[lololo]

My husband and I our in the process of adopting 2 chilren from Russia. We are done with most of the paper work, homestudy etc and were told recently that our wait will probably be 8-10 more months,( we have already been waiting 4 months sine paper work has been in country as well as the 8 months prior to that when we signed with the agency) We are thinking of changing our request from 2 kids to 1 as it would be less time and considereing foster to adopt for a second child. Can anyone tell me about that?
We have our homestudy done and approval through the county anyway. We are still commited to international (financially and emotionaly) but are kind of thinking that there is probably another way of doing this....anyone have any suggestions? we are pretty sad about this wait and want to start our family soon.

[ipumpkin]

Foster to adopt is a good option if you can handle being supportive of reunification of the child with their bio parents. If you are fostering, the child that's placed with you may not stay.

You could become an adoptive only home for the county. Then you would only take kids that are adoptable or will probably be adoptable. I'm not sure how long of a wait you would have going that route. Especially for an infant.

Fostering might be quicker, but you may suffer more losses along the way..

Does that answer your question at all?

[bumpkin]

LOLO

My DH and I have one adopted son who we adopted privately here in the US 7 years ago. We were on track for #2 and were waiting and waiting....long story short. We decided to look into Russian adoption and foundthis Forum. (we had considered this the first time around). When we discovered we would likely receive a referral of an "older " baby or toddler, we thought.....let's look into foster to adopt. Turns out we made the phone call last January, started classess last February , finished in April and THAT DAY received info on a set of twins 6 months old. We transitioned them over the following 10 days and they have been with us since early May. We are hoping to finalize their adoption by the end of the year.

I never thought we would go this route..... and wouldn't have had I not educated myself on this forum. You just never know where life will take you - you just have too look down all the roads you can.... your children are there...somewhere!

I might also mention that we didn't take our name of the list for the private agency we were with. We didn't want to "lose time" in on that avenue before we knew whether we would pursue adopting from the state or not. I think it made us feel better that we had two irons in the fire.

Good luck. My advice would be to pursue this option. Take the classes and find out all you can on the forum. After all, no one is going to force you into adopting a child. You may find out it's not for your, but you may not......Dreams DO come true.

Bumpkin

p.s. feel free to pm me if you have any more specific questions

[sfbaymom2000]

lololo,

Keep in mind that although many people have great experiences with fost/adopt, like Bumpkin, there are many others who have waited months or years for a placement, or have had countless children returned to bio parents. Ther are lots of positive stories on this board, and lots of heartbreaking stories. We started this process in March 2004, and are now actually thinking that maybe we should have done, or should now switch to, international. I know you have had a frustrating wait, but I am reading about other people who got their child in 9-12 months, start to finish. It is all so frustrating! I think there are pros and cons, and big risks, no matter which way you go. It feels to me like a big gamble no matter what we do.

As I said, we started this in March, and we do not even have a signed homestudy yet. Anyway, good luck to you in whatever you decide.

Lynn