Sonogram Picture?

We got our first songram picture:

She's gotta be in there somewhere, right?

OK, so obviously we're joking about the picture.  Another month has gone by and no special needs referral so we need to pass the time.  However, from what we can gather we're not that far away from a special needs referral so there is a good chance that our daughter has been born and is out there somewhere.  It's just a matter of where and when we'll be connected.


Now for the update.

As of 5/13/2010 here's our "non special needs" wait statistics:

Referred through: 5/15/2006
Current wait: 51 months
Projected referral date: 7/13/2013
Projected months remaining to referral: 37

How it'll work

As we move closer to receiving a (special needs) referral we'd thought it would be helpful to let everyone know how the process will generally work and when and how we'll tell everyone.

When we finally do receive a referral we will get a call from our agency followed by an email with a picture and some basic information about the child. At that point we'll have less than 48 hours to make a preliminary decision. After looking over the information we will immediately send the information to our pediatrician for review. We will then discuss everything we know about the child's medical history and what it all means with the pediatrician, our social worker and between ourselves. At that point and only at that point, if we decide to accept (on a preliminary basis) the referral we will begin to inform family and friends of the referral. We will not be sharing any details (or pictures) of the referral on this blog due to privacy concerns. We will only announce that we have accepted a referral. Our intention is to share the details (and pictures!) with family and friends via email and possibly via Facebook (to a lesser extent). So, if you want the details make sure we know that and that we have your email address. We'll probably create a special email distribution list.

After we accept the referral there is more that needs to happen. We won't bore you with all the details but essentially we next have to make a formal request to the CCAA to be matched with the child and then they have to accept that request (part of the reason we cannot post any details online). We also have to make travel arrangements, apply for travel visas and her U.S. Citizenship, complete various other paperwork not to mention getting her room ready as well as a preliminary wardrobe (Beth can't wait for this part). It could take up to 6 months from when we receive the referral to when we travel to China but at least we'll know who she is!


Now for the update.

As of 6/13/2010 here's our "non special needs" wait statistics:

Referred through: 4/26/2006
Current wait: 50 months
Projected referral date: 6/13/2013
Projected months remaining to referral: 37

Chinese for dinner and some encouraging news!

In "celebration" of the one year anniversay of our login date we will be having Chinese for dinner tonight. This will become a yearly tradition, but hopefully next year will include one more member of our family. Speaking of which, we are currently in the process of updating our I-800a which is the approval form by INS to bring a foreign adopted child into the country. This approval only lasts 18 months so it has to be renewed every 18 months. Part of this process is to update our homestudy which is done by our social worker. So, in meeting with her just recently she said she would be very surprised if we had to do this again. Translation: we should get a special needs referral within the next 18 months! It might even happen sooner (maybe within the next 12 months) as our agency has matched many families with special needs children over the past few months. This is encouraging as the non special needs wait gets longer and longer. We'll just have to wait and see.


Now for the update.

As of 5/13/2010 here's our "non special needs" wait statistics:

Referred through: 4/21/2006
Current wait: 49 months
Projected referral date: 5/13/2013
Projected months remaining to referral: 36

In the Review Room!

Based on recent portal updates on the CCAA website they have now reviewed dossiers logged in through April 2009. Since our dossier was logged in May 2009, this means that they are reviewing ours as we write this. This is the step in the process where CCAA reviews all of our paperwork and approves, rejects, or asks questions concerning our dossier. While getting approved through the review room does not get us any closer to a referral it is an important step in the overall process. So far, we have not been informed of any questions they might have so cross your fingers! In this situation no news is good news. Once they announce that dossiers have been reviewed through the end of May 2009 (or later) we'll know that we're through!



On another note, The Washington Post recently published an interesting article on special needs adoption from China. This is something we can very much relate to and if you're interested you can click here.



Finally, we'll save the wait update for our next post but I wanted to mention that Congress did extend the Adoption Tax Credit (see our last post) for another year. It was included in the recent health care legislation. It doesn't go as far as making the credit permament as we would have liked to see but does keep it going for the time being. Rest assured, next year when it's up for renewal again we'll have another post on the issue.

Nothing new on the wait, will update the stats with the next post.

Changing Direction

As we began our adoption journey we have always been interested in adopting a child with special needs. This past month we decided it was time to submit the required paperwork to adopt a child with special needs or as our agency more fondly calls it, Children of Promise (COP). Of course this begs the questions of why we decided to go down this path, what special needs are we considering, and how does this affect the timeline? We'll do our best to answer all these questions in this post.

As our boys grown older we feel our hearts have been led down the path to adopting a child with special placement needs. With so many resources available to us because of where we live and what Beth does for a living, we feel we're in position to offer a child with special needs a home and environment where all their needs can be properly addressed and they can be loved and supported. We also feel that it is selfish for us to wait and wait for a "non-special needs" child when there are so many COP's out there waiting to be adopted. We're in a position to offer them so much.

However, being that we already have 2 children (with their own issues) we realize there are limitations as to how much we can take on. For that reason, we are only able to consider children with minor physical conditions. This would include such conditions as a minor heart condition, extra or missing digits, or asthma to name a few. We also want to ensure that our daughter (we still only want a girl) is at least one grade level behind our youngest so we are only considering girls born after September 1, 2008.

What does this mean for our wait? Matching children with special needs is done a little differently than for non special needs. The actual matching is done by the adoption agency rather than the CCAA and the primary thing they look at what family is the best fit for a particular child. The main difference is that while the LID is taken into consideration it is not the most important factor so families can jump ahead of other families if they are a better match for that child. What this means for us is that the wait could be considerably shorter although not necessarily so. We could still get matched with a non special needs child if our turn comes up on that list before we are matched from the COP list. However, with what's been going on, this is highely unlikely.

As for the updates, we will continue to provide them but bear in mind they are for the non special needs list. We have no way of projecting a wait for the COP list.

Now for the update.

As of 1/13 here's our "non special needs" wait statistics:


Referred through: 4/3/2006

Current wait: 45 months

Projected referral date: 2/13/2013

Projected months remaining to referral: 37




Remember, these are simple projections based on extrapolating the current wait forward. Check out the Rumor Queen (link at top) for more thorough projections