Here are some recent news articles..

Family looking forward to first Christmas since adopting two children from Ukraine.....

The Coughlin family adopted a 3 year old boy and 4 year old girl from Zaporizhya.

Ukrainian adoptions on average seem to be taking 4 to 5 weeks to process in Ukraine. But this time can be broken into multiple trips. After the court hearing there is a 10 day waiting period. Parents can return home and wait out the 10 days there. Or they can stay in Ukraine. After the 10 days, parents can pick up their children. And if you do the paperwork right, only 1 parent has to pick up the children.

Here is the Coughlin family's timeline based on the news article.

• September 2004 - Started adoption



• August 2005 - Dossier registered with Ukrainian adoption authority


• November 31 2005 - Received appointment date at NAC. This is the appointment where families get their child referral.


• December 5 2005 - Family traveled to Ukraine


• December 10 2005 - Visited with children and accepted referral. Started legal adoption process.


• Jan 8 2006 - Arrived home with children

And here is another sweet, "First Christmas" news story.

Home for the holidays has a whole new meaning for Connie Gillette. The 41-year-old single mother from Mount Pleasant adopted her second daughter, Nina, a few weeks ago from Russia.

From: International adoption no match for can-do mom

Connie adopted her first daughter, Emma, from Kharkiv, Ukraine 1.5 years ago.

When she first saw her first daughter, Emma, she said, "I felt like I knew her." But the little girl was ill. She was 2 years old and weighed 15 pounds, the average weight of a 5-month-old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She couldn't sit up and had a bleeding rash on her neck and diaper area.

Gillette carried the little girl to three hospitals to see five doctors. The prognosis was not good. She called a doctor in the U.S., and he recommended she turn the child down

......

Gillette tracked down a Western-trained doctor six hours away to come to Kharkiv, Ukraine, to examine the girl. He gave her a 70 percent chance to be a normal, healthy child

......

As for her small size, orphanage workers had diagnosed her with a food allergy, pumped her full of antibiotics and taken her food away

From: International adoption no match for can-do mom

When I traveled to Ukraine, I prepared myself for close to 2 years. And I decided that I didn't need a doctor to evaluate my child-to-be. I know many families want the involvement of an adoption doctor.

I just felt like..... More information might make the decision more difficult.