But in each case, it is a very
very cute little face! Baby girl's is very mobile and expressive, and
when she's not happy she pulls the most magnificent
I-can't-believe-you-are-persecuting-me-like-this frown. Baby boy seems
more placid, and spends much of his awake time staring at whoever is
closest and quietly trying to figure out what is going on. They both
have enormous feet (we looked under the swaddling when the nannies
weren't watching). When they are next to each other, the differences
are easy to see, but they do look very similar and we spent all of our
second morning telling a baby that she was a beautiful, beautiful girl
before one of the nannies told us that BG was actually the sleeping
baby and we were talking to BB. I'm sure he will recover.

Both of them are TINY. We knew they would be little, but it was still
a bit of a shock to see how little. We know that they are eating, but
they have a very long way to go before either of them have any baby
fat rolls. We can't wait to get them home and start Project Chubby.
In the meantime, it is strange (and quite difficult) to see the
children who will be ours under someone else's care. Intellectually we
knew this wouldn't be easy, but it is even more difficult than we
expected to put our sleeping babies down in a cot and know that we
won't be there when they wake up. We had hoped to be able to spend
most of each day at the orphanage, and do a large part of the caring
for our babies, but this is less possible than we had originally
hoped, and we are re-adjusting our expectations. Fortunately, the
care they are receiving is good care, and we know that other babies
who have come in quite tiny are now thriving. We keep telling
ourselves this each time we have to say goodbye to them.

We are staying in a guesthouse that is only a few minutes walk from
the orphanage, which is fantastically convenient. It's great to be
close enough to get around on foot - this is an incredibly interesting
place and we are enjoying getting to know it. Today was New Year
(Melkam Addis Anet, everyone!) so yesterday there was a LOT of
livestock being moved around the city in preparation for celebrations-
this not a good time to be a chicken or a goat in Addis.

We are missing everyone, but really glad to be here. More later!

Lots of love

John and Caroline

What happens next?

Sorry for this boring procedural info, but lots of people have asked us what happens next. Why can't we fly out there, scoop the babies up and be home by the end of the week?

The short answer is that everyone from Britain who adopts from Ethiopia needs to do so independently. There are no accredited agencies that we can work with, so we are responsible for lodging all our own paperwork and complying with all the complicated legalities that surround adoption in any country. (Fortunately, we will have some help!) In Ethiopia, there are two main stages to the process. The first is:

Having a Court Hearing. For the babies to be legally ours, we need to have a court hearing and a judge needs to decree that we are their new parents. Until this happens, the babies are NOT officially our children, and need to remain in the care of the orphanage (and we can't put any pictures of them on this blog or anywhere else on the internet). So, when we arrive, we can visit the babies during the day, but we cannot take them back to our hotel to live with us until after our court hearing.

So how do we get a court date? We need to apply for a hearing, and then wait for a date to be allocated. The courts in Ethiopia are shut until early October, so we won't even find out when our court date will be until probably around the middle of October. Late October is the very earliest that we could possibly have our court date, and it could be much later than this.

John is flying home on the 25th of September to go back to work, but will need to return to Ethiopia for our court hearing. He will then stay out in Ethiopia for the rest of the trip.

If our court hearing is successful, the babies will be ours in the eyes of the Ethiopian government, but not the British government. We will be allowed to take custody of them at this point, but to bring them back into the country, we need to enter stage two:

Getting visas for the babies. The babies are Ethiopian citizens, and will need visas to come into the UK. To get their visas, we will first need to get copies of their birth certificates, and then we will need to have Ethiopian passports issued for them. Once we have passports, we can apply for British visas. This second stage, when the babies are legally ours but we can't yet come home, will probably take about another month.

So, that's where all the time will be going. At the moment, it all feels pretty daunting (especially the part where we begin our parenting careers in a hotel room for a month, approx 15,000 miles from the nearest Tesco) but I know we will be glad that we were able to spend an extended time in the country where our babies were born. This time tomorrow we should be on a plane!