The Process

We were told by our agency, Adoptions From The Heart, that the paperwork typically takes 5 to 6 months to complete. The fastest they had ever seen the paperwork completed was 4 months and that was with the couple working on it constantly.

I was determined to meet that 4 month target. I have to admit the paperwork was exhaustive, but our social worker gave us our paperwork in stages. Even after your paperwork is complete in the USA, you can have 6 to 7 month wait while your paperwork is processed in China.

Be prepared to wait at least a full year.

Your referral is the much anticipated package from China that contains not only information about your child, but also the long awaited photograph! It's finally real! You now have a face to pour all that love into.

Some of the first things you can do while deciding on your choice of adoption agency is to order your DMV records and schedule a physical with your doctor. Call a traveling Notary to meet you at your Doctor's office to witness their signature on your phyical statement of health. Make sure you ask your agency for the doctor's checklist. Don't forget to ask your doctor what immunizations are recommended for China (they can change from time to time).

The first thing we did after our first visit with our Social Worker (SW) was order our birth certificates and schedule our home study. We were born in different states so I had to contact the County Recorder for each. The great thing about today is most government offices are on the internet, so I was able to verify the fee and order our certs online. We used expedited service on everything, so if you can afford it, I'd recommend using expedited and overnight delivery on anything that offers it. Its worth it!

We received our Birth Certs in about 3 days. The next thing to do was to get our Birth and marriage certs state certified. That means that your certs have been notarized by the County Recorder and must be sent to the Secretary of State to have the notary verified and the state seal is attached to a letter saying the notary is valid and registered with that state.

TIP: Before mailing your request and payment to anyone during the adoption process, call first! Tell them what you are requesting and verify the current fee and address for FedEx. Ask if they accept personal checks, credit cards or bank checks. This will save lots of time and frustration.

We had to send our Birth Certs to two different states. Remember, all document that have been notarized must be State Certified by whichever state the notary is registered in. Call the Sec'y of State you are mailing to and ask for the Authentications Dept. Tell them you need a state seal for your notarized document. Verify the fee and address and turn around time. Many offices have an expedited turnaround for an additional fee.

While we were waiting for our certs, our SW, Shannon provided us with a form from the State Police and we applied for both our criminal and abuse record. Request 3 copies, so that you can get them State Certified as well. One copy for your agency, one for your dossier and one for your file. You never know when you may need an extra original and you won't want to add any more days to your wait.

We also applied for our passports, since ours had expired long ago. We used expedited service for these, as well. We received them within 4 days! The Post Office has never moved so fast! I'm telling you there is nothing like having all your documents in hand. We in no way wanted to have a delay caused by a missing document.

International adoption is estimated to take a year and we did not want to wait any longer than we had to for our baby. When you get your passport pictures ask for 10 copies. You'll need them for your dossier, Visas etc. Again think extra copies. You may not want to be running back to Kinkos before your flight to get a picture taken!

Meanwhile, we were meeting our SW once every other week. She had prepared our notarized homestudy after a month and we again had to get that document authenticated by State Certification. Then we sent our application off to the USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).

It was November 19th, 2004. We had been approved to adopt by our SW and now needed approval from the Feds to adopt internationally. USCIS will also need a copy of your birth cert, so that is a good reason to order two copies, just in case one is lost. This is where you will go for fingerprinting and we received our appointment within a month.

USCIS also has a website and we were able to fill out our request for adoption online (I-600A) and print it out, so it was typed and neat. Don't forget to request permission to bring in two children to the US. In the event twins are available and you agree to accept them, you are already approved to bring in up to two children. You will not be required to bring home two children. If you cannot accept twins, of course, check 'NO' to bringing home more than one child.

All in all, we received our 171-H approval within a month and a half; from the time our application was received on file to the date of approval by USCIS. It was now January 10th, 2005!

We sent the last of the notarized paperwork to the Sec'y of State for certification and FedEx'd every document to our DC courier who took them first to the US Dept of State for certification and then on to the Embassy of China for authentication. We received everything back within 4 days and reviewed our entire packet with our SW.

She verified everything was in order then we FedEx'd our 2-1/2 inch thick dossier off to the translator's in NY on February 10th. Our DTC (Documents To China) date is February 21st, 2005 and our dossier was logged in to CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs) on March 7th, 2005.

Now the real waiting begins!

Waiting For Natalie

We have been waiting for Natalie since we first decided to submit our application in September of 2004. We had been waivering as to when we could submit our application, because although we had the money for submittal, would we have enough for the first installment?

Then we were blessed with a phone call from my sister. She asked if we'd submitted our application yet. When we said no she said well, wait no longer. We will be able to help you. I had to hand the phone over to DH, because the tears started flowing. All the uncertainty was over. All the questions of when were over. My brother-in-law has suppported our decision to adopt from the start and came up with the idea to provide us a financial loan.

Our application had been ready for sometime, we just needed to date our signatures. We mailed our application off on September 15th, 2004!