A Dad's Journey Through International Adoption

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Well somebody up there must be doing something

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Interestingly enough I was looking back at some of the blog posts over the past couple of months. I do that every now and then just to see the flow and how our attitude or mindset has changed or remained the same. I had read the post I did right after the initial rumor came out that the first few agencies had heard that they had gotten all the ministries to sign off and were waiting the MOE to issue accreditations. As most may know we were very very fortunate and our agency was one of the that first group. Anyway the rumor was almost exactly a month ago (June 15th-18th).

So at that time I created some time estimates for when we might be hearing about a referral. Yea, those time estimates are one of my favorite things to do, I guess it's just the analyst in me. Well, I was a bit too excited by the news and thus made an overly optimistic estimate, so I restated my "Best Case" scenario the following day renaming the...

"This will happen if God comes down and places Her right hand on the back on the officials to help move them along Case."

And that estimate was...

That Accreditations would be signed by end of June (check, it happen on June 27th)
That the regions begin working with agencies mid July (check, that happen too)
And that we'll see a referral the end of July/early August (well, that may happen too, I hope)

Well obviously God did come down and help the officials put the pedal to the metal.

Labels: adoption process, time estimates

posted by Steveg @ 9:28 AM 1 comments

Okay, it's getting real now

Thursday, July 19, 2007

So we've heard that referrals are now coming out from our region as well. There have been a bunch of people who have reported that other regions too are now sending out referrals. So it looks like the whole process throughout the various regions is rolling. This is both really great news but also a bit scary. I'm mean, this thing is getting real now. Damn, and just as I was getting accustom to the whole waiting thing.

Of course, we're really still in waiting mode. Because now we are waiting for our referral and there are a lot of factors that will impact when we might hear something. First, we don't know where we are on the list of waiting families not to mention that a child has to be matched up to us (which is a pretty cryptic process and no one really knows for sure how that whole thing is done). And then there's always the possibility that the key person from our region's MOE goes on vacation (next few months are the big vacation time in Russia), and from what I hear everything is put on hold till they get back.

But back to the scary part of this. Remember we were being conservative and estimating we wouldn't be hearing anything until September or October (or maybe even later). Now it's actually possible that we could possibly maybe perchance conceivably perhaps get a referral this month! And that means I need to get it into high gear. I just want to do a little legwork in advance to insure when we need to roll, we have some of the key things in place.

So I've contacted one of the two international adoption (IA) doctors we will be using just to ask how the whole consultation process works. Thankfully these folks have the whole process pretty well wired. You literally can contact them out-of-the-blue with all the pertinent medical records and usually within 48-72 hours they're providing you a consultation.

The other thing I need to do is contact our credit union and see if they will be able to provide the special cash requirements. We will need to pay the people helping us (driver, translator, etc.) in cash and the bills need to be almost brand new currency (or at least unmarked and unblemished). The rationale for this is that the banks and other currency exchange places in Russia are wary of counterfeit bills. And supposedly this is how they protect against that. Doesn't really seem logical to me since the age of a bill or it's properties (faded or repeatedly folded) isn't really a way to determine it's authenticity.

But it's what they want, so that's what they are going to get. So I just need to ask if our credit union can help us get a few thousand in brand new bills. I'm trying to decide if I should inform the teller first that we need it because we're adoption from Russia or just say what I need and see what kind of expression they get on their face. It should be good for a laugh or two. And of course we live in the San Francisco Bay Area which, I know this is shocking, has a few other banks. So even if my credit union can't help us I can easily get a major bank that can.

NEWS UPDATE More good news, there's been a number of reports from a bunch of agencies that the second batch of accreditations have happened today. We'll have to wait and see how many but it certainly appears to be at least the same number that were in the first batch. I'm getting a little worried now because the good news just keeps on pouring in.

Labels: adoption process, money

posted by Steveg @ 11:55 AM 3 comments

Some whispers that things are gearing up

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

We're still waiting for the regions to get going with registering the agencies who were part of the first batch of accreditations. I suppose it's more like we're waiting for the region we're headed to. But we heard some good news that it appears other regions are moving forward and that our region is just about there. Again, it is still possible that our agency which works in nine regions (9 Times Mrs. Bueller, sorry another 80's dated joke) might move us to a different region if they feel it will be easier for us to get a referral that matches up with us better.

But the really good news is that the one region in Russia (Khabarovsk ) which was completely closed down is now up and working with our agency to get court dates for waiting families. This is huge. This is the region where they were not allowing adoptions to be completed until accreditations were done.

The way I think of it there are (in a global sense) three main parts to adopting a child from Russia. First is the homestudy and (what I call the U.S. side) where you are given the right to adopt a child. Second is acceptance of a referral (basically finding your child and filling out all the paperwork to adopt them). And third is the court approval of the adoption (the legal recognition of the adoption).

After accreditations expired and of course it most cases it has been over a year for the waiting agencies to be reaccredited, most of the regions would allow the parents who had completed the first two parts to finish their adoption even though their agency's accreditation had expired. In most cases they just allowed the parents to finish the adoption as an "independent adoption". So over the past year even without accreditation families have been able to bring their children home.

To my knowledge one and only one region (I think there are something like 50!!! regions) did not allow this to happen. Consequently, parents who have met and already made emotionally connections with a child have been waiting for over a year to get a court date and bring their child home. Thankfully Khabarovsk is now officially working to get court dates for these parents and bring the adoption to a happy conclusion.

And that is good news indeed.

Labels: adoption process

posted by Steveg @ 4:01 PM 4 comments

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I'm Steve and this is my wife Stefanie. This is our story, mostly seen through my eyes, of the journey to create our family by adopting a child from Russia.

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