The Paper Pregnancy

We met with our Social Worker, Diane, last night and found out some more details. We also learned why adoption is often nicknamed a 'paper pregnancy.' The amount of paper shuffling that will go on over the next few months is ridiculous! For example, we have to get certified copies of our birth certificates (makes sense). Then we have to send those to Springfield, where they will staple a piece of paper to the top stating that it is definitely a certified copy. Next it goes to Chicago to be translated into French by the 'official' translators. From there is goes to the Haitian Consulate where it will be further authenticated, before we send it to Haiti. And if at any point anyone removes a staple from it, its considered invalid and we have to start all over.

We also have realized that a large amount of the fees for an adoption are spent simply because government agencies don't communicate with one another very well. For example, the 3 different sets of fingerprints we have to have taken at 3 different locations (one place that is 3 hours away from us), because you know, our fingerprints may change each time :-P Or how when we return from Haiti, the Department of Immigration will already have issued a certificate of citizenship. However, the Social Security Office doesn't recognize their fellow government dept's certificate, and thus we'll have to go through the courts and ~$1000 to get a different certificate stating that the child is indeed a US citizen. Lots of hoops to jump through! Honestly, we all were giggling a bit at some of the steps that have to take place!

Diane is amazing and we're really excited to get to work with her. She seems like she's going to try to make the entire paperwork process as smooth as she can for us. Time line wise we're hoping to have all of our paperwork (Dossier) sent off to Haiti by the end of the summer. Once the Dossier is in Haiti we should receive a child referral very quickly. Once we accept a referral we then play the waiting game with the courts in Haiti.

I'm excited to get started on all of this paperwork in front of me. Organizing and filling out forms are actually some of my favorite type of tasks so that's a definite positive! I'll add more details in a later post.