The Next Step

Now that we had the preliminary approval from the agency we recieved all the information on the next steps. We needed to fill out a lengthy application for the agency, have a Home Study done, apply to The US Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to petition to bring an adopted foreign born infant into to the United States and begin working on our dossier. We had background checks upon background checks, fingerprinting upon fingerprinting, paperwork upon paperwork, Fed EXing upon Fed EXing, and of course, check writing upon check writing. From the end of October 2006 to March 5th, 2007 that's pretty much all we did, prepare paperwork, wait for various approvals, and write checks. Oh yeah and stress out over every little change in the Guatemalan goverment that may affect adoptions and possibly shut things down causing us to never finalize an adoption. Talk about stressful. I thought IVF was hard...this is right up there in stress factor.