Paperwork Battle

It's really hard to explain why the adoption process takes so long.  It sounds so simple.  Get a home study.  Submit some government forms.  Collect your dossier documents.  But in reality, there's nothing simple about it.  I feel like I have had to fight for every single piece of paper.  Some people call it a paperwork pregnancy.  Really it's more like a paperwork battle.  I will give you just one little example from today...

When I went to the adoption agency last week to have our 50+ pages reviewed and notarized for our dossier, they told me that there were several pages that were not ready yet for various reasons.  Two of them were our medical reports.  

Dave and I originally had adoption physicals completed by our doctor back in 2014.  We had the letters notarized at the time by the physician's office.  But these letters expire after 18 months.  (Every piece of paper in the dossier has a different expiration date to keep track of.)  So we thought we were being proactive when we had updated letters completed by our nurse practitioner in February of this year.  Come to find out, one of our letters had the correct date on the top of the page, but in the text of the letter it said February 2015 instead of 2016.  The letters are on the medical office letterhead (another required element), but apparently you can't have an off-site notary validate something that is on letterhead.  My next step would be to call my doctor's office and request that the nurse practitioner re-type medical reports for us and have it notarized at their office.  BUT our primary care practice closed their doors unexpectedly in July.  Minor detail.  So... I contacted our nurse practitioner who is now practicing at a new office in Castle Rock.  She is very willing to help, but legally she cannot write a letter for us on her letterhead without us being seen at her office.  Which means yet another appointment for Dave and I.  So we made appointments for first thing Thursday morning.  However, this doctor's office doesn't have a notary onsite.  Not sure where to go from here.  I guess I will ask if the nurse practitioner can take the letters to a notary herself.  Doesn't seem fair to her, but I don't know what else to do.  We could go to a new doctor at a new practice that has a notary onsite, but that would mean getting established with a new practitioner and we'd probably have to get more lab work and have a more in-depth physical.

We'll figure it out.  It's not that big of a deal.  But it gives you an idea of why each piece of paper requires so much time.  We'll keep up the good fight.  It is more than worth it in order to bring our son home!

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