Applying to regular program

You certainly can do that, but know that it costs about $400 more to submit a NSN dossier than a dossier for SN adoptions. Also, you could just tell your agency the situation and tell them at that you do not want to look at any referrals until you give them the go ahead. You can be logged in and be saving your money up to that point. One of the downfalls of waiting two years after being logged in is that your USCIS paperwork will expire and you will have to update your home study to apply for the free extension. The cost of this update varies by state and agency and can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand depending on state laws. Some states say that home studies expire every year and you need a new one each year, some will allow you to update your home study indefinitely.

Be prepared to wait. We started the process in 2006 and were told the process was about a year. At this point we're more then a year away from getting a referral. Through a twist of fate we ended up with a 10 day old Liberian boy in 2008. He'll be three in August. Since we'd put all that money into China, we've let the process continue as we figure by the time we get a referral, our son will be pushing four

they are wanting to eventually apply for SN. This process is usually under a year. I am sorry for your long wait, but so happy that you have a son b/c of it!

Congrats on your decision. Keep in mind that until your paper work is "logged in" with China, you are not officially in the wait process. If your intentions are to adopt through the SN program, and you know you will not have ALL the funds for 2 years, you can start paying the agency it's fees, do the physicals, etc, and stop short of doing the fingerprints or sending anything in to the USCIS because that is what's time stamped, and needs to be updated every 18 months (costing an additional $1,000 after updated home study and fingerprints are included), the clock starts ticking when that is done, regardless of when you are logged in with China. The shared SN list can take anywhere from 1 month to 3 years to find your child, depending on your search. Once you've found your child, it can take an additional 4-6 months to travel. At that time, you will need to come up with the remaining $5,000 orphanage donation fee, and traveling fees. So, the majority of the costs are down the road, when you are ready to travel. I know it's difficult to gather the funds up-front, and I'm sure you've already considered some of these things, but if you have a 401K you can borrow from that short term and pay the remainder of it back after you adopt. If you have equity in your house you can take out an equity loan (never gonna happen for us, we are so far belly up.) You can also do the obvious, and have fund raisers, garage sales, donations and fund raising dinners put on from your church family. Or borrow the money from relatives. I mention this because it's very likely you will be reimbursed for at least some of the funds through your employer and/or the IRS, but not a guarantee, so there is still some risk involved that you will be hit with costs before you are ready. Currently, the federal government gives a tax credit of a little over $13,000 after you've adopted, provided you've spent that much money to fund the adoption. You should be ok because anyone adopting internationally will spend at least that much. Two things to keep in mind about the tax credit; 1. there is no guarantee that the tax credit will still exist by the time you adopt your NSN or SN child from China (you are not locked in on the date you decide, but instead, you claim it on your taxes the year after the adoption takes place), 2. it is not credited to your tax liability until after the fact. So, although it is VERY helpful, it does not help while you're actually paying the fees. Id like to add though, that this tax credit has been around for a while now, and although every year (or every other year) there is talk of lowering it drastically or removing it completely, it continues to edge upward each year, and Im very grateful of that. I just hope it continues indefinitely. One more note, many employers also include adoption reimbursement as part of their benefits package. You can find out more about your own employer through your HR department. For our first dd, my employer gave a $5,000 adoption reimbursement, and DH's employer gave $3,000. And although I am no longer employed, DH's employer reimbursement has gone up to $5,000. Not all companies give adoption reimbursement to their employees, so you have to check if yours does. And again, unfortunately, the reimbursement will not help if the adoption is not finalized, but it's worth looking into, regardless. Then, assuming the IRS credit is still available, you can pay back whatever funds you fell short with. OR, if everything works out, you can use the extra money for a much deserved break to be with your child. We were very fortunate with both companies offering the adoption reimbursement. I was able to stay home with my DD for the first 6 months because of the tax credit and reimbursements. Both companies sent us checks within weeks of finalizing our adoption in China, with just a phone call to each company's HR department, and a couple of faxed documents to them.

