Adoption Process Overview

Before we started the adoption process, we knew a little bit about it from following some of our friends' journeys. Once we started the process ourselves, we realized just how much we didn't know.

We thought we'd share this post just to give an overview of the process itself. This doesn't include anything post adoption. The star in the middle of the chart represents where we are in the process to bring our son home.


Up to this point, it's been mostly paperwork, required parenting classes, and appointments in order to complete our home study (done with a case worker to prepare and evaluate our family for adoption) and dossier (packet to present our case to the Ethiopian gov't). Now, as you may have seen in our last post, we are just waiting for one piece of paper to arrive that will go with our dossier. Then it is submitted to Ethiopia.

Next, we wait for a referral of a baby boy. The average wait time is approx 6 months. Could be shorter, could be longer. We have learned quickly that any timeline we have needs to be thrown out the window as these things are out of our control. Shortly after we receive our referral we travel to Ethiopia to go to court to hopefully gain approval to become the legal guardians of our son. Finally, we come back home for a few weeks while we wait for birth paperwork, etc. to be pulled together, and then we return to Ethiopia to bring him home.

An intense journey, and an honor to do it!