Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Adoption

  • Adoption Stress

    OK, no one ever told me an adoption would be an easy process. Today both me and my wife got voicemail from our adoption agency saying “I need you to call right away”. My wife has the remarkable talent of assuming the absolute worst, so she’s in a total panic.

    It turns out that the US Embassy in Guatemala lost the CIS (Citizen and Immigration Service – now a part of Homeland Security) approval form that was sent to them back in September. This would be the I-171H form, of course. Without that form, nothing can happen.

    It’s not a huge deal. You just have to get the NYC CIS to resend it. Sure, piece of cake, get one bloated bureaucracy to resend a document.

    My adoption agency suggested contacting my Senator or Congressman. Well, I’m sure Hillary Clinton would take my phone call, but just for kicks I went with our congressman. They were actually quite helpful. All politics is local, right?

    So we currently have our congressman’s office nagging CIS and our adoption agency lawyer nagging the embassy in Guatemala. Maybe someday this will actually go through…

  • No date yet

    We’re still waiting on the new birth certificate for our adoption. They told us it would take 3 weeks to get the new birth certificate, then the embassy takes 4-6 days to issue the “pink slip” which gives you the date you can pick up your baby. That is typically two weeks from the date they issue it.

    But we’re at three weeks and one day and nothing yet. We did find out that our baby has iron deficiency anemia. That’s concerning, but it’s apparently a very common anemia and they have her on a prescription vitamin to help that. She hadn’t been gaining weight as fast as the doctor thought she should be, so he ran blood tests on her.

    But we got new pictures:

    11-Ana Ru (FISCHER) July 3' 07

  • Approved!

    Towards the end of the day today I was talking to Elven and he asked, “what’s the word on the baby?” and I immediately replied “nothing”. We still hadn’t heard anything. It was just a big black hole and we were stressed about it.

    I finished talking and hung up. I noticed I had a voicemail. I checked my message and it was our adoption agency telling us that we had been approved by PGN, the Guatemalan government agency.

    Needless to say, I started doing a happy dance. We were so worried that our adoption would get kicked out and we’d have to resubmit something, which would delay the whole thing a couple months.

    I haven’t even talked with our agency yet (I called back and got voicemail). We’ll probably have a date to pick up our baby in around 4 weeks. We are so excited.

    So here’s the latest pictures of our soon to be new baby girl (she’s about 6 1/2 months old). The last one is with her foster mother.

  • City life

    I haven’t blogged in a while (my brief font post doesn’t count). I’ve been a bit busy and stressed. Normally it’s work that stresses me but lately it’s been stuff outside of work.

    Our adoption is stalled with the Guatemalan government. It’s in that black hole mode where we have no idea what is going on. So that’s stressful.

    The big one lately was our home purchase. This was very much a city event. We are buying a loft style co-op. The previous owner took a two bedroom apartment and added a wall to make it a three bedroom. We liked that. After our offer was accepted our lawyer put some language into the contract making sure that the current owner delivered the approvals to have that work done. That seemed like a formality since the work was done two years ago.

    Oops.

    It turned out the official approval had never happened. No problem, just get it done before the closing. Oops. It turns out that they couldn’t get it approved as a three bedroom because one of the bedrooms didn’t meet city regulations. No problem, just do the work to meet the regulations before the closing. Oops, can’t be done.

    Suddenly we had a legal two bedroom. Well, even if the space is identical, I don’t think a two bedroom is worth the same money as a three bedroom. So negotiations went back and forth. Finally we had resolved the issue. So now we are buying a two bedroom with a storage room (for less money).

    Does this sort of thing happen in Amarillo?

    On another note, we spent a very city style Memorial Day weekend. We had no plans so we stayed in the city. It’s always interesting spending a holiday in the city. Everyone else leaves, so the city is pleasantly quiet. Traffic is light. Parking is plentiful. It’s quite remarkable.

    On Friday we had a barbeque at a friends apartment in Brooklyn (they have a nice deck). On Saturday we needed to go to our storage unit to switch winter and summer stuff. This too, is a city thing. If you don’t have an attic or a basement or a garage, you need a place to put stuff. Storage units are common. So twice a year we go, mainly to switch my wife’s wardrobe.

