How this works

I have been getting a lot of questions lately about the process and how it works. For those that have adopted from Russia or know how are Russian adoption worked, for Ukraine it's much different. You first send your apostilled home study (and a couple other papers) to the SDA in Ukraine. They then give you a dossier submission date of when your dossier should be received by them. Our date is in July, so we will start working on our dossier next month. We should then receive our invitation to travel 2-3 months after submitting our dossier, so they anticipate we should travel around September or October.

We are requesting a child age 2-3. For Ukraine, that is a very young child as most are not under the age of 4. We have also requested either sex, but let them know that we prefer a girl. Since age is most important to us, we were willing to compromise on the sex. I am a slight control freak and like to plan every detail, so this part is hard for me. I can't start preparing a room or start shopping for clothes.

As far as the referral of a child prior to travel, Ukraine works different in this department as well. With Russia, we received the referral of Bryson prior to travel. In Ukraine, once you arrive you will go to the SDA office. There they will show you the profiles of a couple different children. You will then decide on which child you would like to meet.