[watermelon0719]

Hello! My husband and I are not new to the world of adoption (in fact, we were in the process of adopting last year when our agency made us stop because we got very unexpectedly pregnant), but I do have a question about minority infant adoption. Currently we are looking into requesting a baby girl, since our (small) agency does allow gender requests and we have a biological son. Our agency coordinator says that in spite of this, our wait would only be 4-6 months after we submit our birthparent profile and complete our classes. I am having some trouble believing this statistic, because I have read in lots of places that requesting gender during a domestic adoption would delay our adoption significantly.
Has anyone here requested gender, and if so, what was your wait like? Does the 4-6 month wait sound suspect to you?
Thank you!

[ChrissyMoon]

I think it's entirely possible. Often the wait for minority adoption is much shorter than for a white child. I'm not sure about requesting a specific gender and what that does to the speed, though.

[mig42]

we've requested a newborn AA or bi-racial baby boy and we were told it still shoule be a short wait...I'll let you know how we get on..

[Linny]

In the last five years, we've adopted three AA babies. Our first was a girl, so the second time, we requested another girl. (You have to know that at that time, we'd already adopted MANY times (6) and there were no other girls in the house then.)
Soooo, we waited---and waited---at least in comparison to adopting otherwise, the wait was longer. We also would only adopt another AA baby.

All in all, we waited approximately 18months. I do think that's a bit longer than I would have expected. For our last, BTW, we didn't really care what gender we had, and adopted a baby boy. (I honestly do believe the wait times for boy babies are significantly shorter.)

Time waits also have a lot to do with how many agencies you're submitting to, how populated is the area that your agencies serve, etc. I would encourage you to apply to several agencies and attorneys to lessen your wait time too.

I hope your wait is short and you're bringing your little baby girl home, soon! Good luck.

Sincerely,

Linny