You can view my posts on adoption here.
A little look into the timeline for our adoption:
Adoption Timeline
2011
October – made the decision to start the adoption process
November 2 – sent application for intercountry adoption to the Ministry of Social Services
November – applied to and was accepted by agency #1 for their Ethiopia program
December – found out agency #1 went bankrupt
2012
January – lots of research on agencies
February – brief break on researching while we traveled to Uganda
March 12 – send off application to agency #2
March 19 – accepted into the DRC program
March 30 – completed criminal record checks and child abuse checks
March 3—April 1 – told our family and friends
April 4 – home study begins
April 11 – home study
April 21 – home study -individual meetings
April 25 – got blood work done
April 27 – TB tests and mailed off immigration pre-approval application
April 30 – TB results
April & May – medical paperwork
May 1 – fingerprints done for Interpol
May 16 – mailed dossier translation fee
May 17 – paid dossier fee, last home study visit and our dossier is sent!
May 17 – on the wait list!!!!!
May 22 – our dossier arrived at Social Services in Regina
June 4 – our dossier arrived at agency #2
July 17 – our Canadian Immigration and Citizenship Part One approval arrived in the mail
September – completed online adoption training courses
2013
February – found out some ethical issues with agency #2 (some details here)
March – applied and are pre-approved for agency #3
March 14 – sent letter of termination to agency #2
March 23 – received our dossier back from agency #2
April 12 – get a call from agency #3 and our adoption journey ends, at least for now
July – start thinking about looking into countries/programs again
August 9 – heard some details about the South Africa program from a friend
August 10 – call an agency to hear more details about the program
August 13 – mail in our application to agency #4 for their South Africa program
September 10 – accepted into the program!!
September 17 – sent in our registration papers & payment (a post about some of the paperwork)
September 19 – Skype meeting with our agency’s director
September 27 – fingerprints updated
September – criminal record checks updated
October 5 – meeting with our social worker to update our homestudy
October 8 – child abuse record checks updated
October 21 – homestudy completed (again!)
October 22 – mailed our dossier off to the agency to sit on our social workers desk while he was on holidays for a month
December 11 – agency received our dossier
2014
January – our dossier is in South Africa!! now we wait for a referral (at this point there are 15 families with dossiers in the “pool”)
February & March – updating our reference letters and medicals
waiting . . . cue Jeopardy music
September 19 – referral day! we have a son!
September 30 – renew our criminal record checks
October 1 – renew our fingerprint checks
November 12 – start the journey to Durban, South Africa
November 15 – we meet Ephraim for the first time (and here is the second day)
November 17 – we passed court!
You can see all my posts from South Africa here.
And all our adoption posts here.
Finally, a family of four!
