Referrals Are Here.....

CCAA has issued referral up to and including August 9th, 2005.

They did 18 days of LIDs. Which I guess is better than before, however, I have heard that there were less dossiers during this time frame. I'm going to look at the positive spin on this -- they did 18 days. Still....the wait....

I feel like I have been waiting for years. We tried several years of infertility treatments. So I guess it feels like we have been waiting forever.

If the wait is 13-14 months -- this will mean a referral in October/November with travel in Dec 2007/Jan 2008. This means our little one is probably not born yet. Bill thinks we will be celebrating Christmas/Hanukkah in China in 2007. I hope he is right.

Jen

Here is my one miracle

I have talked alot about adopting a baby. But I cannot forget, my one true miracle, Emily. Emily was conceived almost 7 years ago. We went through infertility treatments to have her. In fact her conception was 9/15/1999. We found out a month later while we were on a cruise that we were pregnant. I packed pregnancy tests with me. I remember waking up Bill at 4 in the morning because I had to pee and it was time to test. We had such a faint positive that it was hard to see. I only packed 2 tests and this was a 7 day cruise. 2 days later we took another test, positive. We had a hard time believing it was true. Once we were back in the USA -- we ran to Walgreens in New Orleans (where we flew into) and took another test. Positive. Emily was born the following June. She was not a very lovey baby. Didn't like to be held. She did love to swing though. Never napped.

6 years later --- she is smart as a whip. Reads voraciously. What is so great about her is that she is a good person inside and has a great heart. (I know Mommy is prejudice).

Here she is.....

Reasons Why Adoption is Better Than Infertility Treatments

One of my fellow bloggers posted Why Adoption is better than Pregnancy. Here is my spin.....

Why Adoption is Better than Infertility Treatments

10. No more buying those damn ovulation kits and pregnancy tests. I probably could have financed this adoption with the amount of dollars I invested in these kits.

9. No more bruises on the legs. They looked like I was a drug user.

8. No More Infertility Drugs. Another waste of money!

7. No More Unconfortable Legs in Stirrups every month. Nothing is worse than having an exam when you have your period. It is disgusting!

6. For my husband -- No More "Donations" at the Clinic. I'm sure that this was not his most favorite thing to do.

5. No More mood swings -- see #7. ah but in my case, mood swings are still there

4. No more dr. appt's. Even with insurance covering most of our treatment, I had to pay a co-pay each time we went. Again, we could have financed our adoption with this money we wasted.

3. No more dr's telling us well it could be this, it could be that. We just don't know.

2. No more timed sex. Nothing is worse than sex when you have the flu or you are sick but you cannot let this key moment go by without trying.

1. Best thing -- We KNOW that there will be a baby at the end of this LONG journey. Infertility treatments to me was hopeless.

Jen

We got a LID ----9/11

9/11 for us will be a mixture of sadness (for all those who lost their lives) and joy.

We have been assigned a date 0f 9/11/2006. Currently the wait is 14 months. So that will give us a referral in November 2007. Travel would be January 2008.

Let's hope China speeds things up!

Jen

Remembering 9/11

I can hardly believe it has been 5 years. Time certainly does go by fast. Remind me I just said that when I'm complaining about the China wait. I remember vividly where I was. We were having a training class for our desktop upgrade. We had classes going on. Then news started to spread. They had TV's turned on in one of our conference rooms. We saw the towers go down. At that point, Atlanta was shutting down. I work one of the tallest buildings in Atlanta (it might be the tallest). 55 stories high. I work on the 48th floor. Everyone was really nervous that something might happen here so we were closed for that day and the next. I think our eyes were all glued to the tv for the next coming weeks. Immediately following, we had building drill to test if we could walk down. It was very hard. Legs were jello by the time I got down.

Please say a prayer for the families of the victims of 9/11 and our soldiers in the Middle East.

Jen

No LID Yet....

Looks like we head into the weekend with no LID.
Bill predicted a 9/7 LID based off what we were seeing.
People with DTC up to 8/11 have been assigned......

I have been very tempted to shop for the baby room.
I actually had everything in the shopping cart.
But I exited out before completing the purchase.

Hmmm I guess a good start to this process would be to clean out the junk room and then paint and then buy baby stuff. I like the retail shopping part of this not the cleaning and painting.

Maybe I can get HGTV (Home and Garden TV on cable) do a Clean Sweep of the room. They come in and clean and then give you a whole new room.

Have a great weekend.

Jen

No News on LID Yet

The person who does the LIDs at the CCAA is on vacation. It is looking more like a September LID.

The following has taken place in the past week. Referrals were made to everyone with a LID from July 14th to July 22nd. It includes July 22nd. So you see we are basically at a 14 month wait now.

Also LIDS with a Nov 2005 date, their dossiers all have been reviewed by the CCAA. Basically dossiers get logged in (called a LID -- this is what we are waiting for now), then they get reviewed (they just reviewed Nov 2005), then they get referred.

There was an interesting post on yahoo today from Jane Liedtke. Jane runs an organization called OCDF ( Our Chinese Daughters Foundation) http://www.ocdf.org/. They provide heritage tours in China for adopted children. They also do provide facilitation in Chinese Adoption. She lives in China. Well anyways, there was a question to her about domestic adoption in China and if it was increasing -- one of the reasons behind the delay on international adoptions. Here is her response:

Domestic adoptions are encouraged through the new one-child policy that was instituted in Dec. 2004. However, the numbers (10,000 adoptions reported on the low end but they could be higher now) are not huge when compared to the population (1.26 billion persons) or compared to the number of births in China (1.7 million annually). CCAA is now responsible for all adoptions from the total of 1000 orphanages in China - both international and domestic (thus the slow-down - you have shifting offices, shifting employee roles, new employees, new procedures, getting a handle on domestic adoptions, promoting domestic adoptions, getting the 750 institutions that aren't international adoption-ready up to standards, etc etc etc). Add to all that the media focus on baby-trading in China and CCAA has it's hands full these days. It is highly responsible of CCAA to slow the process to be sure that they can get their staff up to speed and balance work loads, train new staff, and be ready for a larger volume of potential domestic adoptions. It doesn't mean they won't continue international adoptions, no way will they "shut down" that income stream. They are just adjusting their business for a larger scope and mission. We should all be thankful for their good work and increased attention to ALL the children who are institutionalized in China, not just those from 250 institutions allowed to adopt internationally.

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From what I inferred from her post, is ONE that China will not shut down their international adoption process (this was a rumor), and TWO perhaps more orphanages will brought on line to international adoption standards. Maybe, in time, our referral wait will decrease. The CCAA just moved to a larger building, added more staff. To me, that is all good signs.

Those Rumors
I asked our agency last week about the rumors, especially those concerning weight. They told me it is all speculation. They have asked CCAA about these rumors and nothing is confirmed. They also told me we would probably be grandfathered in so whatever new changes that do happen, won't affect us. I have complete confidence in CCAI (our agency). They have only had only two dossiers rejected in over 10000 placements. Those two dossiers had issues that weren't revealed to the CCAI from what I have been told. Even so, 2 out of 10000 isn't too shabby.

So when I hear about the rumors, I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and scream "LA LA LA LA LA" and ignore them. hopefully.....

That's all for now. Have a great weekend.
Jen