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Adoption
International Adoptions...come in
Hi!
We are just looking into the adoption process and I wanted to know if you would share your international adoption time line with me. It is a bit overwhelming looking through all this stuff so I would like to hear from people who have actually gone through it. TIA
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Re: International Adoptions...come in
We adopted from Korea/SWS. Our timeline is probably not the norm, but just to show that you can adopt quickly and go at your own pace. We sent off our application to our agency's partnering agency in September 2008. We already had a completed homestudy because we were originally in the Vietnam program that was shut down, so our social worker just had to redo a couple of things to meet Korea's requirements.
Korea-SWS also has a BMI requirement that I didn't meet so I had to lose 80 lbs to qualify. This took the longest part, so we didn't do much between Sept and January when I finally made goal weight. Then we had a flurry of activity to update our homestudy again, get fingerprinted again, medical clearances. and put together our dear birthparent letter and album. This part took the longest because we dragged our feet and we finally submitted our dossier to Korea in mid May 2009. Realistically, this could have been done in 2 months. Because we were open to some nicotine and alcohol use and a few medical conditions, we were told to expect a call very quickly with a referral, even though the wait was typically 6-9 months. They didn't lie- we got the call on July 28. Our son was available quickly because his mother smoked during pregnancy, drank a couple of times (both of which are very common in Korea) and he had a very small ASD (cardiac defect).
We consulted with an international adoption pediatrician who explained it all to us and we accepted the referral on the 30th. We flew to Korea in late October 2009 and have been enjoying parenthood with the best, happiest, healthiest, smartest baby in the whole world (not that we're biased or anything).
We laugh when people tell us how quickly we became parents when we tell them we submitted our paperwork in May and were home with a baby in October. It totally discounts the 3 years of fertility treatments and 3 years of adoption hurdles to get to that point. In fact, we got on the plane to Korea exactly 3 years after we submitted our initial adoption application to our home study agency.
Good luck!
We are currently on the waitlist for adopting a child from Ethiopia. Timeline is in my blog. I will say that we *just* snuck in before a new rule about when you can send in your 1-600A. So, now, I would probably add about 2 months on to our timeline.
We went on our agency's waitlist at the end of March. The waitlist is supposed to be 4-10 months, but we were called last week saying we will most likely receive a referral much sooner due to the age and gender of a child they may be receiving information on. At our agency, the 10 month wait is usually for healthy infant girls.
7/2008 1st Homestudy started
11/2008 Finish 1st Homestudy
12/2008 Started 2nd Homestudy with IA SW
1/2009 Finished 2nd Homestudy
2/2009 Mailed I-800A
3/2009 traveled to Canada to meet SW
6/2009 Mailed I-800
9/2009 Received Custody Paperwork
9/23/2009 Brought DD home
4/1/2010 Finalized
Our adoption was a private IA from Canada so we had some wrong info to start with. I really had to stay on top of everything in order to push this through. We completed everything that we had to do before the deadlines and I e-mailed and spoke with both our SWs weekly if not daily. We knew the family of DD so we did not have to wait on a match but adoptions from Canada to the US are rare so no one knew how to handle out request.
We're in the process of adopting from Peru, which tends to be a longer process than many other, more common programs. If we wait for Peru to match us wish a child, it could take 1-2 years from the date we were approved. Instead, we have requested to parent a child off the waiting list. Here's our time-line:
March 15, 2008: Decided to start our adoption process
April 28, 2008: Applied to adoption agency
September 2008: Homestudy approved!
January 13, 2009: US Immigration approved!
February 26, 2009: Dossier sent to Peru!
April 3, 2009: Dossier submitted to Peruvian authorities
June 17, 2009: Received request for more information from Peruvian authorities
July 15, 2009: Submitted response to Peruvian authorities
September 9, 2009: Received approval from Peru!
March 11, 2010: Requested to parent a particular child, M
March 24, 2010: Received new information concerning M
March 31, 2010: Requested to continue with our intent to adopt M
We're now waiting to find out if Peru will refer M to our family. We expect to hear something within the next 2 weeks to a month, hopefully. Once we receive a referral, we'll travel within 6-8 weeks, and spend 6-8 weeks in-country. When we return, it will be with our child and our adoption finalized.
Our adoption timeline is in my bio (link in siggy) and it's pretty detailed. We definitely could have done it faster though.
GL to you!
We adopted from Russia, but due to the recent news, who knows what will happen.
We started our homestudy in March 2008 and it was completed in May 2008. I got pregnant and our agency lost their Russia accrediation. The pregnancy didn't work out and we went with another agency in October 2008.
Our homestudy was fine to use so we started on the dossier which was sent to Russia the end of November 2008. We were told that during the holidays nothing is done so the earliest we could hear was February. We received our referral in mid March 2009; traveled for trip 1 in April 2009; traveled for trip 2 in August 2009 and home in September 2009.