baby showers

After my planned baby shower, i got a suprise one and sooo many gifts. Luckily they were all dresses cause i hadn't bought her a one.

Lawyers, Tigers and Bears.. oh my

I have had much consternation over this re-adoption vs registering adoptions debate. I am a "1 traveling parent" family so I always believed that my husband/we would need to readopt our daughter when we got her home. When I returned home from China I got a letter from FTIA saying that Keith could register adoptions for a small fee and there was a note at the bottom of the letter that started IR-4 families could "either" register their adoption or take the more costly and time consuming route of readopting. I called the agency and was told that was a misprint and that I had to go thru the re-adoption process. I knew of several families on the FTIA thread who had filed themselves and had even gotten copies of forms off the Internet. I called the Lawrence county xx office and a very rude person told me she didn't know how to file it and she didn't have the forms, I told her I had forms but she insisted that I needed to go thru a lawyer. I should of called Keith back right then and there but I assumed that more costly and time consuming also meant face time with somebody so I opted to use a local lawyer in my county. At my appointment I took everything I had and after 10 minutes the lawyer decided that since I had the power of attorney, everything was filled out as if my husband had been right there in the room with me. THERE WAS NOTHING SPECIAL TO DO. All I had to do was file a petition to register the adoption in the state of Indiana. I had to include the following exhibits...Chinese and translated birth certificate, translated abandonment certificate, original and translated adoptive registration certificate, a copy of her permanent resident card and a copy of the original and translated Chinese decree of adoption. Then I had to fill out an additional medical form for the health department. I filed a petition to waiver a home study (I included a copy of my existing one)I filed a petition to waiver the punitive father registry fee AND then I got a bill for.... ouch $$1250.00 It took one month to get the court decree. The lawyer sent that on to the Health dept. for a birth certificate. The Health dept. informed me that foreign births had to wait 90 days from the date of the court decree. Once I get the birth certificate then I can go to the Social Security office and get a SS number. Some time after that I can apply for her certificate of citizenship, finish up the I-600 forms and I should be done.

Insurance Coverage

For any of you out there considering the special need, VSD - Ventricular Septal Defect, there is very little info out there on costs for treatment. Here are some numbers that applied to my situation. I searched high and low for some general idea so i could determine if i should switch to high-option insurance or even change companies. I also had employer assist but once you bank the funds, you lose what you don't use. yikes! After weeks of begging, the hospital's pre admission dept. reluctantly gave me a figure of $250,000 and by that time it was all up to the divine. My daughter had the surgery in February for a large hole and only spent 5 days in the hospital. 1 day more than she needed in ICU cause they didn't have any vacant beds (yah, right but the insurance covered 100% of her stay ) So I was pleasantly surprised when the bills started rolling in and it came up to about $125,000. About $10,000 wasn't "covered". I'm not sure why or how but the hospital is dealing with my insurance company on that still. It seems that half the people involved were not in my PPO so I have alot of 35% co-pays instead of 15%, something you just can't control. I got a new bill the other day but I think I have the end in sight. So far I'm happy to say my co-pay seems to total approx. $5000.