Waiting one week

Ok, one week down, hopefully not too many left until we receive a referral.  We have MDs lined up for each type of special need we are open to (though I do tend to rely on gut instinct based on our history of accepting referrals).   When we moved to the China program and first talked about opening ourselves up to a child that may need surgeries or ongoing therapy, we realized (duh) that we live minutes from one of the best Children’s hospitals in the world.  If you live in the U.S. you have access to some of the best hospitals in the world, but here is one literally minutes from our house.  We definitely had an Aha! moment there.

I know I alluded to the wait for our Letter of Acceptance or LOA in my previous post.  Once we accept a referral, we submit a Letter of Intent, or LOI.  Hopefully within about a week we should receive PA, or preliminary approval.  But in order to file our I-800, we need that LOA from China that is the final approval of us to adopt that specific child.  The LOA can take anywhere from 30 days to 120 days.  Unfortunately, we learned via our agency’s monthly newsletter last month that we will most likely be in that 90-120 days category.  The reason being because 1) our dossier will have just arrived in China and will still be in line to be translated and 2) we are not adopting a special focus child (a child with more serious special needs) whose paperwork (and the family’s paperwork too) can be expedited.  So we will be in for a 3-4 month wait for that document.  Luckily, we will receive all the paperwork to file our I-800 beforehand, so we should be able to file that the day we get our LOA, then file the DS-230,  wait for the Article 5, then we receive Travel Approval, then notice of our consulate appointment, which means we can travel. 

Hopefully we will travel within 5-7 months of receiving our referral.  And its only one trip of 2.5 -3 weeks! My only goal is to get home BEFORE February 2013, when Chinese New Year begins and all of China pretty much shuts down for a least a week, from what I’ve heard.  This is the one time of year when EVERYONE migrates home, which is pretty crazy when you are thinking of millions of people.  

So we continue waiting. Waiting should somehow be incorporated into the word “adoption”.