    On Sunday my wife needed to organize the stuff we got from storage. So it was me and Danielle. We spent the whole day together at various playgrounds. We call them parks, but I grew up in the Midwest and to me “park” implies grass and trees. These are asphalt, swings, jungle gyms and sprinklers. Where we live there are easily ten playgrounds in walking distance. You pick the playground to go to based on what you want to do (playground A has the best swings, but B is better for riding bikes and C has good sprinklers). So in the morning we took Danielle’s bike to the close playground (bikes). Then we grabbed swim suits, went to McDonald’s for lunch and hit the next playground (sprinklers) with her scooter. After getting soaked we went for Italian Ices and went up to our roof deck to blow bubbles. And then we all went out for dinner. All in all a very good Brooklyn day. Then Monday my wife took Danielle to a baby shower and afterwards we went to Jersey for another barbeque. Not bad for a weekend with no plans.

    Hopefully I’ll have an adoption update soon…

    Loft:

    A loft is really just an apartment that is a big rectangle space. It is often created when an industrial or other type building (school, etc.) is converted to apartments. Lofts are favored by artists because you get a bunch of big space. But apartment dwellers also like them because you get to decide how the apartment will look by adding walls where you want them. They also typically have high ceilings which add to the spacious feeling. Our building is the original headquarters and factory for Ex-Lax (insert joke here). The building was converted to apartments about 30 years ago.

    Co-op:

    A co-op is similar to a condo, but different. Co-op is short for cooperative. In a co-op the building is owned cooperatively by all the apartment owners as a corporation. Each apartment owner has a certain number of shares in the corporation which determine voting rights, etc. The building is typically managed by a co-op board and each owner pays a certain monthly maintenance fee which covers the mortgage on the building and all common expenses. Co-ops are very common in New York City.

  • Adoption Update

    I’ve been refraining from posting adoption news for fear of jinxing anything. But we just got some new pictures, so I can’t help myself. The process is in the final stage of the Guatemalan government, but this stage is a total black hole. It could last four more weeks, or eight more weeks or they could decide that they didn’t like the font we used in our application and kick it back to start this part all over. And there’s no feedback at all until a decision is made, so we just wait.

    But our baby is doing well. At least as far as we can tell from a thousand miles away. We get a report every month with pictures and a doctor’s report. She’s gaining weight nicely and appears to be a smiley baby. She turned five months old on April 20th. If things turn out well we could have her by the time she turns seven months.

    I’ve been holding out on posting pictures for fear of jinxing things, but what the hell. Here are two pictures of hopefully our soon to be adopted daughter.

    And here’s her big sister in her new blue cast. She only has to wear the cast for two more weeks.

  • Adoption Progress

    Things are slowly moving along with our adoption. There have been some strange concerns lately around the Guatemala adoption environment. There’s an upcoming concern about the Hague treaty. This is an international treaty around adoptions and any country agreeing to it must meet certain standards (primarily to prevent shady dealings, coercion, etc.). Guatemala has agreed to the treaty, but hasn’t put the proper procedures in place yet. If they do not do so in a timely manner the US might decide that no adoptions will be allowed until Guatemala gets it’s act together.

    That, however, is down the road and we are far enough along that it should not impact us. The State Department has stated that anyone with an approved I-600A form will be grandfathered and we’re way past that part.

    The next issue was an adoption facilitator in Guatemala getting arrested. It’s somewhat of a strange story. Apparently this adoption facilitator was trying to arrange an adoption for a couple in Washington state. The adoption was completed, the couple came to see the baby and discovered that the baby was malnourished and had other health issues. The couple balked, and went back to the US to consult with a doctor. But at this point the adoption had been completed so the Washington couple were legally the girl’s parents.

    The adoption facilitator was concerned that the couple wasn’t going to follow through and the child would end up in an orphanage, where her condition would likely get worse. So she snuck the baby into the US, presumably to take care of her herself. She got busted for doing that.

    The concern is that now Guatemala is investigating and that this will distract from the regular adoption process in Guatemala.

