Adoption Timetable

We thought it would be important to let you know how long this adoption process has taken. There is so much that goes on before the final trip to China! Below is our current timetable. We are still waiting but are hoping for news on a referral soon.

June/July 2005 - We host a young girl from Belarus in our home for 6 weeks. It is during this time that we decide to start the process to adopt another child from China. It was a memorable summer.

July 5, 2005 - We contact Great Wall China Adoption. We used them for Julia's adoption and think it is wise to use them again. We start the process of filling out paperwork: agency application, medical forms, etc.

August 2005 - We start our homestudy process which includes 4 social worker visits with one of them to our home. It's intensive and we are "investigated" as a couple, as parents, and as a family. No stone is left unturned!

September 2005 - We are still collecting needed paperwork and documents: birth certificates of the entire family, marriage certificates, financial statements, County police clearances (we are not criminals!), and employment letters.

During this time we have filled out INS paperwork (I-600A) and have submitted fingerprints for an FBI criminal check. We have to wait until INS approves us before we can get our documents authenticated and sent to China, so we send copies of these documents to Great Wall for them to review and make sure we didn't miss anything.

October 5, 2005 - We get our INS approval (171H) to adopt and bring a child into the country legally! (This document is valid for 15 months and our homestudy is valid for 18 months.)

October 2005 - Now we send all our documents (dossier) to the NC Secretary of State to get our notary statements on every document authenticated. After the NC Secretary of State is done with the documents we send them off to the US Department of State for certification and then to the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC for further certification/authentication. Each document in our dossier comes back with a paper from the US Dept of State and the Chinese Embassy stating it is a legal document....we copy EVERYTHING...and I mean EVERYTHING in the dossier. Our copy "stack" is about 1 inch thick.

October 24, 2005 - We send our dossier to Great Wall in a ziplock bag via FedEx...why the bag? During Julia's adoption the FedEx guy dropped our package in water and it was soaked when Great Wall recieved it...our caseworker had to use a hair dryer to dry the documents so they wouldn't bleed further and possibly mildew while in route to China! We did not want the chance of that happening again!!

October 28, 2005 - Great Wall sends our dry dossier to the Center for Chinese Adoption Affairs in Beijing, China. Now the wait for our Log in Date (LID) begins.

November 17, 2005 - We have our LID! Our documents will now be translated into Chinese and then reviewed. Now the wait begins...we initially think it will take 6 to 8 months to get a referral. Things dramatically change!

May 2006 - We recieve word that our documents have finally entered the review room. Now the Chinese officials are looking through our documents to determine if we are eligible to adopt. The process has slowed greatly by this point. We are not sure why there is a slow down and have been told many things. The main opinion is that more children are being adopted domestically in China now and the number of prospective international adoptive families is greater than the number of available children in orphanages. We aren't certain this is true, but we aren't "in the know" so we can only speculate on the truthfulness. The waiting continues.

Fall 2006 - Our documents move out of the review room. Since we have heard nothing and haven't been asked for further documents or clarifications on our dossier, we assume we have been approved. Basically, no news is good news. The bad news...our homestudy and INS approval will expire soon. We have been waiting 12 months in November 2006.

January/February 2007 - We start to renew our homestudy and begin the INS approval process again...this includes a visit to submit fingerprints for another security clearance.

April 2007 - We get our renewed INS approval (171H). Just in time...things are still moving slowly, but the prospect of getting a referral this summer is good.

We have been waiting for 18 months! We hope for a referral in the July/August 2007 timeframe. We will travel to China 6 to 8 weeks after we recieve a referral.

And now you know the rest of the story...