Registered in Moscow

This past week, I talked with Carol at my agency, CSS and we finally decided to register me in Moscow, 5 months after I submitted my dossier. It is all finally starting to feel real! This adoption is such a different experience than my first from Kaz.

For those of you new to my journey, I adopted my daughter, Clare, from Uralsk, Kazakhstan in September 2008. The agency that I used, which is one of the best in Kaz, no longer accepts single parents. While there are other agencies that still are accepting singles in Kaz, I really trusted my agency and believed that if they were not accepting singles, there was a good reason. To find my daughter and Clare's sister, I chose Catholic Social Services out of North Carolina. They work in several different regions in Russia, all of which have different requirements and processes. Moscow is a region where you travel "blind" which means I will travel without any information on the child - no picture, no medical, nothing. Very different than my experience in Kaz.

I anticipate it will be a 3-trip journey. The first trip is typically a week long. I will travel to Moscow, meet a little girl, be given any medical history that is available, and have an opportunity to have a doctor evaluate her.  Then I have to make the decision as to whether I accept the referral or not. Very simply - is this my daughter? A few families recently have traveled and had to turn down referrals for medical reasons so there is definitely some risk and potentially some serious emotional pain involved. From my journey to Clare though, with a lost referral, I have faith that I will find my daughter in the right time and in the right way so I just have to keep that in mind.

After the first trip, I will come home and wait for a court date, which seems to be about 1-2 months after Trip #1. Trip 2 is about 4-5 days in length and is when I go to court and have the judge grant my adoption petition - you may know that as Gotcha Day! Then, there is the dreaded 10-day wait. In Uralsk, for Clare, this was waived, and I broke Clare out of the babyhouse the same day we had court. In Moscow, that won't happen. Because of Clare, I will come back to the US during the 10-day wait and then travel back for trip #3 to bring my new daughter home. That last trip is about a week in duration too.   Once we land on US soil, she will officially become a US citizen and the real journey begins with my 2 daughters, as a family!

Thanks for following along.  I will next post when I hear new news from my agency - hopefully with travel dates to Moscow.