It took a while.... but we're on to the next step

We FINALLY got the approval we’ve been waiting for!! Back in early July we applied for our NOC (no objection certificate). It was an application to India to allow us to adopt the specific child we had matched with back at the beginning of March. Our agency initially told us that the approval would come within a month, however, the wait for the NOC ended up being a painstaking 18 weeks. Admittedly, we haven’t felt up to posting updates in the last couple months. There really wasn’t that much we could update during that time since the process wasn’t moving. It was just a long, long wait and some days it left us feeling pretty down. But we’re moving into the home stretch and crossing our fingers that things speed up for us.

We found out in August that CARA (the department for adoption in India) was only about 30% staffed after some significant turn over. We were informed to expect delays, potentially it would take 3 months to be up and running at full speed again. That was bad news for us; things were running slowly and our agency was asked limit contact with CARA because fielding excess inquiries would slow down an already snail pace department. Our agency also has more conservative policies to keep a positive working relationship with CARA, which prevented them from pushing the point too much. Regardless, we definitely felt discouraged as there didn’t seem to be much we could do to push things along. We knew that our kid was spending extra time in the orphanage waiting for a family and getting older. We had to trust they were getting the best possible care given the situation, but it’s still very far from the ideal environment.

Eventually, our patience did run out… After 2+ months of waiting and knowing nothing, in September we decided to start calling CARA ourselves. We wanted to confirm all of our paperwork had been received or if there were any problems with our case. After many attempts (on one occasion, 20+ calls in one day), staying up late, or getting up early, (due to the 10.5 hour time difference) we discovered that our file was missing some vital paperwork. It had been uploaded to CARA’s online system but apparently there was a glitch and it never made it to them. Browsing Indian adoption support group pages on Facebook, we found out these types of computer system glitches were not uncommon. It was very frustrating but, at least we had an answer. Our case manager re-submitted the missing paperwork and we went on waiting some more. To make things even harder, we learned that the NOC committee met only once a week. So we would get our hopes up at the start of every week and then our morale would fall through the week as another week passed with no good news.

As more weeks passed, in mid-October, we decided to call CARA again to see if there was a reason for the continued hold up. CARA has specific criteria regarding children who are adopted internationally and they want to ensure that the child being adopted meets all the conditions before they approve the NOC. We discovered that the NOC committee had reviewed our file, but they needed additional medical information before they could approve our file. They apparently were requesting this information from the orphanage, but the orphanage had not responded to the requests from the NOC committee. Fortunately we were able to work with our family doctors to get a letter with the information CARA needed. It was another couple days of calling each of our doctors to see who could get us the information we needed as quickly as possible. Thank you Wildwood Clinic for helping us through the strange request on short notice! Our understanding is that this was a rare request that isn’t typically part of the NOC approval. But at every step of the way in this process; we just jump through whatever hoops they ask us to. It only took us a couple days to get this info and we called CARA again to find where to send the letter, but we had just missed the committee meeting. Oh farts. We sent the letter in, holding on hope for another week.

So a couple weeks ago, on the morning (in India) of November 1, I called CARA once again because we still had not heard anything. The woman knew who I was before I told her, saying she recognized my voice… so I think we called them enough…. But then she gave us great news, the committee recommended us for NOC approval!! It actually took two more weeks for the paperwork, to process so it wasn’t official until yesterday morning (11/16). A couple more anxious weeks and several more late night calls to CARA. We aren’t exactly sure what the specific hold up was, but we finally got through this big hurdle. This wait was harder than we imagined and we had some dark days where we thought things would not work out, but we are so happy to be moving on to the next stage!!

There are still at least a few months to go until we travel to India. Our case needs to go through the court system to legally finalize the process in India. The next step is waiting for the orphanage to file paperwork for a court date; legally they are supposed to do it within 10 days of getting the NOC. Hopefully, they move faster than they have in the past! Then we should hear back about a court date a few weeks after that. Then we’ll know a little bit more about when we’ll travel and how many trips we might need to take. We’re not sure we even want to guess about how long the court process will take, it all depends on the state you are adopting from, the judge you get, holidays, monsoons, etc. Fortunately the major Indian holidays and rainy season are behind us.

As you may have noticed we haven’t shared all that much information about the child we are adopting. Partially that was due to the NOC waiting period, it tends to be where adoptions from India get hung up and could fall through. We are planning to start sharing some more information via the blog and with our friends and family in person. There’s still some information we might not share as we think about our child’s privacy. It’s going to be a complicated history for them, and as they grow up and we want to make sure they have control over “their story”. Not that we don’t want our friends and family to know, but we want our kid to have a say in how and when the story is presented.

As always, thanks to everyone who has been there for us, supporting us through this process.