Your last group of steps! In-Country Process Now comes more waiting – at least for you. Your agency and their staff in your country will be working hard to complete the legal process required to bring your child home. Your agency should give you an idea of how much time to expect this to take. Some countries only take a few months, others are closer to nine months. Remember also that sometimes things go wrong and your case may take longer than anyone anticipated. While you are waiting is a good time to begin preparing for your child – as … Continue reading →

Picking up where the last entry left off . . . Agency or Facilitator Now is when you really need to have an agency or facilitator. You can sign with them at any point in the process up until now, but if you are tight financially, then it is better to get your homestudy and I-600A finished before signing with your agency and paying their initial fees. Agencies and facilitators basically do the same thing, so I will usually say “agency” but feel free to insert “facilitator” if this is your situation. In the future, I will write some entries … Continue reading →

When you take the plunge and decide that you want to adopt, it can be pretty overwhelming to know where to go first. You probably have already talked to a few people who have adopted in the past and you may have made calls to a few agencies, and that is a good start. However, I found that those conversations actually made things a lot more confusing for me. People were throwing around words like “dossier”, “I-600A” and “I-71H”. They talked about homestudies and post placement visits and referrals and handling the wait. Basically, I just wanted some unbiased, easy-to-understand … Continue reading →