Hi! We are Cris and Gui, and similar to a lot of adoptive parents out there, we are a loving couple that attempted to conceive a child on our own and decided to seek adoption after failure of those attempts.
We did not know much about adoption and its process. We knew that we wanted to be blessed with a baby.
After talking to our social worker, we decided to look at AIS. It felt like a natural path. We needed help navigating the adoption waters. What is the difference between an agency, lawyers, facilitators, different states laws,…? How to create a profile? Where to start looking for an agency? That all seemed overwhelming and AIS gave us a safe port.
We were lucky, initially, by matching with our first birth mom in no more than 3 months after having our profile and home study ready. Unfortunately, we had a sequence of misfortunes that lasted over 2 years. We had 2 failed adoptions. We had our hopes up and we were ready to become parents: car seat in hand, nursery done and baby bag ready. It was tough and painful. And when we were ready to give up, AIS called us with an opportunity that became our little daughter. We can say that they were the hope when we were close to losing ours.
During the rough waters, tears and even feelings of despair, we could count on Leigh and the AIS team. They were there to counsel us and help us make decisions, avoid being precipitous, fight for us when we had troubles with agencies, and be our advocate. Ultimately, they were there to help us, give us a hand when we were low, and help us stand up.
We definitely recommend AIS to everyone. They had our best interest at heart. They answered our calls and many emails and advocated for us. And we were blessed to have our daughter born in a hospital near their office which allowed us to get together and celebrate this long journey before we brought her home with us.
Thanks, AIS team!
