Chapter
Thirty-One:
We Lose Our Faith for Good
“Thunder only happens when it’s raining.
Players only love you when they’re playing.
When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know ...
oh, you’ll know.”
–Fleetwood Mac
If there is one date that Daniel and I can honestly say that we lost 100 percent of our faith in Denise Hubbard, Building Blocks and its representatives, it would have to be Monday, Jan. 24, 2000.
Even with the back and forth about Cyril’s autopsy and the refund mess, we had kept a modicum of faith in Denise and her ability to help us with Anguel’s adoption.
But that all
changed in one day, when we were finally pushed to the brink for the first
time. And it was because of an
innocuously titled email: I Thought I Sent This Last Week?
Bulgaria
Adoption Time Line
Below is an
estimated timeline for the documentation process once your documents are in
the hands of the representatives overseas.
Please note this is approximate.
The time indicated below is the maximum time we have been advised
it can take for the adoption process. The
Average adoption is approximately 20-24 weeks.
Translation
and Authenciation of Documents 2 Weeks
Ministry of
Health 8 Weeks
Ministry of
Justice 4 Weeks
Documents
Await Court Date 2 Weeks
Court Date
– Judge Has 30 Days to Write Decree 4 Weeks
Validity of
Adoption Decree 2 Weeks
Issuance of
Birth Certificate 2 Weeks
Police Clear
Adoption Documents 2 Weeks
Passport
Issuance 3 Weeks
Parents
Travel 1 Week
30 weeks
The above time line is provided to give one the idea of what to expect when waiting to return to pick up your child(ren) from Bulgaria. As you can see the sooner your documents are in Bulgaria, the better.
Your INS
approval does not need to be in Bulgaria until they get to the
Ministry of Justice.
If you have a referral, submit all documents as soon as possible, then submit INS when it arrives.
If you have all your documents completed, please send them to our office as soon as possible and we will prepare the documents and send them to Bulgaria to get translated and authenticated. While we are seeking your referral your documents will be processed through the translation process and then held until you travel and see your child.
The
timeline above DOES NOT start until you have a referral, have
traveled overseas and submitted all your documentation (except
your INS, if not completed).
Daniel saw this first and hoped that I wouldn’t see it before he got back from running some errands. He knew I would not take it well, and he wanted to be there with me when I read it.
Unfortunately, I came home that day from work before he returned and logged on to check email.
To say that I was devastated was an understatement.
I was smashed and beaten. I looked at the calendar that hung on our wall above the computer, grabbed it and began to count the days.
July. JULY! WE HAD BEEN LED TO BELIEVE WE’D HAVE HIM HOME BY MARCH or thereabouts!
And that was if things went as she said they would, which we already knew wasn’t likely.
Denise did a good job at keeping this from us for as long as she did. Why the delay in sending us this information?
Was this just a way to keep us as paying clients by sending this in an offhanded manner like this? Is this how she treated paying customers who were adopting the children she cared so much about?
This was enough to make me seriously reconsider Anguel’s adoption. We did not sign up to adopt a child who would be two and a half at homecoming; we had already lost so much of his babyhood – to have to wait so much longer seemed like a sick and inhuman joke being played on us.
I had also been reading. One book, Becoming Attached by Robert Karen, had left a deep impression on me.
It wasn’t about adoption at all, but about how people develop the ability to bond to other people.
And according to Karen, it became much more difficult after a child reached the age of two.
I also had to wonder after reading Dr. Ronald Federici’s Help for the Hopeless Child, a manual for adoptive parents based on his own experience as a psychiatrist and father of half a dozen Eastern European adoptees.
He recommended many drastic measures to take as the only way to heal children with attachment problems, and the implication was to expect them. Were the stories in his book a glimpse of our future with Anguel?
(By the way, it’s worth clicking on the link. Many of the same themes we have been touching on on this website — the lies and denial within the adoption community in particular — repeat in the stories told in the customer reviews ... and it’s interesting that none of those people leave their names).
What kind of child would we be bringing home from Bulgaria after all this time? A bitter malcontent prematurely destined for the New York State correctional system? The thought made me so sick one shift at work that I had to go home early.
And what about the developmental delays Anguel would be suffering from? A 2.5 year old boy isn’t the same as a 1.5 year old boy. And I didn’t care how “great, loving and caring” the orphanages were in Bulgaria.
An orphanage is an institution. Institutions are not families. Institutions can only give so much, and once time is lost in a person’s development, a person can’t get that back easily.
Not that it was a death sentence, but we might never have agreed to his adoption if they had TOLD US THE TRUTH before we signed up to adopt him. Yet another lie that was going to bite Denise Hubbard in her big fat ass.
Finally, after much gnashing of our teeth over what to do at this point, we got on the EEAC Bulgaria list and posted our concerns. Publicly.
Denise hates her clients to post anything on the Internet anywhere. She was so afraid of us “revealing” things that shouldn’t be “revealed” like her LIES, agency MALFEASANCE and INCORRECT timelines. And especially fees.
We didn’t mention our agency for months on the list. Our first post had to do with adopting two-year olds and the issues they
faced — delays, health, anger, despondency. In the post we said that we may reconsider Anguel’s
adoption if the issues were too much to over come — or they were issues we
could not handle.
I am happy to say that the responses, both public and private, were positive. Parents who had adopted toddlers responded honestly about their children.
Not all the stories were happy sunshine; they did say that it was hectic the first weeks their children were home — screaming, throwing things, anger issues, but after the first few months, things calmed down.
Not one person who responded said their child was having attachment
issues, and when we heard that, it alleviated our fears. We stuck with Anguel through that hurdle.
And one very nice woman even gave us Dr. Federici’s email address so we could ask him ourselves, which we did.
He said that his book was mainly meant for parents who had tried everything else and were at the end of their ropes, which in fact a good deal of his clients were. His answer was very reassuring, and probably did the most to convince us to continue.
Yet Daniel and I were still not happy about this timeline. It meant readjusting our already-difficult emotional states of mind.
It was time to play good little adoptive parents once again and ask
Denise about it. Denise replied
again with her usual LIES about the Bulgarian process on Jan.
31: