Anyone looking into Philippine Adoptions?
Hi Ladies!!
I am new to the board! My name is Bee. My husband and I are just starting to gather information on adopting a baby from the Philippines. Thought I would post and see if anyone can suggest agencies/blogs/books on adopting from this country. Of course I would love to hear personal experiences as well 
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A majority of my husbands family still lives in the Philippines, that is why we have selected this country to adopt from. It has always been our dream to get married, go through the experience of having our own child, and then adopt a child of the opposite sex from the Philippines. We both wanted to go through the experience of having our own child, but both feel that there are SO MANY children out there in the world that need a good loving home. Both of my uncles were adopted, and it's always been something really important deep down inside of me that I have wanted to do.
We were blessed with our little baby boy this past April. I know that the adoption process can be a very long process and a very expensive one so I am trying to gather info and start planning now as we would like our children to be close in age.
So really, just trying to see if anyone has a good place to get started other than the basic books. Any suggestions or info would be greatly appreciated.
TIA and I wish you all good luck on your adoption journey 
Re: Anyone looking into Philippine Adoptions?
(ps - head's up, I have a kid in my sig)
I lurk here, for someday we'll do IA... but here's some tidbits Iearned, as I looked into this HEAVILY back when we were choosing adoption as our next step.
You do pretty much have to have that filipino blood connection to adopt from there. It seems that they take a LONGGGGGG time to find other local family that will take the child (preferred) and only then do they become available.
Reglious (catholic) affiliations were important, and it seems about the only ones up for adoption were older (age 5+ boys). There is NO room for ANY type of mental illness blemish (none. DH took an AD years ago, and that culture's "stigma" on mental illness would basically nix us right there)
this is who I was speaking with at the time... https://www.whfc.org/adoption/philippines/default.htm
but I believe Children's Home Society and HOPE have Philippine programs?
I don't know if you've visited your husband's family there, but we spent a month in some of the islands in 2006. I fell MADLY in love with the people, the culture and I swear, if I see a filipino on the street, I run up gushing about how incredible my journey was there. (well, not really, but I wanna!) It's an incredible place.
oh, and I'm sure the girls here can elaborate more, but since we had a bio child, and were still attempting to concieve another on our own (failing miserably) ... BIRTH ORDER was a huge thing to take into consideration. We were told by multiple agencies that we either had to/should/kinda try to keep our oldest, THE OLDEST. Since many waiting children were older, that made things tricky, and kinda the lead reason we put adoption on the back burner for now - it was just going to be tooo hard to find a referral that worked for our family, that respected Ava's birth order.
so not sure if that helps much, but just keep digging around for agencies that work with this country, and find the right program for you!!
GL !!!