Arriving in Guatemala and learning about our BABY-GIRL!!

posted by Cheri on Thu. Sep 28, 2006
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Our emotions were ALL OVER the place. From the grief of our miscarriage the week before, to the despair of believing that all new adoptions had been shutdown in Guatemala, to the excitement of learning that YES we did have a referral waiting, to the insanity of packing and leaving the country on two hours notice... yes, I would say that our emotions were frazzled!!

Now let me back up a moment and explain how a referral "normally" happens.

The baby is placed with a foster mother (who is trained by our agency), and then examined by our agency's doctor. Blood samples are sent to a lab to test for various medical conditions. Documents are gathered, including the baby's birth certificate and the birth mom's identification papers. And a generous number of photos are taken. Once the medical lab results are in and all the other papers are gathered, the referral packet is sent to a waiting family.

In most cases the babies are perfectly healthy, but not always. Unfortunately the impact of a medical condition is magnified during an international adoption because of the distance the family is from their baby, and the length of time it takes to get the baby to the US. Plus, adoptive parents become financially responsible for the baby at the time of referral, but most insurance policies don't kick in until the adoption is finalized.

For many reasons, it is important for a family to review their referral packet and consult with their pediatrician before making the decision to accept or decline a referral. When a referral is accepted, most families sign their papers in the US and after a series of authentications and translations the papers are filed in Guatemala several weeks later.

Now this is how our referral happened...

On Thursday, Sept 28th, the President of Guatemala threatened to sign an Executive Order that would block all new adoption cases as of Saturday, Sept 30th. At that time our agency had around 30 families waiting for referrals and only 11 babies that had not yet been referred (their referral packets were being compiled). But with the shutdown looming, our agency decided to refer ALL the babies immediately, and get their papers signed and filed IN GUATEMALA the next day! Had they not done this, those 11 babies, including Eliana, could have been caught in legal-limbo for months or even years!

That afternoon our agency contacted the families at the top of the referral waiting list and explained what was happening. Within hours ten families were making a mad-dash to Guatemala to sign their papers in-country and beat the possible deadline!

So there we were, on a plane flying to Guatemala without having received a referral packet yet! Although we had asked for a baby-girl referral, given the unusual situation and the limited number of babies, we had no idea if we would be referred a girl or a boy, infant or toddler, healthy or not. On the plane I said to Gary, "So what happens if we get there and our referral is a 3 lb baby boy with a serious heart condition?" His response? "Then we will have a very small son and a lot of medical bills." And that was okay.

After a short flight we landed in Guatemala, took the hotel shuttle to the most beautiful hotel either of us had ever stayed in, rushed to our room, and began eagerly trying to get the internet connection to work so that we could see our baby. After two hotel employees worked on the connection, it was finally working.  I checked my mail - there is was - an email entitled "Referral Documents."

We opened the email... IT'S A GIRL!  We read the documents... SHE'S HEALTHY!  We opened the photos... She is ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!

We cried, and hugged, and poured over the documents again and again. Eventually we sent an email to friends and family to announce our good news (and to let them know we were in another country). Then we waited ever so impatiently for the next day when we would get to hold our baby-girl in our arms!