The Great Paper Chase
When I first started investigating international adoptions, I had a very unrealistic expectation of how long it would take. I saw the estimates for Guatemalan adoption taking 5-7 months and I thought, Hey, we'll have a baby by next summer!" Now, 8 months later, we still have 5-7 months to go! What the sources I looked at didn't tell me is that it would take 5-7 months after the referral. They didn't tell me how long it would take for a homestudy (which was unusually long in our case) or for getting together our dossier.
The dossier is a huge packet of documents that all have to be notarized, certified, and authenticated. It took us several months to get all that together. We had to have birth and marriage certificates, letters of employment, health letters from the doctor, proof from the cops that we aren't criminals, two letters of reference, fifteen photographs of our house, family and ourselves and a whole bunch of legal documents like Power of Attorney and some others I don't even remember. Most of these documents had to be notarized, and let me tell you, it's a pain to get a notarized letter from a doctor. After we had gathered everything, we had to have the notarizations certified by the county and the state. We drove all over the state to get this done because I didn't trust the mail, and I wanted it to go more quickly. After everything was certified, we had to send it to the Guatemalan consulate to be authenticated. Each time we got a document notarized, certified, and authenticated, we had to pay a fee.
I don't want to discourage anyone, but I want to be honest: If I had known before I started how much work it would be, I might not have done it. However, by the time we found out exactly what was required for the dossier, we had already invested a lot of time and money in the process. I'm telling you this now because I know that when I have Kit in my arms I will forget how much work it was. I think it's the same kind of thing that happens to women who give birth. They forget the pain and decide to do it again.
To tell you the truth, Jack and I already talk about what we're going to do for our second adoption.
The dossier is a huge packet of documents that all have to be notarized, certified, and authenticated. It took us several months to get all that together. We had to have birth and marriage certificates, letters of employment, health letters from the doctor, proof from the cops that we aren't criminals, two letters of reference, fifteen photographs of our house, family and ourselves and a whole bunch of legal documents like Power of Attorney and some others I don't even remember. Most of these documents had to be notarized, and let me tell you, it's a pain to get a notarized letter from a doctor. After we had gathered everything, we had to have the notarizations certified by the county and the state. We drove all over the state to get this done because I didn't trust the mail, and I wanted it to go more quickly. After everything was certified, we had to send it to the Guatemalan consulate to be authenticated. Each time we got a document notarized, certified, and authenticated, we had to pay a fee.
I don't want to discourage anyone, but I want to be honest: If I had known before I started how much work it would be, I might not have done it. However, by the time we found out exactly what was required for the dossier, we had already invested a lot of time and money in the process. I'm telling you this now because I know that when I have Kit in my arms I will forget how much work it was. I think it's the same kind of thing that happens to women who give birth. They forget the pain and decide to do it again.
To tell you the truth, Jack and I already talk about what we're going to do for our second adoption.
posted by Jill @ 4:08 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home