Our adoption journey...

Now is as good a time as ever to say thank you to some special people. To my mother for never asking the question why, but for accepting our choice and supporting and, in some instances, defending it ever since. To my sisters for their support especially in difficult times. To my nieces and nephews for their enthusiasm, their smart questions :) and their patience! To Cindy, who was there from the first step, literally standing next to us at the postbox when we posted that first letter. To all my friends (they know who they are:)) for patiently listening to me venting my frustrations and for always telling me it will be ok! To my stepchildren for being who they are. My biggest thank you goes to VCT in Bangalore and Raju's foster family for looking after my son during all this time. Knowing that Raju is in good hands, receiving care and affection makes this wait a little less hard. Eventhough this has been a long journey, I have met some amazing people on the way. Thank you!

Once you accept a referral you have to wait for the No Objection Certificate, this is granted by CARA in India. Things didn't go as smooth as we wanted. Once we signed the referral it transpired our home study was about to expire as they are only valid for two years. So again we had to update the file before it could be transmitted to CARA to apply for the NOC. Updating the home study involved interviews with the social worker, pshychologist, police and doctor. This time we made sure our home study reflected Raju's age, we didn't want the NOC to be refused because it didn't correspond with the home study. Finally in January 2012 the file was complete and transmitted to CARA. What followed was a stressful time. There was a series of demands for extra documents and questions from CARA to the orphanage. The orphanage was as frustrated as we were but they were very helpful. I contacted CARA several times and was told all the time that it would be issued next week, but w

Once we knew our file had been transmitted to a RIPA (orphanage) began an exciting wait... Because there are no agencies in Monaco and our coordinator does not master English that well, we were given permission to be in direct contact with the RIPA, this is unusual and we are very thankful that the RIPA was ok with this. On the 5th of July 2011 like all other days for the last 5 years the first thing I did when waking up was to check my email. And there it was.... an email from the orphanage. This of course was not unusual but when I opened it I realised it was the referral. The inital email only contained the medical history and social report. Half an hour later I received pictures .... sometimes the world really does stop. We were smitten but we wanted to make an informed decision. We collected as much medical history as possible and asked for advice from several pediatricians. On the 6th of September we were finally able to sign the official documents! Many people did not quit

The home study was very well carried out. Everyone on the team was extremely positive and supportive and it was a pleasant experience. Eventhough I had heard many stories about home studies ours was very fair and it was not as stressful as I had anticipated. Still the relief when we finally had the agreement was big and it was a very happy moment. Our journey could now really begin... Adoption involves a lot of paperwork (perhaps an understatement) but there are many protocols and steps to follow. Especially since we are adopting under the The Hague convention it is very important to follow the advice of the central authorities involved. We waited for several  months (8 to be exact) during which we had no news at all, not even a confirmation that the file was received. After 8 months we discovered that it had in fact not been received at all. The disappointment was so big (plenty of tearful calls to friends and family who all helped us through this). A new file had to be created...

Welcome to our adoption blog. I hope our story will encourage and give hope to others on the same journey. It is a long and often difficult path to travel, surround yourself by people who believe in you and support you along the way. We started our journey 5 years ago when we sent our first letter to our central authority to enquire about adoption. One year later we had undergone our home study and we were approved for adoption. We choose to adopt from India, the desire to adopt was a long standing one and India seemed like a good choice. Here is in short our time line of adoption: September 2007: start of our journey December 2008: approved for adoption by our central authority June 2009: discovered our file had been lost in India January 2010: submitted our new file to CARA March 2011: CARA asssigned our file to the RIPA September 2011: we accepted the referral of Raju January 2012: submitted a new updated homestudy to CARA June 2012: NOC granted by CARA I will refer