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The Philippines?

If you want a baby as healthy and young as possible concurrency might be the only option. There are no countries where you can get healthy babies under a year. Maybe Kenia but there you have to live for 9 months plus you need to actively practice christianity. A consequence from the Hague is that children first need to be offered and rejected a few times in own country. After that the children move on to international adoption, they are older than a year than. Healthy infants are often adopted by people from the country they are from. Special needs children are avaliable also young ones, the sn ranging from correctable issues to severe disability.Several eastern european countries are hague countries! But there also unlikely to get an infant under 2. Why do you not want to adopt domestically? There are a lot of people on the boards who did have babies placed.And those adoption cost peanuts compaired to international adoptions.You might want to consider adopting an older child, or a sn child.In the adoption world things like facial deformity, missing a finger, strabismus, heart murmer etc are considered special needs.More serious things like RAD, FAE, FAS, ASD etc are more difficult to predict in an institutionalised child, if you can accept that risk, you might as well consider a child with special needs. Special needs are not as scary as you think at the moment you know a bit more about it. Just consider.

yep philippines would be good choice cept they have put a stop on applications of children under 2...i can't help but dispair at the mo...just really overwelmed and fustrated every country we chosse seems to have something about it!i guess welcome aboard eh?audinoddyx

What about domestic adoption?

And every child will have something about it!

There are thousends of wonderfull children for adoption in the uk and abroad. Most of those children are a bit older and some have special needs. They are still fantastic kids!It might be a disappointment for you that adoption is no longer getting children straight after birth. It is all about finding families for children not children for families. In the uk and abroad!

I've sent you a private message.alison123

Are you sure Ethiopia is not an option for you?I've seen people being referred healthy 3/6 month old babies and waiting times are/were (last year) very very small, like a month.There is a very active and welcoming UK group of people adopting from there who will support you everystep of the way.Some of these families are also in the UK intercountry adoption yahoo group, so ask there.You can't right now adopt a child under 24 months from the Philippines, because they already have quite a few files for those children, but you can apply to adopt a child from 24 to 36 months, which is not a baby, but it's still small enough to be babied and carried around and who will probably benefit a lot from it.And I would really keep an eye on the China SN's programme, because once it starts, it's going to be a fantastic option for families.

When we started the process I looked at intercountry adoption and went through the same arguments as Pluto described. I also realised that it is better if you have a strong connection to the country you are adopting from, and the only countries I have links to do not do intercountry adoption. So we adopted domestically.I also discovered - once I got used to the idea that a child does not need to come as a baby - that we actually peferred an older child.

Having adopted domestically three times I'm really curious to know why you have discounted domestic adoption and are so set on intercountry? I'm not being critical at all - it's just that with the huge expense of intercountry adoption I struggle to really understand why! I think the thing is most people here have adopted domesticaly and I'm not sure really how much practical help and support we can be to you. Is it that you're wanting to adopt a baby and that's why you're discounting domestic adoption? If that is the case then you'll find a lot of us here have actually adopted babies - of course, that doesn't mean to say that adopting a baby comes without its issues. It's just that you don't necessarily find out exactly what those issues are until they're a little older.Have you tried Oasis? You might find that they can be of more help?

We are adopting internationally but our choice was between the UK and the country I'm a dual national of i.e. we already have links. We never considered adopting from another country overseas, though I know other people who have, and in some cases specifically because of the age of the child they could be matched with. I do know that adopters on here have been matched with babies from the UK, but we were left with the choice of a) our LA who we already knew to be incredibly inefficient and slow and frankly unprofessional, who were unlikely to consider us for a baby because of my husband's age or b) a number of VAs who would not consider us for a child under 3 because they rarely place them or c) intercountry adoption where we would definitely be matched with a baby under 1 year.So, although it might be possible for a lot of people to find an agency or LA that would place a baby with them, in the UK, it's not always possible. But as I say, we went into ICA with a specific country in mind, because of my links there. As it turns out, it would be possible for people without links to adopt from our country, but it's an unusual country to adopt from and we know about 3 other couples in the UK going through the process at the moment, all of whom are dual nationals (one or both of the couple) - so we've all chosen to adopt due to our links.On our prep course there was 1 other couple adopting from overseas and they were in exactly the same position as us - adopting from their country of origin (not the same one as us).

I can see that thespouses and understand your reasons for choosing a particular country. Perfectly logical - if horribly expensive!! We've been approved by 3 different agencies and placed by a further 2 and we've had babies placed each time. And, in theory, 3rd time round my age could have been an obstacle - but wasn't.I suppose I'm just being nosy and trying to understand the motivation to want to adopt from overseas when there doesn't appear to be any link?

I do know some people have been lucky (if that's the word) to adopt a young baby in the UK, but I'm not quite sure what we would have done if we didn't have the choice we do (though as you say HORRIBLY expensive).Our LA who we originally applied to foster with (as we were not quite sure we were ready to adopt) first of all told us we were ineligible for adoption at all, due to husband's age, then closed our fostering application without telling us because they were no longer recruiting foster carers for the type of fostering we wanted to do. Not very confidence-inspiring.The VA we are with would not take us on to adopt a UK child under 3 as they never place children in that bracket, and suggested if that was what we wanted we should go back to our LA. Then the medical advisor from the VA suggested we look for a child over about 5 or even 8 because of husband's age (children of this age are almost never placed for adoption in the country we are with) but thankfully our SW pointed out to him that it would be a bit pointless to approve us for this age group.I am very nervous about what will happen if we want to adopt for a second time from either country as it's not going to be possible, given my age now and the fact that we're still waiting, for us to have less than a 45 year age gap between even myself and a second child, while keeping a 2 year age gap between the older child and a second child.I know others have adopted a second child or even a first child with a larger age gap but there seems to be a lot of feeling against this in our area.Even 50 miles down the road in the Big Smoke we know LAs that are a bit more flexible but we live at one end of a very large LA and all the other LAs see us as just too far away to work with (again, we did ask).