    But despite all of that, we appear to be about 2-3 months away from adopting our baby. Below is a chart from the State Department with a general overview of the process and timelines. We’ve completed the first four steps (green is completed). Really the first five are the bulk of the process. Once the adoption goes through PGN (Guatemalan Solicitor’s General Office – step 5) you are pretty much done. PGN is somewhat of a black hole. The timeframe of 2 months listed below has a very wide swing. Our adoption agency said 6 weeks to 3 months. But still, it’s getting close. June would be realistic.

    The strange thing is that if this were a normal pregnancy, my wife would be quite large by now and I think we’d be doing a lot more planning. But because the adoption is so abstract to our day to day life, we really haven’t done much to prepare. I guess it’s partly because this will be our second and we know the drill (and we have all the stuff). But the whole thing still doesn’t seem real yet.

    Step

    		 Form No. Description Responsible Office Confirmation/Document Expected Timeframe
    1 I-600A Eligibility of Parents to Adopt overseas (home study, etc.) US DHS District or sub-Office in the United States I-171H and Visas 37 (or Visas 38/39 6 months (may be done in advance or concurrently with other steps)
    2 Proof of “orphan” status (birth certificates, cedula, hospital records) Guatemalan Attorney USCIS form “Autorizacion para iniciar prueba de ADN” 2 months
    (depends on attorney & situation)
    3 DNA test submission Guatemalan Attorney DNA test results 30 days (after step 2)
    4 DNA test approval Embassy DHS/ USCIS Consentimiento (irrevocable release by birth mother) to Guatemalan Attorney 4 weeks (after step 3)
    5   Guatemalan court documents. PGN/ Guatemalan attorney Protocolo/escritura 2 months (after step 4)
    6   Finalizing the Adoption Guatemalan Attorney Adoption Deed 7 days after step 5
    7   Guatemalan Birth Certificate with name(s) of adoptive parent(s) Guatemalan Attorney Birth Certificate 7 days after step 6
    8   Guatemalan passport Guatemalan Attorney Guatemalan Passport 1 day after step 6
    9 I-600 Petition to Classify an Orphan (blue form) and final adoption documents packet
    (Form I-600 is filed in the U.S. for escort cases)    		 Attorney submits to DHS/USCIS at the U.S. Embassy
    (or Form I-600 is submitted to the appropriate DHS/USCIS Field office in the U.S. for escort cases)    		 “Pink Slip” interview appointment letter–Approved petition in US for escorts Normally within two business days following submission to DHS/USCIS at the Embassy
    10   Medical report Embassy Approved Doctor, also called a Panel Physician Sealed Envelope with medical report Completed after step 9 and prior to the Interview. The Embassy recommends that adoptive parent(s) be present at the medical appt if at all possible.
    11 DS-230 Immigrant Visa application Consular Section Approval at interview same day as interview
    12 I-864 (for IR-4 cases only) Affidavit of Support with previous year’s tax returns, etc. Consular Section Approval at interview same day as interview
    13 IR-3 or IR-4 Immigrant Visa Consular Section Visa and sealed envelope with final documents delivered to adoptive parent(s) 3:30 p.m. the next workday following the interview

  • Adoption Update

    Many of you know that we are trying to adopt a baby from Guatemala. We currently have an orphaned baby identified for us and a lawyer in Guatemala has power of attorney to arrange the adoption.

    The baby girl (I’m not calling her “our baby” yet – things can still go wrong) was born on November 20th. We have pictures, though I’m not posting them yet. Right now I feel about the same way you feel when you just find out you are pregnant. You want to wait a while before you tell people in case something goes wrong.

    But on the plus side, my wife isn’t throwing up like she did when she was pregnant.

    Right now we are in total waiting mode. After a flurry of activity to get all our paperwork together, it’s weird to be doing nothing. We will get periodic updates on the baby, but that’s about it.

    Guatemalan adoptions typically take 6-7 months from the time the baby is identified, so we are looking at June or July. But nothing is certain in adoptions, so we are trying not to get too excited yet.

    But that’s easier said than done…