So fast forward a whole bunch more and the landscape looks like this... all of the ‘Stork Reports’ from Great Wall (children being matched with adoptive families) were showing referral times in excess of (and the number keeps growing) 36 months! Yes, 36 months. Why? The popularity of the program, the sheer volume of applications to be reviewed, the CCAA (China Center of Adoption Affairs - www.china-ccaa.org) was overwhelmed, and then the Hague Treaty came into play, etc. By far the biggest determining factor was really that the sheer ratio of applications to available children had grown way out of proportion.
Now based on our application and certain criteria, we could have been matched with a child as young as 8 months of age. If we had stayed the course. If however, we did stay the course it would be about another 18 months (give or take a few months) before we were matched with a child. This is based on the fact that the referral times were continuing to grow and our log in date put us way down the line. The log in date being the official date our dossier (that dictionary sized load of official paperwork that was in essence, our life and our hope for a child) was received in China. So we started looking at the Waiting Child Lists.
Since Kendra is a pediatric RN, and this is already a scratch and dent household, adopting a child with some medical issues seemed, inevitable! It truly breaks your heart to read those Waiting Child Lists though. Some of the conditions are staggering. To say it’s painful is a gross understatement. Kendra being a nurse and having focused her work on special needs children for quite some time, helped us to determine what we could and could not handle with these kids. So many of the children on the Waiting Child list had such severe issues…
So we kept watching the lists and finally, truly, settled into The Big Wait.
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