Well, our grand plan to adopt from China has been shut down even before it began. China announced new stricter criteria for couples wanting to adopt, and there is a minimum financial limit that we don't qualify for. The new changes don't go into effect until May 1st, so if we get all our paperwork submitted today, and everything goes perfectly smoothly and quickly, there is a chance that we could squeak in under the wire. But there are alot of non-refundable fees, and all it would take is an employee to be sick for a few days and have our file sit unworked for a week and we wouldn't make it. We were crushed to hear of the changes, I can't imagine what we would go through if we got so close only to miss the deadline. So we have decided China is no longer an option.

Which leaves us in a conumdrum. There were many reasons we wanted to adopt from China specifically. Reputation, stability of the process, alot of the babies come from healthy women (due to the one child policy, although I recently heard they're now allowing two children). We don't qualify for most of the rest of Asia for different reasons (some don't allow adoptions to Albertans, some the costs are just too high, some require very lengthy in-country stays, etc). So now we're going to start looking at other places. Africa, Eastern Europe and South America.

But I have to say the wind was knocked out of our sails by this. We're really back at square one, re-evaluating what we want and why. We're going to compare as many countries as we can to see what are real options for us. We know we want another baby, we need to figure out what's the best way for us to do it.