Waiting for Pre-Approval from the Embassy

Well, after a long time of not posting (probably because we rarely hear much about how things are proceeding), we thought we would keep you updated on what has happened since DNA testing.

About 5 weeks ago, DNA testing was done on Blake and his birth mother. It was a match (hallelujah) and now the results have been submitted to the U.S. Embassy. Once the U.S. Embassy processes the results, an email will be sent to our agency and then the agency will forward us this email. At this point, we will have received our "pre-approval" to go into the last step of our adoption - which is called PGN. Although this is the last step, we have friends whose case has been sitting in PGN for 73+ days. Everyone asks, "Why does this have to take so long?" We don't know the answer exactly, but what we do know is that there is a small staff working with a big load - there are hundreds of cases to go through and several families are ahead of us. They will be looked at first. Also, many families have been getting KO's as they call them (kick outs) from PGN.

When a family is kicked out of this step, it is usually for some silly thing (like a typo on one paper in your file or the facilitator for your case in Guatemala, for example, forgot to include your birth certificate (crucial), etc). Although our agencies are our advocates, we have to make room for human error which occurs all the time. Unfortunately, these errors cause huge setbacks in adoptions. Sometimes it takes 2 weeks to just get the approval to be kicked out and then once you're officially out, it's another 3 weeks to get resubmitted! Anyway, we are expecting to be kicked out at least once (hopefully not more), but are still optimistic that things will continue to go well as they have thus far.

On another note, Chris and I bought our tickets to go meet Blake for the first time!!! We are SO thrilled to finally see our baby. We leave on Sunday, July 1 and Chris will stay until July 6th and then have to return to work. On the 4th of July, my mom and mother-in-law will come to visit and stay through the 9th! If all goes well, I will stay until August 1 (yes, 1 month) to foster Blake! Currently, my ticket's return date is for July 16th, but that can always be changed, right?!!

We should be getting some more pictures of Blake soon to share with you that our facilitator took during his last trip to Guatemala. Take care and thank you for sharing our joy in this process!