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Jill Cunnup of Siler City is in the same situation. In 2004, after years of infertility, she adopted a son from Kazakhstan, who came home at 10 months old. Last fall, she decided to adopt a child from Vietnam, thinking the process would take about nine months.

"I thought the second time would be easy," said Cunnup, 29. "Now, I still have hope that I will finish the adoption, but I have no idea when."

The U.S. government has recently become concerned about the selling and stealing of babies in Vietnam, and investigators are poring over each case to ensure each child is actually an orphan.

"These protective measures have been put in place to ensure the integrity of the adoption process in Vietnam," said Peter Vietti, a spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

Stern, who runs the Mandala agency, said she believes corruption exists only in a tiny portion of cases. While investigations drag on, she said, children suffer. In the past month, Stern said, six babies set to be adopted by Americans died when a virus swept a Vietnamese orphanage.

International adoption, all but unheard of at the end of World War II, has become a mainstream phenomenon in the past two decades. Each year since 2002, Americans have adopted more than 20,000 foreign orphans, according to the State Department.

As its popularity soars, so does pressure from international groups such as UNICEF, which believe that children should be removed from their home countries only as a last resort.

Fears of baby-selling

"Lack of regulation and oversight, particularly in the countries of origin, coupled with the potential for financial gain, has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption, where profit, rather than the best interests of children, takes center stage," UNICEF states in a position paper on its Web site. "Abuses include the sale and abduction of children, coercion of parents and bribery."

However, among U.S. adopters, those allegations have gained little traction. They focus on the benefits.

Foreign orphans come with scant chance that a birth parent will attempt to reclaim the child or seek a reunion. And some say that foreign-born children, relinquished most often because of poverty, are less likely than U.S. orphans to come from mothers with substance abuse problems. Without adoption, many foreign orphans face a future without governments that will save them from starvation or ensure medical care.

Lackey, 36, a photographer, said she and her husband decided to adopt after an around-the-world trip through more than a dozen impoverished countries. In the orphanage where their son lived, children didn't have basic supplies such as toothpaste or Tylenol. They used rags for diapers and slept several to a crib.

She says the boy they named Caleb has so enriched their lives that she decided to adopt another child. This time, she is waiting for a toddler from Ecuador -- an option open only to couples willing to accept older children and to spend up to two months living in the country.

She said she hopes the delays and uncertainty won't discourage people from opening their homes to the world's children.

"It's opened up a whole door that we didn't even realize we were missing," said Lackey, who also has a 6-year-old biological daughter. "These issues that we're talking about are government issues. The children are still there."

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