Last Homestudy Meeting

We had our last (we think) home study meeting today with our social worker. We gave her all of the forms and documentation that we have filled out and collected over the past couple months. She was pretty impressed with how fast we have gotten everything together, most people take much longer I guess. We still have a couple forms we are waiting on that we will hopefully get in within the next week or so. Once everything is turned in our social worker will give us our home study document and then we can apply to the US Immigration Service to get permission to bring our daughter into the country. We also got a call yesterday that our baby furniture is in and will be delivered on November 5th.

Big 30

We reached an important milestone in the adoption process today. Jen turned 30, this is important because China requires that we are both at least 30 in order to adopt. Our agency allowed us to start the process before Jen's 30th birthday but we would not be able to send our info to China until her birthday. We are still waiting on a few more documents to come back once we get them we can schedule our final homestudy appointment.

Closing a door

We had our follow up meeting today with our doctor from the Fertility Center. This meeting was just to discuss the results of our last failed IVF. We were a little nervous going into the meeting knowing that we would be telling the doctor we would not be continuing with fertility treatments for a while. He took the news really well, congratulated us and seemed genuinely excited for us. He told us a story of a conference he went to where there was a plane full of couples coming back from China with their little girls, and they were all so cute. He is surprised though that IVF hasn't worked for us yet. The next steps, if we decide to continue with treatments in the future, would be chromosomal testing on the embryos to test for abnormalities. They would perform a normal IVF cycle but do a biopsy on the embryos before transfer and only transfer the best ones. We had a good feeling coming out of the meeting knowing that we were closing out that chapter and moving forward with the adoption. We know that it is something that we can go back to and maybe the technology will be better when/if we are ready to try again.

Jen's Home Study Meeting

Today Jen had her individual home study appointment at Panera. It also went really well. I spent about an hour and 40 minutes talking with the social worker. We had a lot to discuss since my family is so big, there were many topics to cover. She thinks I am a very fortunate person to have such a loving and wonderful family and I agree. We talked about the same issues she covered with Steve and it was tough to come up with areas of disagreements, usually they include shoes, football or cats!! Next steps are getting the last few documents signed and sent in and then wait for the homestudy document to be compiled.

Steve's Home Study Meeting

Steve had his individual home study appointment today, it went really well. We met at the Panera Bakery in North Andover. She basically took the autobiography that I wrote and used it as a guide to discuss aspects of my life; childhood, school years, college, career and the relationship between Jen and I. She wanted to know how Jen and I resolve conflicts, that was an easy one because we don't have any, just kidding. We discussed the death of my father and the death of a friend of mine. Also discussed some happier things like why I think I will be a good parent and some of the things I like to do as an individual. The meeting lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes. After the home study I had to go across the street to my doctor for an appointment to get a physical to prove that I am healthy enough to parent a child. The physical was pretty basic but I have to get some blood work done to make sure I don't have HIV and about 17 other diseases, I guess this is a requirement from China.

Notary Public Fun

Who would have though that finding a notary public would be the most difficult task for us thus far? Jen spent this week making phone calls to notary publics trying to find one to sign a couple of documents for us. We finally realized that our bank has a notary on premises and she was able to take care of it for us tonight. These documents were additional background checks and some legal documents for CAWLI. We are pretty much done with the bulk of the paperwork for now. We need to get our physical/health forms completed, which should be complete within a week or two.

CORI Checks

Mailed out our forms today for our CORI checks. These are just background checks to ensure that we don't have criminal records. We also sent out the forms to the people that we have asked to provide references for us.

First Home Study Meeting

We had our first home study appointment today, it went very well. We first sat down and discussed some of the paperwork that we need to turn in. Then she asked about our reasons for adopting and specifically adopting from China. She also asked us some mandatory questions from INS regarding child abuse, drug abuse and alcohol abuse. Then we gave her a tour of our house, we think she liked it. We spent the last few days cleaning and Steve spent all weekend repairing the patio but she didn't even go out onto the deck. Lucy was even fairly well behaved, she initially jumped up onto the table a few times and came inches away from drinking from her glass but we stopped her in time. So we dodged a bullet on that one. We then banished her to the basement for the rest of the home study. The meeting lasted for about an hour and fifteen minutes. Our next steps are our individual home study interviews, Steve's is on September 15th and Jen's on the 19th.

Social Worker Called...

We got a call from our social worker today. Our first home study appointment is scheduled for next Tuesday. We will probably be spending the next few days cleaning up the house and yard.

Intake Meeting

We attended our Intake Meeting today at the CAWLI office. It was basically just a meeting to go over all of the forms we have to fill out and answer any questions we had. We also gave them our first big check to pay for our home study and post placement services. We should be getting a call from our social worker next week sometime to set up our first meeting. We can now start digging in and filling out some of these forms.

Baby Furniture Shopping

To take advantage of the Massachusetts tax-free day this upcoming weekend we decided to pre-order our baby furniture. We picked out a crib, changing table and dresser, probably won't be delivered for at least 2 -3 months. This is the set, but we chose a caramel finish rather than white. We also got started on our paperwork; we have written our autobiographies and have dug out our past three years of tax returns.

