The term paperchase is commonly used to describe the records gathering process. I have also heard it referred to as a paper pregnancy. Both terms fit for me. It could also be called the validating your existence phase or the are you kidding me phase. Once we were accepted by our agency, we received a package that detailed all of the work that lay ahead of us.
Getting copies of our vital records was step one in the paperchase. This was the point when I realized that all is fair in love and adoption. The folks who are very good about always keeping copies of their vital records in their safe deposit box or somewhere hidden in their home are no farther along than the rest of us. You see, for the vital records to be accepted by China, they must be less than six months old. Consequently, everyone starts at square one. Finally we were on an even playing field.
For us, the vital records included our birth certificates, our marriage certificate, and certified divorce decrees. There was other fun paperwork to gather, but I'll tackle that next. For Charlie and me, getting these five required vital records (we've both been divorced once) required that I go through four different states. Of course, these four states did not all work the same. This was the second time that I have hailed the beauty of the Internet. In two of the five cases, once I found the right sites, all I had to do was enter the vital information and hit click. They arrived at our home within two weeks. The other three required much more leg work, but I don't believe I would have been able to accomplish it had I not had the benefit of the Internet at my fingertips. After a few frustrating days of searching for some information on one of the states, I picked up the phone. That got me nowhere, so back to the wonderful and vast Internet it was.
I started the vital record quest in September of 2005. We had everything in our possession by the middle of October. It was a check in the good box for step one of the paperchase. Charlie and I started to think that this whole thing might be possible! Onto the next paperwork step...