KarenInCa, I like the list at the bottom of your post. It does seem forever. Our LID for China is 9/1/06 and it's still a long ways out. When we started the process and poured all that money in, the process was explained to us like your first time around time wise. Kinda feel a bit cheated on that one. If I never had to deal with USCIS paperwork again, it would be too soon :)

Guppy....I agree with you! Our agency was fairly straight forward with us on our second adoption. At the time, the wait was 18 months long, and expected to go up. We were told by our agency to expect it to go to 24-26 month wait. So, I buckled down and decided to set my sights on 36 months...I figured, "3 years is twice as long as the wait now. So, it will all be good, and I will be pleasantly surprised."The hardest part of it now being a 4 year wait, and expected to go to around 6 years or maybe more for us, is that my first daughter is STILL waiting for her baby sister, and I KNOW it has to be hardest on her. We stopped talking about our second adoption to family about a year ago, and although we stopped talking about it to our first daughter, after the first two years was up, she STILL talks about her baby sister in China sometimes. So, that's really what keeps us keeping on. YOU are SOOO close! Maybe you will see your child's face by the beginning of next year!!I'm just hoping and crossing everything I have two of, that the IRS credit will still be around by the time we are completed with our adoption. It has been there for years, but there's no guarantee it will continue.Just curious..if you KNEW it would be a 5 plus wait...would you have pursued it to begin with?Honestly, if I would have known it would be (most likely for us) a 6-8 year wait, I don't think we would have. But with four years in the wait, we're committed to this adoption till the end. We've talked about the age differences now that the wait will be so much longer than we originally thought, and we still see a lot of plusses to adding another child to our family.

We would not have pursued it knowing it would be a five year wait. Part of this is our age. I'm about to turn 51, my wife 48. 46 and 43 when we started this. What worries me is the real lack of communication on this stuff as it continues to lengthen. I think it's greatly unfair to the prospective adoptive parents and to the kids needing homes. I worry that new families are getting in this line. Are they being told about the long wait time and the never ending cycle of money and paperwork.The irony is we end up with a beautiful little boy totally unplanned and have only now finished a 2 and 1/2 year battle to get his paperwork in order.The plan is since we've already dumped all that money into the China adoption process, we at least need to see it through to referral and hope that we can manage to pull it off. I don't quite know who to blame for the mess that this has become, but as I said in the previous post, we really feel cheated and also feel there are a lot of kids being cheated by a system that can be this long and unorganized.

Guppy-You are very blessed with your little guy. I feel that we are with our first DD as well. I can't imagine this wait without our first DD. As for the wait times, IMO, China is being very calculated by doing this. I have never believed that the numbers have gone down drastically as we have been lead to believe. I believe that perhaps, there are less babies in SWIs than there were in 2004-2006, but not as few as we are lead to believe. And that is why they are so closed when it comes to finding out information. When we adopted our first daughter in 2006, we toured the orphanage, and at that time, the wait had gone up by 3 months. That doesn't seem like much at all, compared to what happens now. But it had actually gone up 1/3 from what it was when we started (from a 6 month wait to a 9 month wait). We were being told the same thing then, as we are now....less babies/children to be adopted through IA because China was becoming less strict about the 1 child policy. Yet, there we were, in an orphanage that did very few adoptions, with many, MANY children there. Granted, some might have very well been SN children, and we would never know. But, it had only been 3 months since the NSN babies were abundant. I mean, really, how could it catch on in the rural parts of China in only 3 months, that the rules were becoming more relaxed? Especially since the crime of having more than one child 3 months earlier was met with such strict regulations. And then you would hear about incidents where people were still FORCED to have abortions if they were caught going against the 1 child policy. None of that made any sense at all. And now, the people who visit the orphanages are saying that there are not very many children there, but they are also visiting the orphanages (in a lot of cases) that now foster a lot of the children to neighboring homes, whereas they did not do that as much before, leaving the orphanages more vacant. Knowing that China is a very industrial country, I believe that there are still a lot of healthy children placed in orphanages and then into foster care, but that fewer healthy children ever become paper ready. When we adopted our first daughter they were processing 1 full month of LIDs every month, like clockwork. I believe their system became so smooth for NSN children to be adopted through IA, that China saw a need to keep more NSN children within China, by making the waits longer, hence directing more PAPs toward SN children. Looking at it from only an industrialized country's viewpoint, it's much more of a drain on the country to raise the SN children into productive adults, to become hard workers, than the NSN children, because China does not invest in the same resources for SN there as we do in the states. I think the Chinese government found itself in a bind. If China were to completely release the 1 child policy, there would be a baby boom greater than what happened in the US after WW2. So, China chooses to keep a lid on it, yet keep a lot of the NSN children to be raised by the government, so they can grow up to be appreciative citizens and hard workers. It's a harsh view, and it's only speculation, but we are talking about a country that takes on harsh realities to begin with, like the 1 child policy. From all that I've learned about China, the strength of the country is first and foremost...everything else, including the welfare of it's individual people is second. I'm just truly hoping that nothing else happens in our family before the end of our journey to adopt again. I lost my job last year, so our income dropped drastically. If we become ill or have a family disaster, it all changes. And families are so different 6-8 years down the road. I know things can happen after adoption, but at least then you can deal with it as a family, instead of always having an unknown piece of your family and your life hovering over your head.