Part 1 is here. In part 1 I was looking for unbiased sources of adoption information that would help me decide what country to adopt from. By this point in my research I had already decided against foster care adoption and private adoption within the US.


After I discovered the NAIC, I found the US State Department's adoption site. They have fact sheets on every country's adoption program.


And best of all.... They had numbers. I am analytical by nature so I really liked the numbers. I analyzed the number of children adopted by Americans by adopted country. I was looking for patterns... trends.


I didn't want to be anyone's guinea pig. I wanted a program with a proven track record. I compared the percentage of increase in number of adoptions from 1999 to 1998, 1998 to 1997 and 1997 to 1996. I decided to research all the countries who had a positive percent increase.





I quickly discovered that I couldn't adopt from Korea. I am single.


Guatemala was a little pricey, but looked very interesting. The trip was very short. The negative for me was the age of the children. By this time in my research I had decided that I wanted to adopt a child 3 years or older. It seemed like only babies were being adopted from Guatemala.


I really don't remember looking too much at the Vietnam program.


But I remember the day that I found Cathy Harris' web site. I looooved that she posted statistics on the adoptions she was involved with.


Cathy Harris' site became a must read for me. I looked at the various families stories and the adopted children's photos over and over.


I started researching independent adoption. It stunned me to discover that I didn't have to use an adoption agency. Ukraine's government set up their adoption program so that adoptive families didn't need an agency. But if they want to use one in their native country.... fine.


But once everyone was in Ukraine, everyone was in the same boat; independent or agency adopters. Our adoption experience depended on the faciliator/translators.


And Cathy Harris was also a single person. Cool...


So there you have it... I adopted from Ukraine because of statistics.