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Hi:
I looked in your profile and saw that you live in NJ - so do we
and we have adopted newborns from out of state twice,
the first from CA and the 2nd from MN. We weren't using
an agency in NJ (except for the homestudy and post-placement
visits) so we had a lawyer here and also another lawyer in
the state where the baby was born. Our lawyer here chose
the out of state lawyer through AAAA (American Association
of Adoption Attornies). I would assume that you could
choose your own instead of you would prefer.
We flew to CA ahead of the birth of our 1st daughter. The
bmom was going to be induced so we were able to get
there in time. We cleared ICPC within a week (and that
included July 4 in the middle of the week) and flew home
when dd was 7 days old. We had taken her to a pediatrician
in CA the day before we flew, but did not have any
health-related paperwork to show the airlines if we had been
asked (never even thought about it!) When we were home,
I discovered that Continental does not let infants fly who are
less than a week old. While we were in CA, the bparents
went before a judge and surrendered their rights.
When our 2nd daughter was born, the bmom went into
labor earlier than expected and we were not able to get
there until later in the day after she was born. ICPC took
a bit longer than our lawyer had anticipated - seems that
some papers may have sat around on a desk in MN (maybe office
Christmas parties?) We were cleared to come home less than
2 weeks after the birth. Again, the bmom went before
a judge to surrender her rights, but she still had some time
where she could change her mind. We were able to
come home before that time. The bfather's rights were
terminated 30 days after the birth.
In both cases, we booked our flights at the last minute.
We were fortunate enough to be able to use frequent flyer
points both times. We did have to change our return flight
for the 2nd adoption due to the ICPC delays. I read another
time here on the forum that someone found it less expensive
to book one-way tickets rather than round trip when they
traveled last minute.
For the most part we stayed in hotels with a living area in
addition to a bedroom. We also had a small refrigerator
and a microwave. A pool was nice too!
Both adoptions were finalized here in NJ.
I would highly recommend the NJ lawyer that we used for
our 2nd adoption - if you want more info, let me know
and I'll PM you the info.
Sandy
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