We have had Simon for 6 weeks now. Looking back, we can see how much he has changed in that time. Physically, he has grown a couple pounds or so. He has learned to use his hands and discovered his feet. He is rolling over and even trying to crawl. He has gained more trunk and head control. He has started tasting foods--I say tasting because he doesn't seem to like baby food, but is very interested in what we are eating and seems more open to tasting "real" food.
Emotionally, he has become more trusting of us. He is attaching very well and seems to know that we are "his people.". He shows preference to us and is clearly secure as long as he is with us. He looks at me while he is taking his bottle and likes for me to talk to him during those times. He recognizes what little semblance of a routine we have now and clearly shows preference to that. He is much more content and "happy" than when he was first placed with us. He laughs and loves playing with us and his siblings. He loves looking at a family portrait hanging on the wall taken 5 years ago. He has even gone from wanting to be held ALL the time to showing contentment in small periods of time alone (when he wakes up in his crib). Most of the time, he "acts" just like my biological children did at his age.
Tonight I went to the store (alone) and was thinking about our adoption journey. I was remembering our transition from foster care to international to domestic adoption as we sought to add to our family. In each of those, we gained education and training and made connections with other families who had adopted via those channels. In foster and domestic, we now have first-hand experience. I had often questioned and wondered why our journey to adopt had taken so many turns.
Now that we have Simon, I can finally see why. Yes, he is a domestic adoptive placement. He was born in the United States. But his birth parents came to the US from the Marshall Islands and live in a community that has very much maintained a lot of their traditions and culture. Simon's birth mother does not speak fluent English and still maintains ties to her native country (citizens of the Marshall Islands are allowed to live and work in the US in a nonimmigrant status without a visa due to the Compact of Free Association). We have seen some of the cultural differences, particularly in how the Marshallese define "family." Our international adoption training has been really beneficial to help us honor that connection to his birth parents' nationality. Simon was in a private foster care setting for his first 3 months. Definitely we have seen adjustments on his part due to having 3 mothers in his first 3 months of life. I wouldn't have understood or known what to expect with some of the behaviors we have seen in him had I not had training and experience with foster children. So in getting Simon, we got a foster child through a domestic adoption with an international birth family.
Everything is going really well with Simon adjusting to our family and our family adjusting to Simon. We love him so much! But there has been a dark cloud the past few weeks on our adoption. Because Simon was not from Alabama, we were required to go through ICPC to bring him home.
What is the purpose of the ICPC?
According to the Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children, “The primary purpose of the ICPC is to ensure that children placed out-of-state are placed with care-givers who are safe, suitable and able to meet the child’s needs. The ICPC requires an assessment of these factors before a child is placed out-of-state. Individual state statutes are not enough to ensure that such an assessment takes place prior to placement, because the authority of an individual state and its statutes ends at the state’s border. As a legally binding agreement between all states, the ICPC ensures that children enjoy a uniform set of protections and benefits regardless of which state they are moving to or from. While there are a blanket set of requirements for an ICPC, some states have additional requirements.
After Alabama ICPC required documents not in our packet and not easily attainable, we requested they give us provisional approval to bring Simon home. We are in a bind. Simon's birth mother signed consent for his adoption in the hospital (almost 3 months before we got him). We are in regular contact with her and she calls us his "mom" and "dad" and our children his "sisters and brother". Brad and I went through all the required clearances, home study, training, and jumped through all the hoops required to be approved for adoption (we actually did it three different times--see above). But due to some inconsistencies in adoption requirements between different states, we are "stuck" in a purely legal loophole. ICPC is supposed to protect adoptive children moving across state lines but all it has done is caused us a TON of stress and resulted in us hiring and consulting 4 additional attorneys in 2 states (this is not counting the attorney in Hawaii who arranged the adoption).
We are wracking up unexpected legal fees all in the name of "protecting" Simon. Which is also ironic because had we cleared ICPC, we would have had required visits by our social worker to check on him, but since we are in limbo, that has not happened. Do you see the irony? Alabama is requiring additional paperwork that may be impossible for us to get, but we are trying (which is why the legal fees are adding up). We are at the mercy of Alabama's interpretation of ICPC (which varies by state even though the whole point of it was to have all the states in agreement) and/or Alabama's adoption requirements. Typically, an adoption cannot be finalized if you have not "cleared" ICPC.
Just so you know, if I was a crackhead mother and had a baby and decided to place the baby with my aunt in another state who I'd never met and had no idea if she was a suitable parent (she could be a hoarder with 30 cats in a trailer home), guess what? ICPC would not be involved to protect that baby for the simple reason that I am placing the baby with a "relative." The whole thing just blows my mind and I could go on and on forever about the ridiculousness of it all. So, my point in telling you this is, PLEASE pray for us. There is nothing more we can do at this point. Half of my maternity leave is now past and the majority of my time home has been spent filling out retainers for attorneys and going through different "what if" scenarios with them.
