Russian adoption

I thought I would give a little background on Russian adoptions in general.  We have gotten lots of questions in the last few weeks about this process.  We are happy to answer any questions, we actually welcome it because it allows us a chance to talk about our future heritage and culture that we will be blending into our lives. 
Russia in general has great working relations with the USA.  They have signed an adoption agreements and they have paved a clear road for all adoptions coming from Russia to the US.  The youngest child that can come out of the Russian adoption program is 8 months old.  All children need to be available for domestic Russian adoption for a minimum of 6 months first then they are eligible for international adoption. They do not have a "foster" system like the US does, so every child that has been removed from a home or given up is housed in orphanages.  These facilities are less than optimal, but they do provide some basic needs.  They are typically underfunded and understaffed.  So for every month a child lives in an orphange they are typically 3months behind our developmental standards.  There is over 250,000 Russian orphans available for adotpion, and about 2.5 times that number of children living in orphanges for some reason or another.

Russia is great at matching a child to an adopted family...which means they look out our finances, our ages, our biological child's age and they firmly believe in keeping natural birth order and trying to match a child that may look like us if we desire that.  This is different from other countries that just match the next available orphan with the next available family.

Most of Russia operates on a "blind referral system".  This means we get little or no information about our child until we arrive in Russia to meet the child.  We then get access to any information they have on the child.  At this time we get there medical file that is filled with a list of medical conditions that may or may not be true. All orphans have some sort of medical condition labeling them, this is how they get them on the registry list to get adopted.  Some of these conditions are not eve translatable into to English, because they don't exist.  Simple things like, lactose intolerant is label as a GI tract condition but only need proper attention that is not offered living in a standardized environment.  After meeting the child, and the Orphanage director and Dr. we can decide if we want to proceed with this adoption.  We then return to the US and wait for another invitation to travel for court. This is usually about 2 months later.  As of Jan 1, 2012 we have been informed that Russia is implementing a mandatory 30 waiting period after our court date that will allow us to take our child to the US embassy in Moscow and get there birth certificate and passport so they can come home with us.  They will be a US citizen upon arrival in the US.  So what this means for us.  We will both need to travel twice and one of us will have to go back a third time to get our child.

We are excited about this journey the Lord is taking us on, and we anticipate the day we get a call to travel for the first time.  Our prayer today is that we get to travel this year.  We don't know if this will happen, it is possible but it is also realistic that it may not happen.  So if you are a praying person, we ask that you pray for this journey to happen this year.  We are currently at a waiting period for some immigration paperwork and then we can "Register" with a specific region in Russia - from that point they say it can be a 4-12 month wait.