How long are you willing to wait to adopt a child? No matter which method of adoption you choose, you are going to have to wait. I used to believe that adopting out of foster care was fast, but I know several adoptive parents who had to wait quite a while to adopt waiting children. Unfortunately, all adoptions include a ton of paperwork, and completing all of the paperwork and getting those papers filed with the right people takes time.

When I was looking to adopt in the late 1990's, I was told that the average wait to adopt a healthy newborn was 3-5 years. However, I have spoken with numerous adoptive parents over the years, and very few waited this long. I generally hear people share that their wait was between 1 and 2 years after completing the home study, with a few lucky souls who were matched after only a few months. I also know several adoptive parents who endured a failed adoption, which added to the wait time.

Generally speaking, international adoption and foster adoption will provide you with a more specific time frame. However, things are always subject to change. When we looked into the Romania program back in the late 1990's, the wait was about 6 months from completion of the home study. Adopting a newborn domestically meant that we could be matched in five weeks or in five years, so it was hard to make the call about which direction to go.

Bottom line – You need to reach a place where you are willing to wait as long as it takes because you have no control over the process. It is going to take as long as it is going to take, and there is nothing you can do to speed up the process. This was a hard pill for me to swallow because I am such a control freak, but I had to let go and trust that the child who was meant for our family would come at the proper time – and he did!

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This post concludes my discussion of topics surrounding deciding to adopt. I used Adoption.com's Self-Assessment Adoption Quiz as an outline for this series. Were there any other topics you wanted me to discuss? If so, please post your comment here or e-mail your question to me at faitha@adoptionblogs.com.

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