Weathering the stress of an adoption with Child Welfare can take a lot out of you. We did enjoy adopting our baby daughter on National Adoption Day with all the festivities and fun excitement of the day. There was a lot more stress and drama because of choosing this date.

Up until Friday evening after 5 o’clock we were unsure whether it would really happen. Waiting to the last minute, no, last second to do paperwork is not my idea of being prepared. Add to that, we live four hours away. This leaves everything to be done by fax.

While they (Child Welfare) said they had all the paperwork that they needed, I did not have copies of the paperwork. When you are talking about subsidies for a special needs child that we must have medical for all of her therapies, etc that she will need, and I didn’t have anything in writing that she will receive it. I got a little stressed.

Finally, we decided to meet at the court house before the adoption to receive the paperwork. Funny how I have the time to fax the signed paperwork to them but they are just too busy to sign and fax back.

We located our attorney pretty easy at the court house since we had never met her before. I was feeling pretty comfortable with things and then she asked for my daughter’s birth certificate. I did not bring any of her paperwork with us, which I explained to the attorney. She had me view the information that she was placing on the new birth certificate and I gave her the other information. She had an address listed that we had not lived at for over nine years.

The information she needed was the details of her birth (Sorry, I was not there, so I don’t know it.), which she had to have to complete our adoption. At this point I am feeling a little sick. The big problem no one, including Child Welfare had a copy of the full entire birth certificate even in her file. They decided to use the wallet (snap shot size) birth certificate as the original. The problem is the wallet one only shows her date of birth, name, names of the parents and the county, not all the detailed information.

The attorney stated, “You should have been provided a copy of the full original birth certificate.” I explained that I had requested one but was sent a blown up copy of the wallet one. At this point we had to make the choice to push the issue forcing them to acquire the full detailed one that would most likely push back our adoption once again, so we decided that we could live with not having it.

The judge and attorney decided to proceed with the adoption and the attorney would have to get Child Welfare to track down a copy of the full one. Mostly the attorney will end up doing it herself. Hopefully all the paperwork falls into place not causing any problems with the adoption after the fact.

This all was driving me crazy since I like to have some control over things. Paperwork can be a nightmare. At the end it has all well worth it, we have a beautiful daughter.