When people talk about adopting from Russia they often say things like, 'we had to wait for her to get off the database,' or, 'we'll get the first referral off the database that fits our criteria.' That's what we said about Little J - he was the first referral off the database that fit our age and health criteria after we sent in our dossier. Actually, he wasn't off the database when he was referred to us (he had 3 weeks left) but because of his age (14 months) and sex (male) they were pretty sure he'd be available when it was time to adopt. In any case, we didn't get to go meet him until he was completely off the database.

But what is the database?

It's here: http://www.usynovite.ru/db/

It contains information, sometimes photos, of all children available for adoption in Russia at any one time. The link is to the national database; regions have their own as well. The current length of time children are on this database and the regional one is 8 months total. When we adopted Little J it was 6 months.

If you go to an online translator like this one: http://www.systransoft.com/index.html, you can type in the link to the website and it will translate the site for you. Then you can go back to the original site and explore. Perhaps you will see your future child in the database! Or maybe you'll locate your child's siblings, if you happen to be searching for them. I have searched many times for my son's siblings and I haven't found them, but I still have hope they might show up someday.

The purpose of the database is to give the Russian people the first chance at adopting the Russian children, or to give relatives notification that these children are available for adoption.