You’ve probably heard international adoption called a “hurry-up and wait” game. Meaning, that you are often in a mad hurry to fulfill every request for a document or signature, lest you miss the monthly meeting of the Romanian adoption committee by one day, or your social worker doesn’t get a chance to fax her counterpart before her vacation, or whatever, and you miss another precious month of your child’s infancy. Then, you don’t hear back from anyone for weeks.
Sometimes slow and steady is okay. You focus on your work, or your other kids, or whatever, sending out questionnaires to adoption agencies one week, writing your autobiography a couple weeks later, sending reference forms out later that month, as your schedule allows.
But what if you’ve been told of a certain child, or you’ve seen a photolisting case history that won’t let go of you and are desperate to be united with this child as soon as possible, or simply want to be a parent this year and not next? Is there anything you can start preparing while you wait for the application to arrive, wait for your fingerprints to be processed by INS, wait for the home study?
After two international adoptions, here’s my advice:
1. Decide what agency you want to work with and what country program. (If you have a certain child in mind, of course, you need to work with the agency responsible for placing them. Research first and make sure it’s a good one.) Call and ask for their application packet.
2. Choose at least six people to be your references. (Some agencies may require letters from your parents, a clergyperson, etc. as well several non-relatives.) Call your references and ask them. Let them know they may be getting a request from your agency. I had expected this to be like filling out a form verifying they’d known us for a while and we were generally good people, but our references later told us they’d been asked many essay questions covering our personalities, our marital communication, our spending habits, our health histories, etc. So clue your references in. Act extremely grateful and hint at how important it is to you that they respond to the agency promptly. Tell them the agency’s name so they don’t toss out the envelope thinking it’s a financial solicitation.
3. Begin thinking about your autobiography. Specific requirements may vary by agency, but you can begin preparing to write about the general topics of: your own upbringing and what you’d do differently or the same; your relationships with your family of origin now; your marriage: how you met, strengths and weaknesses of the relationship; your personal strengths and weaknesses, your reasons for wanting to adopt; your experience with children; your views on discipline; the role of religion in your family life; celebrating cultural heritages; child care arrangements; your aspirations for your children; your experience with people of other cultures; the community you now live in and,if applicable, whether you think your community and extended family would be good places for a child of another ethnicity.
4. Obtain and begin filling out immigration forms from the website of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) website. Use the I600A if there is no child yet identified and the I600 if there is. Submit this soon and find out what you need to do to get on the list for a fingerprinting appointment at the INS office nearest you.
5. Begin thinking about and researching what special needs you could accept in a child. What ages? What about siblings?
6. Assemble your last three years of tax returns and your last twelve months of bank statements.
7. Get a letter from your employer in this format: “To Whom it May Concern: (your name) has been employed with (X Corporation) since (hire date) and currently holds the job title of (title) which has an annual salary of (X). Prospects for continued employment are good.”
8. Get another letter from your health insurance company verifying that they will cover your child from date of placement in your home even if the adoption is not yet finalized. (In most states they have to).
9. Get a letter from your bank verifying that you have X accounts with a balance in each of X.
10. Be prepared to fill out a form listing the value of your assets (savings, checking, stocks and bonds, house, car, major possessions) and debts (mortgage, car payment, credit cards, student loans, etc.)
11. It goes without saying that you’ve filled out as much as you can of the forms when you get them. I’m trying to list things you can do to work ahead here.
12. Locate a notary public with reasonable fees.
13. Update your passport.
14. Schedule a checkup with your doctor. If you have a chronic condition, have him/her write a statement indicating how it might, or won’t, impact your ability to parent.
15. Don’t sweat the home study. Do be prepared to show the social worker where the baby’s room will be (they won’t expect you to have it prepared). Many agencies say that a child cannot share a room with an opposite-sex sibling older than six. The home does not need to be childproofed yet if you do not currently have young children.
16. Read a book such as Real Parents, Real Children by Holly Van Gulden or Raising Adopted Children by Lois Melina so the social worker will see you’ve sincerely tried to familiarize yourself with issues that might arise. Think carefully about what it will be like to raise this child at all stages of childhood and youth, not just as a cute baby.
Keep plodding along, have patience, don’t sweat it. Like a difficult pregnancy, it will all be a distant memory someday.