Our son was born in Guatemala City on November 26, 2006 and weighed in at a little over 6 lbs. The next step in this process just might be the hardest. We have to wait for all of the legal paperwork to clear before we can travel to Guatemala to pick him up. On average, this process takes about 4 to 6 months. That should give us time to think of the perfect name for him.
Guatemalan adoptions are unique in the fact that they allow the adoptive parents to visit their child prior to the finalization of the adoption. We are hoping to take at least one trip sometime in the next few months to go and see our son. It’s going to be hard to come back home without him, but it will definitely make the wait a little more bearable.
Our adoption agency has told us that we can expect to receive new pictures every 4 to 6 weeks. We’ll be sure to send them out to friends and family members as soon as we get them. Thank you all for your love and support as we continue on our adoption journey.
Sincerely,
Pete and Tanya
So why an international adoption? Once we decided to adopt, we spent endless hours trying to figure out which type of adoption would work best for us. The options were overwhelming at first - domestic adoption, foster adoption, international adoption, agency adoption, private adoptions and on and on. Like most other things in life, there were pros and cons to each option.
After we weighed out all of the options, we figured out that international adoption felt like the best fit. Unlike a domestic adoption where you can sometimes wait for years before you are matched up, an international adoption offers a more predictable timeline. As it currently stands, adoptions from Guatemala are taking about 6 to 8 months from the time you turn in all of your paperwork.
So why Guatemala? Once we decided to go with an international adoption, we still had to figure out which country was the right fit for us. Once again, the options were overwhelming - China, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Russia and Guatemala are some of the most frequent countries for international adoption. We again weighed the options and it turned out that Guatemala was the right fit for us. They have a great track record of healthy babies and they actually allow you to go and visit your baby as often as you like while the paperwork is being processed. We also liked the fact that it was close enough to visit frequently in the future if we choose to do so. We'd love to be able to take our son or daughter back to their home country in the future, and we figure it will be much easier to take a trip to Guatemala than to China or Khazakstan.
So what's the next step? We've already completed our home study with a social worker and we're just finishing up the paperwork portion of the process. Once everything is turned in, we hope to get our referal in about 1 to 3 months! The referal is the point where they actually provide you with a picture of your new son or daughter. The vast majority of the matches from Guatemala are boys, so we are planning to be matched with a son. After that, the real hard part begins. We'll have to wait another 5 months or so until we can actually take him or her home. We've talked about taking a trip to go and see our new child before we can actually take him or her home. The difficult part is trying to figure out if it will be harder to wait for 5 months without ever seeing our new baby or going to visit our baby without being able to bring him or her home!
As we mentioned earlier, thanks a lot for all of your love and support as we go through this process. Our friends and family mean the world to us. We can't wait to add to our family and share the love that we've shared with all of you throughout the years. Stay tuned for additional updates!
Love,
Pete and Tanya
