As most of you probably know and some of you probably don't, Jessica and I are currently in the process of adopting a little girl from Taiwan. It's a long, frustrating, expensive process, but we hit a milestone this week that's worth sharing.
When you decide to adopt internationally, the first thing you have to do is something that's known in the adoption community as "Paperchasing". Basically, that means you have to put together a folder full of birth certificates, background checks, marriage licenses, reference letters, fingerprints, passports, agency applications, government documents, and... you get the idea. Anyway, that usually takes about 6-8 months. Jessica and I were able to complete this process in only 4, mostly thanks to Jessica's really hard work to keep us moving.
This past Monday we submitted the last document for our dossier (our collection of documents) and yesterday we received word that our dossier had arrived in Taiwan. What that basically means is that we have now done pretty much everything we can do. Adoption people say that we are now "paper pregnant" but I don't really care for that... just sounds gross. Anyway, now we begin the wait. We're told that we should expect to wait anywhere from 18 to 30 months until we get a referral and then we'll have to wait another 5-6 months before we can travel.
So, if you ask me how the adoption is going anytime in the next 18 months, I'll probably just tell you that we're waiting and there's no news. There probably won't be any news at all for at least that long. It's hard... really, really hard but we believe it will be worth it.
Did you know that the gestational period of an elephant is eighteen months? Not that I'm comparing you two to an elephant or anything. It's just a thought. You wanted thoughts, right? Be careful what you ask for.
Just kidding. Congratulations. I'm praying it will go faster than that for you.
Posted by: Meriam | April 11, 2008 at 10:17 PM
Congratulations! We are also adopting from Taiwan and I came across your blog tonight. We finished our dossier a few months back, but a job change has us going back now and updating several parts of it...we just like to keep things interesting.
Best wishes in your journey!
Cindy
http://adopttaiwan.wordpress.com
Posted by: Cindy | April 15, 2008 at 09:48 PM