Several people have asked us about what the adoption process looks like, and I thought I\u2019d do a quick (ha! not really. very long. saddle up.) blog post to kind of at least give an overview of what this process has looked like for us.<\/p>\n
We made the decision to adopt sometime in January and started researching countries and agencies. For us, China made the most sense because it\u2019s a well established program, and the wait in relatively short. It also requires a comparatively short travel time. Once we picked China, we started researching agencies. We ended up choosing CCAI (Chinese Children Adoption International). They are an agency that has been working in China from the beginning of it\u2019s international adoption program, and have facilitated 11.000+ adoptions, so we feel like we\u2019re in good hands.<\/p>\n
Application:
\nThe first step once we decided on an agency was applying. The application is a very basic overview of our lives, and it also certifies that we meet China\u2019s conditions to adopt, which include age, BMI, income of at least $10,000 per family member, and a significant \u201cnet worth\u201d requirement. We also simultaneously applied to our home study agency, Options for Families and Youth in the Cleveland area. We were accepted by both agencies and we got started!<\/p>\n
Home Study:
\nA home study is a set of face to face interviews with a social worker to determine whether you\u2019ll be a suitable parents to the child you adopt. Most people, us included, find it terribly intimidating and spend obscene amounts of time cleaning all the things and setting out ridiculous snacks because you want the social worker to think you\u2019re awesome. Every article I read kept saying that it wasn\u2019t a big deal, to just relax and HA!, have we met? I did not relax. But I\u2019m here to say\u2026 it was no big deal. Our social worker, Ginger, is the absolute best. We liked her right from the start. She was kind and funny, and walked us through the whole process. She is a gift and we are so grateful to her. We did one longer visit at our house, just Josh and I, and then we went to her office for fingerprints and a training required by Ohio law. She also did one more visit to our house (I cleaned a lot less for this one!) and interviewed Eden. She did a quick walk through of the house to make sure that we didn\u2019t have any torture chambers or, you know, doors that a child could lock themselves in with, and it was super easy. Along with the home study, we did background checks, a fire inspection (we own a fire extinguisher now\u2026 exciting stuff!), and some personal narrative work as well. And best of all, when she asked if I spoke any languages besides English fluently, and I replied \u201csarcasm\u201d she laughed because she is the awesome. The other piece of that is asking people to write letters of recommendation. We can\u2019t say thank you enough to Phil and Kristina, Dave and Karen, Danielle, Melissa and Michelle. It\u2019s a scary thing to ask someone to tell a social worker their honest opinion of your parenting and we are so grateful that they said \u201cyes\u201d when we asked them, and that, we assume, they said nice things.<\/p>\n
Medical Conditions Checklist (MCC):
\nThe MCC is what gets the clock ticking for when you\u2019re matched with your child. It\u2019s pretty much what it sounds like; our adoption agency has an extensive list of conditions and you go through and check which ones you would accept and which ones you would not. It is an incredibly bizarre experience to sit on the couch with your spouse and say \u201cyes, I could deal with this, but no, I couldn\u2019t deal with that.\u201d It was one of the more humbling experience of this journey so far for me, because behind each condition you say yes or no to, there are actual kids waiting for their families to find them. In the end, we said yes to lots of conditions, such as cleft lip\/palate, heart defects, limb differences, skin conditions, some feeding and digestive challenges, and a lot more. As I said above, submitting this starts your clock to match, so we pushed hard to get this done. Once we are \u201cDocuments to China\u201d (DTC), this is what they will use to match us, and our openness to conditions will shorten or lengthen our wait. People open to boys with Down Syndrome, or significant heart issues, or older children etc will be matched sometimes before they even complete their dossier. People who are requesting a girl under 3 with very minor health concerns might wait 24 months+. So, the MCC is really important. Our clock started running on July 17th, 2014, so we\u2019ll see when it stops!<\/p>\n
Dossier:
\nOh, the dossier. Say this word to any adoptive parent and their eyes immediately glaze over in exhaustion. A dossier is a look at our lives on paper and includes birth certificates, marriage licenses, passports, the home study, immigration approval, a petition to adopt, physical exams, blood work, and a bunch of other stuff I\u2019m forgetting. Once it\u2019s completed, most of it has to be notarized and then the notary seals have to be authenticated in the county where the notary has their license. THEN, it goes to the Ohio Secretary of State to be certified again and THEN it goes to the China Counsolate in New York (by courier! because you can\u2019t just mail it!), and THEN it goes to our agency for critical review, and THEN it\u2019s bound and sent on it\u2019s way to China. Head spinning yet?! Now that I\u2019ve had some time to wrap my head around this part of the process, I\u2019m good, but when I read through all of that for the first time, it was pretty intense. I will be so happy when that part of this process is over and our documents are in China!<\/p>\n
Documents to China\/Log in Date (DTC\/LID):
\nOnce our dossier gets to China, we are logged into their system, and that is when doors really start to open up. Once that happens, we are able to be matched with any child in the system. If we are following a \u201ctypical\u201d timeline, we may be waiting for a while after LID, but our MCC is fairly open, so who knows? This is both a relief and a whole new kind of stress because now every phone call and every email could be \u201cTHE ONE\u201d.<\/p>\n
Special Needs (SN) vs. Special Focus (SF):
\nWe are adopting through the special needs program, which encompasses the \u201ctraditional\u201d special needs program and also the special focus program. Basically, special needs are considered mild to moderate and correctable in the US. The special focus program are kids who have multiple special needs, are older, or who have more severe conditions that may be on going once they\u2019re home. The other difference is that for SF, we can request their file without having our dossier logged in. For SN kids, we have to be logged in.<\/p>\n
Still with me?! Phew! That\u2019s at least an overview of what we\u2019re doing right now, and where we\u2019re going. It\u2019s a long process, but so worth it, and our agency is amazing and has a fantastic guide that is walking us through the process so we feel confident we know what we\u2019re doing. We are currently waiting on our home study and then we\u2019ll be working on immigration. Progress is happening, and we\u2019ll keep moving forward!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several people have asked us about what the adoption process looks like, and I thought I\u2019d do a quick (ha! not really. very long. saddle up.) blog post to kind of at least give an overview of what this process has looked like for us. We made the decision to adopt sometime in January and Continue reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatwalltogreatlakes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatwalltogreatlakes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatwalltogreatlakes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatwalltogreatlakes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatwalltogreatlakes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatwalltogreatlakes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatwalltogreatlakes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatwalltogreatlakes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatwalltogreatlakes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}