After picking our agencies, the next 21 months were a contrast in styles. The first 3 months was crazy and hectic followed by 18 months of nothing.
To adopt internationally, your paperwork is divided into three main parts. The first is the home study. Ours took about two months and included three meetings at our agency and one meeting at our house. Most families are nervous about our home study, and we were no different. There's no reason to worry for most families, but even the theoretical possibility of getting denied to something you want to do so badly causes worry for families. We also had to do paperwork that went with the home study: medical reports, financial information, autobiographies, references, fingerprints, background checks, etc. Our social worker was so, so wonderful to work with. She made us feel comfortable as we navigated the process. In Indiana, our home study only lasts for 12 months, so we've also had to do two home study updates as we have continued to wait.
The second part is paperwork for USCIS. They approve you as adoptive parents. Then later they also will approve that your child is an orphan in order to issue them a visa to come to the US. Their fingerprints last for 15 months and their approval lasts for 18 months. We have had to renew each of those once. USCIS does give you one free renewal of each.
The third part is the dossier. This is the set of paperwork that you send to Ethiopia so they can approve you to adopt from there. For Ethiopia, this included things like medical reports, more references, police reports, bank statements, and others. It also includes the home study. This took us a few weeks to get everything together.
Once we got all of our paperwork done, it was assembled and then the dossier was sent to Ethiopia. This is a very important day for adoptive families! For us, our big day came on July 9th, 2009. Then came the waiting.
Why did we wait? It all has to do with what kind of child you are requesting. Depending on agency, you are allowed to set parameters for age/gender of child that you want and also what special needs you are open to. Girls almost always take longer than boys, and younger children take longer than older children. For us since this was our first child, we decided to adopt a baby and chose to adopt a child less than a year of either gender. We expected to wait 5-6 months, but circumstances in Ethiopia changed and we ended up waiting 18 months for a referral, which is when you get matched with a child.
Could we have not waited? Yes. There are children who do not fit anybody on the waiting list. They go onto a waiting child list. After you get your paperwork in, you can adopt any waiting child available. There are tons of children waiting. Boys over 5 and large sibling groups are the most likely to wait. I encourage any family who can to consider adopting a waiting child. We expect to do that on our second adoption, but because of our age we chose to adopt a baby for this first adoption. That caused us to wait 18 months until we got our referral of Rogi. The details of that wonderful day will come in the next post!
To adopt internationally, your paperwork is divided into three main parts. The first is the home study. Ours took about two months and included three meetings at our agency and one meeting at our house. Most families are nervous about our home study, and we were no different. There's no reason to worry for most families, but even the theoretical possibility of getting denied to something you want to do so badly causes worry for families. We also had to do paperwork that went with the home study: medical reports, financial information, autobiographies, references, fingerprints, background checks, etc. Our social worker was so, so wonderful to work with. She made us feel comfortable as we navigated the process. In Indiana, our home study only lasts for 12 months, so we've also had to do two home study updates as we have continued to wait.
The second part is paperwork for USCIS. They approve you as adoptive parents. Then later they also will approve that your child is an orphan in order to issue them a visa to come to the US. Their fingerprints last for 15 months and their approval lasts for 18 months. We have had to renew each of those once. USCIS does give you one free renewal of each.
The third part is the dossier. This is the set of paperwork that you send to Ethiopia so they can approve you to adopt from there. For Ethiopia, this included things like medical reports, more references, police reports, bank statements, and others. It also includes the home study. This took us a few weeks to get everything together.
Once we got all of our paperwork done, it was assembled and then the dossier was sent to Ethiopia. This is a very important day for adoptive families! For us, our big day came on July 9th, 2009. Then came the waiting.
Why did we wait? It all has to do with what kind of child you are requesting. Depending on agency, you are allowed to set parameters for age/gender of child that you want and also what special needs you are open to. Girls almost always take longer than boys, and younger children take longer than older children. For us since this was our first child, we decided to adopt a baby and chose to adopt a child less than a year of either gender. We expected to wait 5-6 months, but circumstances in Ethiopia changed and we ended up waiting 18 months for a referral, which is when you get matched with a child.
Could we have not waited? Yes. There are children who do not fit anybody on the waiting list. They go onto a waiting child list. After you get your paperwork in, you can adopt any waiting child available. There are tons of children waiting. Boys over 5 and large sibling groups are the most likely to wait. I encourage any family who can to consider adopting a waiting child. We expect to do that on our second adoption, but because of our age we chose to adopt a baby for this first adoption. That caused us to wait 18 months until we got our referral of Rogi. The details of that wonderful day will come in the next post!
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