Holding my breath!

We found out our birth mother interview for Ahren is today. I can't breathe. This is a critical point in the process. Here, let me explain a bit of the background.

In the old Guatemalan process to adopt a child, the birth mother was interviewed by Family Court and that report was included in the adoption paperwork submitted to PGN. In addition to this important report, the results of the mother/child DNA testing were also part of what PGN required. Sounds good. Make sure the mother is willingly relinquishing the child and understands what she is doing, plus make sure the woman is truly the birth mother and therefore has the right to relinquish the child. During the adoption process, the birth mother was required to sign off at several key points. Each time, she had the right to change her mind and decide to parent the child. On paper, it seemed every effort was made to insure the birth mother's rights were protected.

But, like anything where money (great sums of money) is involved, greed and corruption began to take over. There are many stories of officials being bribed, babies stolen, birth mothers paid to give up babies, and much worse. The Hague Convention is a treaty among nations intended to force the adherance to sertain rules governing adoptions in the attempt to protect the children, the birth mothers and the adoptive parents. Because the United States signed the convention recently, if Guatemala wants to contiue to allow babies to be adopted by Americans, they have to become Hague compliant. This is an almost insurmountable task for a country where there is so much gone wrong, and even the government can't cooperate within itself to make decisions in order to move forward.

In addition, the new President of Guatemala has made some changes to the officials running PGN, the government office that oversees adoptions (plus child welfare and other issues). The new officials, as is often the case, have decided to make sweeping changes to how things were done. They are the ones who decided that all the approved cases be re-called and investigated. The new officials in PGN have decided that they are requiring another interview with the birth mother on each case before they will sign off and release them. This is the interview that is happening for Ahren's case today.

But (isn't there always a but) so far PGN has had 300 or so interviews. They have not released any of those files yet. People are saying they will begin to release them this week, but who knows. Also, early reports claimed that 10% of the reviewed cases were found to have problems and sent for further investigation or cancelled. Of the cases set to be released, some are approved and some have previos (issues with paperwork that needs to be corrected and re-submitted) No one knows yet how many are actually being finished versus needing more paperwork.

So although we are moving forward a tiny bit, they keep adding additional hurdles to the system. We are keeping the faith. I don't know how soon we will know the outcome of today's interview. As soon as I know, I will be posting it. I am sure it will be at least a few days, weeks or months.....