Road to Hana is Moving!

I've learned so much and gotten great support and inspiration through others' adoption blogs and that was key to my decision to keep this blog public - to pay it forward. As we inch closer to referral we are starting to think more seriously about preparing for our child's arrival. Part of that is ensuring privacy when the need arises. Blogger gives me the option of password protecting the entire blog, but I like the Wordpress option of password protecting individual posts better. That gives me more precise control over what is public and what is meant for family and close friends only.

I've moved all the posts and links from here over to The Road to Hana, Wordpress edition. Please update your links and Bloglines accordingly and I'll see you on the other side!

The Road to Hana

Politics vs. Child Welfare

Someone posted a link to this article on one of the China adoption message boards I read - it's an opinion piece, and in line with my beliefs about international adoption and how politics are ultimately sentencing many children around the world to institutional living, a detriment to their development, education and eventual success in life, often putting them at risk of falling into homelessness, crime and prostitution as they age out.

While I believe that in-country adoptions should supersede international adoptions, in many countries, there are far more children than families willing to adopt them. In these cases, it is better for the children's welfare to get them into families abroad rather than raise them in an orphanage. Unfortunately, politics too often holds the children hostage for the sake of nationalism.

Click here to read the opinion piece.

36 Months LID...3 years!

Our dossier has been officially logged in with the CCAA for 36 months - that's 3 years of official waiting in the slow line that is China adoption.  The wait is far from over, but we're at the point where it's unlikely - we hope - that our wait will continue to consistently stretch further and further with no end in sight as it has since we started this.  Our current estimate for referral using forecasting is January 2010.  Our agency is hoping we'll see referral this fall - they are hoping to see a slight speed up in referral rates soon.  We'll just continue waiting and see.

It's been a bit surreal, this journey.  When we logged in we were told to expect referral in 8-10 months, then that estimate quickly grew to one year and we've been expecting referral "in about a year" for 3 years now...Well that estimate should now start to ever so slowly go down.  "Should" being the key word here.  

April Stork Alert

April referrals came last week, covering Log in Dates (LIDs) March 7 and March 8, 2006.  Congratulations to all families who now wait to travel to their new children! 

There are 43 days left to refer until our LID of 4/20/06 is reached.  The current 12-month rate of referral is 4.83 days per referral batch, which come about once per month.  If this rate remains unchanged we can expect our referral in January 2010.   This is significant because it reflects our wait from current time to expected referral actually shrinking slightly after 3 years of expansion.  

As for our concurrent adoption attempt, we have put a limit on our patience and if nothing happens in the next few weeks, we'll be ending it.  I'll let you all know what happens - and what was going on.  Right now I'm thinking perhaps this fell into our laps last year to be a distraction from the long China wait. 

35 Months LID

We've now been logged in for referral from China for 35 months. There are still hopes coming from agencies that things will pick up later this year and time will tell. We are still in limbo with our concurrent adoption and are dreading the decision we will have to make soon.

One milestone that was just reached yesterday - I belong to a small online China adoption group and had opportunity to meet several of them in person - of the ones that I have met in person I am officially the last to receive referral. It has been fantastic watching these wonderful people meet their children and it has truly helped me cope with this wait.

March Stork Alert

March referrals are here and they cover LIDs March 3 through March 6, 2006.  That leaves 45 days until our LID of 4/20/06.  The rate of referrals over the past year is about 5 LIDs per month (the only stat we have to work with).  If this rate remains unchanged then we can expect referral in January 2010.  Since we've been logged in, this rate has been on a steady decline.  

Congratulations to all of the families seeing their child's face for the first time! 

Homestudy Update #3

We just had a visit with our homestudy social worker for our third update - our state requires annual updates plus our I-171H immigration approval is due to expire soon and we need to send an update with our renewal. It was a good meeting and it was nice to be able to gently vent about the state of our concurrent adoption attempt and the fact that it's looking more and more like we will be forced into a very difficult decision soon. When we started the concurrent, the timing was such that we would either have a child(ren) at least one year before our China referral as required, or we would know for sure that it would not happen and we would proceed as normal with the China process.

Now because of extreme stalling in the concurrent country and because it looks like we will see a China referral sometime between this fall and next spring, it's looking more and more like we are going to be forced into a very difficult decision.

We must have at least one year between placements. If it comes down to us having to choose, do we go with the process that is a sure thing, just very slow (China) or do we go with the process for which we already have referral (photos and all) but for which it's apparent the home country is trying to discourage adoptions to the US and it may never really happen?

I'm feeling very resentful that we're being backed into this corner and I really hope we get news from the concurrent country in the next week or two - one way or another.

34 Months LID

We've now been logged in for referral from China for 34 months...that 3 year mark is just around the corner. I spoke with our agency recently and while they believe the next batch of referrals will be small due to the Chinese New Year holiday, they are hopeful that we will see more children referred in the months to follow. I asked them if they have information to support this or if it's just hope...it's just hope. The orphanage donation has been raised for the first time in 15 years and they hope that this will encourage more children to be referred to the international adoption process - while China reports increases in domestic adoption, the general belief is that it has still not increased enough to eliminate the need for international placement.

As for our attempted concurrent adoption, things are not looking great right now.

33 Months LID and Stork Alert Update

We're still here!

Tomorrow we'll have been logged in for referral from China for 33 months. Based on the average number of LID days referred per month over the most recent 12 months, we estimate our referral to be October of this year. That said, there are rumors out there that March will take a full year to refer, and if that comes to fruition we won't get referral until 2010. To date, China has referred up to February 28, 2006.

Meanwhile we continue to work on our concurrent adoption and things have stalled a bit there as well. I thought we would have more definitive news by now, but we don't. I'll be sure to keep you all posted.