Good news!!

Some exciting news from our adoption coordinator. Our agency works with 3 orphanages in Vietnam and our dossier is currently waiting at one of them (I think its at Khanh Hoa). Khanh Hoa is a beach community in southern Vietnam. At the last update there were either 3 or 4 dossiers there waiting for children. Just recently, Khanh Hoa received 6 children eligible for adoption, 3 toddlers and 3 babies. They weren't expected to start receiving new children, esp babies, until the end of the summer, so this is ahead of schedule. They are in the process of searching for the birth parents for these children (mandatory 30 days) and then searching for Vietnamese adoptive parents (another mandatory 30 days). If they don't find parents for the kids after that search, they get referred to our agency. The birth parents did come and reclaim one of the babies. But that still leaves 2 babies and 3 toddlers and only 3-4 dossiers. I am excited b/c one of those babies might be Baby Schmidt!!! Even if I'm wrong, its exciting to see other families get united with their new children.

In other Vietnamese adoption news, health reports of children already placed in the US have been very good. A few children had mild developmental delays, but parents report overall health and could tell the children were taken care of and loved by the orphanage workers. One common trait is low birth weight due to malnutrition of the birth mother. From the report:

"Of the healthy children referred to us thus far, their birth weights ranged between 1 kg (2.2 pounds) and a little over 3 kg (approximately 6.6 pounds). Most of the children were between 1 and 2 kg at birth. Quite often birth mothers making an adoption plan are doing so due to poverty, which can be a cause of malnutrition in the birth mother."

So, overall it sounds like the Vietnam program is running very smoothly. This was a very encouraging report!