Our Adoption Story

Mark and I are adopting a child from China through Children's Hope International. In a nutshell, the whole adoption process takes around 18 months, with a lot of governmental intervention.

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Our first step wass completing a dossier.

1. The dossier includes:
   1. A letter/petition to adopt.
   2. Homestudy
   3. INS Approval (I-171H)
   4. Marriage Certificate or Statement of Singleness.
   5. Birth Certificates (For adoptive parent(s) only.)
   6. Medical Report Form(s)
   7. Financial Statement Form
   8. Employer letter(s)
   9. Police Report(s)
2. Documents must be notarized.
3. Documents must be state certified.
4. Documents must be authenticated by the Chinese Consulate.

The dossier normally takes around 4-5 months to complete. Ours was finished in approximately that amount of time - but only because CCAA regulations changed as of 02/01/2001. The dossier was then sent to our agency, who delivered it to China, where it was translated into Chinese. After translation, it went into the queue at the China Center of Adoption Affairs. There it sat for approximately 13 months to be matched with a baby to our specifications (0-12 month-old healthy girl - but she'll most likely be closer to 9 months or older). It's a very systematic process - the babies' dossiers are taken in the order in which they are received, as are the parents'.

When there is a match, the referral is translated into English. With the referral comes a passport-sized photo and a very general medical report. Mark and I say yes or no (rarely does someone say no). Then we wait for an approval to travel to China, which is normally two months after the referral.

We fly to China with a group of other adoptive parents, get acclimated for 2-3 days, and then get the babies. We go through a lot of governmental paperwork and do a lot of sight seeing, but the adoption is final in China after 2 weeks there. She even becomes a citizen at that point as well.

All of the babies are wanted and loved, no matter what the gender. But because of the patriarchal society that China has had for the last few thousand years and because of the one-child policy in China, boys are preferred. When the children are married off, the wife lives with the husband and his family, who support the older parents. If the only child is a girl, the parents have no one to support them in their old age. Therefore, a lot of parents are abandoning their baby girls, which is why the probability of us getting a girl is about 95%. The babies go to welfare homes upon abandonment. The welfare homes also house the elderly, without children to support them. This means that the babies have "foster care" while they are in the welfare home, because the elderly patrons hold them and feed them. Because it is against the law to abandon a baby in China, we won't know anything about the birth parents, or our baby's circumstances - probably not even her birthday.

Timeline

• 11/05/2000: Completed adoption agreement sent to CHI
• 11/07/2000: Submitted I-600A to INS - Petition to adopt an unidentified orphan
• 12/04/2000: Fingerprinting for INS
• 12/22/2000: First Home Study visit
• 12/27/2000: Second Home Study visit
• 02/23/2001: Third Home Study visit
• 03/01/2001: Completed Home Study received
• 03/08/2001: I-171H received from INS
• 03/26/2001: Completed dossier to CHI
• 04/02/2001: Dossier mailed to China for translation
• 04/12/2001: Dossier officially logged in at CCAA
• 06/04/2001: "Brown envelope" from U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China received
• 05/31/2002: Referral!
• 07/21/2002: Meet Amy
• 07/22/2002: Adoption complete
• 07/31/2002: Amy is an official US citizen
• 11/16/2002: Apply for Certificate of Citizenship (already have MO birth certificate, US passport, Social Security card in US name)
• 06/16/2003: Certificate of Citizenship appointment