Emmy Award winner and Grey’s Anatomy star Katherine Heigl was recently a guest on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” when her latest adoption was brought up. Katherine Heigl and husband Josh Kelly adopted their first daughter from South Korea back in 2009. Three year old Naleigh is now a big sister to newborn baby Adalaide.
Katherine said, “This was fascinating, actually,” she said. “We started the adoption process again and we thought we were going to adopt internationally. It’s a pretty long process. It can take years…” They had originally thought about adopting internationally again, but when they discovered Korean adoptions had gotten more difficult to complete and China’s waitlist was extremely long, the couple turned to domestic adoption.
While it is true some countries may be more difficult to adopt from, there are several countries with quicker and more stable programs – such as MLJ Adoptions’ Bulgaria and Democratic Republic of Congo programs. Bulgaria is a Hague Convention country and thus the country has invested in the international adoption process and proven their commitment to international adoption. The program is therefore stable and provides additional securities in the international adoption process that may not be present in other countries. The time frame to complete adoptions from these countries range from 6-18 months, whereas adoptions from China can take 30+ months to complete.
MLJ Adoptions supports adoptions both international and domestic. We have international adoption programs for Bulgaria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Honduras, Nicaragua, Samoa, and Ukraine and we provide services such as home studies for domestic adoptions.
For more information about MLJ Adoptions’ international adoption programs, please click here.