Intake Package

We received our Intake Package from CAWLI today. It is huge, 43 pages of documents and forms that we need to fill out to complete the adoption. We have a meeting on August 17th at the CAWLI office for our Intake Interview where they will explain the intake package to us. Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback and words of encouragement that you gave us on the guest book. It is really nice to get so much support from all of you.

Our Story

We are Steve and Jen. We met in May 1997 and were married July 28, 2001. After a couple years of being married we decided it was time to start a family. After almost a year of trying on our own with no luck we decided to get some help from a fertility specialist. Six IUIs and two IVFs later we decided that starting a family was what was important to us. We planned to try one more IVF and in the meantime look into adoption. The Third IVF did not work, and as much as it hurt we have so much to look forward to in getting our little girl from China.

After all of the heartbreak that we had been through with the failed fertility treatments we decided that domestic adoption was not a good fit for us. We did not feel comfortable with open adoptions where the birth mother still has a role your child's life. The birth mother can also change her mind and decide that she wants the child back after he/she has been in your home and has attached (this seems to happen very often). We've had so much loss lately that we would hate to have an adoption interrupted or wait longer since the wait can sometimes take years.

Through our research we both separately decided that Chinese adoption was really calling out to us. The more research we did, the more Chinese adoption just seemed right. There are hundreds of thousands of infant girls abandoned in China every year. There are many myths surrounding the abandonment of these little girls. It is a complicated issue that has a lot to do with China's population control (one child policy) as well as a cultural bias favoring boys. This bias comes from the fact that when a boy grows up he is expected to care for his elderly parents. A Chinese girl grows up, marries and is expected to care for her husband's parents.
The process of adopting from China should take us about a year if everything goes well. We have found an local agency called China Adoptions with Love that we will be working with. We found this agency through an article we read in the Boston Globe about a couple who used them to adopt from China. Read the article here.

The following are the steps that we will be going through in this process

• Attend Orientation - Done
• Apply to the Agency - Done
• Attend Intake Interview - Done
• Home Study - Social Worker will visit us in our home to decide if we are fit to parent - Done
• Apply to USCIS - This is a US gov't agency that decides if we can bring a child into the country - Done
• Get criminal background checks and fingerprinting- Done
• CAWLI takes the dossier of documentation completed above, authenticates them, translates them to Chinese and sends them off to China- Done
• At this stage we will be considered dossier to China (DTC) and the wait is about 8** months to get a referral- Done
• Referral - we will get a picture and some basic information about our little girl.
  Travel to China - 4 - 6 weeks after getting our referral we will travel to China to get Grace. We will be there for about 2 weeks. Usually includes sightseeing, travel to province to get our daughter, travel to Shiamen Island to the consulate to finalize everything and then go home.

We plan to request a six - twelve month old (this is the youngest we can request) but there are no guarantees on the age. In general the Chinese adoptees are in good health and transition well into American families. The process will be a long and bumpy road but having our little Gracie will make it all worthwhile.

**At the time we started this process the wait was about 8 month. By the time we get our referral we will have waited 27 months. More than three times longer than we initially thought.

A negative and a positive

Today is a happy and a sad day. We learned this afternoon that our third IVF has failed. As much as this hurts we were waiting for this outcome to apply to CAWLI to start the adoption process. The application will go out in the mail tomorrow

Our Timeline for Grace

6/29/2005 -Attended orientation at CAWLI

7/31/2005 - Sent application to CAWLI

8/17/2005 - Attended intake meeting at CAWLI

8/30/2005 - First Home Study Meeting

9/15/2005 - Steve's Individual Home Study Meeting

9/19/2005 -Jen's Individual Home Study Meeting

9/29/2005 - Final Home Study Appointment

10/12/2005 -Received preliminary Home Study

10/23/2005 -Received completed Home Study

10/26/2005 - Mailed I600A to USCIS

11/5/2005 - Got Fingerprinted

11/23/2005 - Received USCIS approval

12/14/2005 - Dossier sent to China (DTC)

1/5/2006 - Log In Date (LID)

4/28/2006 - Received Brown Envelope

6/4/2006 - Attended Parent Travel Advisory Group Meeting at CAWLI

10/25/2006 - Home Study Update Complete

11/3/2006 - Through Review Room

12/27/2006 - Mailed USCIS to request re-fingerprinting appointment

1/23/2007 - Got Re-Fingerprinted

4/2/2007 - Mailed I600A renewal to USCIS

4/11/2007 - Received new USCIS approval

7/16/2007 - Received 2nd Brown Envelope

10/20/2007 - 2nd Home Study Update Complete

2/20/2008 - Mailed USCIS to request re-fingerprinting appointment

2/18/2008 - Got Re-fingerprinted again

4/4/2008 - Referral Day

4/7/2008 - Mailed Visa application

4/28/2008 - Received Travel Approval

4/30/2008 - Recieved Visas

5/22/2008 - Leave for China

5/26/2008 - Family Day!!!!!

6/4/2008 - Home

CAWLI Orientation

We attended the orientation at China Adoptions with Love today. It was a really good experience. Because of all of the research that we did we didn't really learn anything new but we felt really prepared for what we will be embarking upon. Interesting cross-section of couples at the orientation. We were definitely the youngest couple there and were surprised to learn that most of the couples already had children at home. We went out to a great Chinese food restaurant across the street afterwards.

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