Matched!!

As many of your have heard, we have been matched with the sweetest baby!! This happened WAY faster than we thought it would. We have been told all along that it would be 6-12 months to receive a match, and we only waited 3 weeks! I can’t even explain how excited our family is and how blessed we feel that it happened so quickly. We truly believe all the hiccups we have encountered along the way were so we would be ready for this specific child!

A lot of people have been asking why we didn’t post on Facebook or Instagram what the child’s gender, age and name is. We were asked by our agency to keep all identifying information off of social media, and we want to respect our child’s privacy. Please know that we can’t wait to share more once we have our baby in our arms.

Now for the question we get everyday… how long is it going to take to get the baby in our arms? Well, our agency has told us it could take 6-12 months to finalize our adoption and bring our child home. Right now we are waiting for the following:

1st – I-600a approval- this gives us permission to bring a child in to the country. We are hoping this will come any day now. We need this permission to move forward with the next steps. I am a little obsessed with checking the mail! – Approved one day after I wrote this post!

2nd – I-600 approval- this gives our specific child immigration approval

3rd – Emigration Permission Submission- this could take 2-4 months. This is the 1st step in the child’s exit process.

4th – Emigration Approval- this take 2-4 months during this time the Korean court will be reviewing our file for final adoption approval. This is the step right before submitting our file!

5th – Travel to Korea for 1st Court Appearance- we will receive notice about 3-6 weeks before we need to travel to Korea. When we are there we get to visit with our baby, complete court paperwork and appear in court. We will be there about 1 week.

6th – Pick up our Baby!- about 4 weeks after we get home from our first trip, we will travel back to Korea for our visa interview and to bring our sweet baby home!!!

When I look at this list of things left to do, it looks so short! We have been in this process for the past year, and we are so thankful for where it has taken us. We are praying really hard that the rest of this process goes by quickly, and we get our sweet baby here soon!

Thank you all for your love, support and prayers! Keep praying this process moves along quickly, and we get to Bring Home Baby Stoyk soon!