When you adopt, after your child comes home you have to do a number of post-placement home study visits before the adoption can be finalized.  The number of actual visits varies from agency to agency and the timeline also varies from agency to agency.

For us, our agency in the USA sets a very strict timeline for when they will occur.

I honestly don’t mind doing them.  Our visits are with the same social worker who did our initial home study, so she already knows us and we have a good rapport with her.  The social worker isn’t guaranteed to be the same, but I am really glad ours is the same one because we aren’t trying to get to know her again.  She’s easy to talk to and we are already comfortable with her.

Anyways, after each visit she has to write a report that is approved by our local agency, sent to the Canadian government for approval and then sent to the USA agency.  And we always get a copy.  And I LOVE reading them.  It’s so interesting to read someone else chronicling our son’s first few months of life.  I kind of think one day he might also enjoy reading them.

The only downside is that each visit is costing us multiple hundreds of dollars (we’ll spend a total of $2000 for these visits, which in the scheme of international adoption isn’t actually that much).  For some reason we didn’t expect these bills to be this high – I have no idea why we didn’t expect it, we just didn’t.  Of course they will charge us for this service and of course they have to charge for the visit, the report writing, the report reviewing, and the report mailing.  Everyone agency and lawyer involved in international adoption has to make money, so of course the Canadian agency needs to as well.

Honestly, I’m just so sick of adoption bills!  Yesterday I actually had a bit of rant to which Mr. MPB somewhat patiently heard me out – no-one else we know with an infant is spending hundreds of dollars and time doing all this stuff.  I wouldn’t trade our son for anything in the world (obviously), but seriously, it’s hard constantly paying money to agencies when I’d really just like to be putting that money into his education fund or into toys for him or into a future family vacation or even just into our mortgage payments. And what’s even worse is that everyone going through infertility treatments or adoption faces this stuff.  Seriously, when will we all get a break from these costs?  Sometimes I just cannot help but think about how unfair it is to all of us spending so much money to try to have children.

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