[tgrinarml]

Hi,
My husband and I are just starting to look into adoption.
We have one 4 year old son so we need to consider his needs as well. Does anyone know of finaincial help for Polish adoptions? And how long were your stays really?
It's a work issure for us.

Thanks

[taia]

Hi! I am doing an independent adoption, so my time may be different to those who do it through an agency, but:
a. my first visit was one week long (pre-preadoption)
b. my preadoption visit was 3 weeks long, though it was supposed to be longer. i secretly came back home to finish the semester at work.
c. my final adoption visit was 10 days long
d. I am flying for the fourth time next Saturday to finalize the rest. I am planning to do it in 4 days.
I am getting a lot of help from the nun who runs the orphanage. Things like collecting the decree, birth certificates, and such.
I hope this info will help you. My judge was unmoved by my work situation.
Good luck!

[mschaefer]

We are getting ready to travel for trip #1 in just over 2 weeks, so stay posted for actually time abroad. We plan on doing two trips, unless something unforeseen pops up. First trip will be 18 days (although we are prepared for anything with internatinal adoptions). Second trip we were told to estimate 5-7 days, we will have a better idea once the first trip is completed -- but again preparing for unknown's to "pop" up.

We too have a 4 y.o. (well I he'll actually be 5 soon). We have chosen to incur the additional expense to have him and my MIL travel with us rather than leave him for almost 3 weeks.

Regarding financing adoption -- we saved as much as possible -- the referral was 1 year after dossier sent to Poland and 17 months after decision to adopt. We also took out a home equity loan to be sure we would be covered for the two trips.

[jessipea]

It is expensive. You can adopt in the US and it is very little expensive if you go through the state...you may even get compensated.

We do the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace Plan to pay off the adoption...it was more than we thought once we had to go for an initial trip and then the final trip. I wish we would have done the plan before we adopted...just to cover some of the financial burden...we also brought home three.

I am a teacher and fortunately I got to go during the summer. I was there for 7 almost 8 weeks. The first trip was about 5-7 days.

Jessi

[lastpaige]

We started the process many years ago and had to stop for lack of funding. Since then we bought a house w/zero down, the market skyrocketed, and we applied for a home eq loan at the peak. Monthly savings and tax credit is paying off the loan.

Not willing to leave any of our children on the other side of the Atlantic, we made one long stay out of it. My husband saved vacation and took the rest off via FMLA. We were gone for 7 weeks.