A little bit of a back story about our wait for Miss Vivi Cate...
I hadn't really posted updates about the adoption because there were no updates. At the end of each month China releases a shared list of children who are available for adoption. Around March of this year, the shared list began to shrink. There were fewer children on the list available to be matched. When we started the process in January, most families were getting matched the first month. When we were LID in June and could be matched, our agency told us it would take one to three shared lists. By August, we were told it could take three to four shared lists.
Another way we could be matched with a child is through our agency's orphanage partnerships. Our agency partners with several orphanages by not only helping these children homes but also providing humanitarian aide to them. In April, our agency sent a team of social workers to help get the paperwork process started, so these children may have a chance to be adopted. They also brought along a medical team of pediatricians, developmental specialists, physical therapists, etc to not only assess the children but also get them the medical care they may need. The first group of files of the children were supposed to arrive in June but did not arrive then and our agency had no idea when China would release them.
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Why was it so difficult to be matched during the shared list slowdown?
Age and Gender. Although we were open to several special needs, we wanted to stay in birth order. We requested to be matched with a child who was 20 months or younger, and we were confident with that decision. We were also requesting a girl. What most people don't know is that special needs boys are more available to adopt than girls. During our wait, I questioned our decision to wait on a girl. We had even requested a boy or girl in our homestudy, so we had approval for either gender...
but I could not shake this overpowering feeling that we had a daughter in China.
so we waited.
The first group of our agency's partnership files finally arrived at the first of September. We waited for a few weeks as they organized the files and began matching. We still did not receive THE call, so we just thought that maybe we could be matched with the next group of files that would hopefully come in soon. Towards the end of September our agency SW (social worker) notified us that the September shared list would come out on Monday the 24th. This would be our fourth shared list, but I was not too optimistic. I was exhausted from the emotional roller coaster of getting a big fat 'negative' every day for weeks, and I was not looking forward to another shared list letdown. The day the shared list came out was a typical Monday for us. We were recovering from another crazy weekend and trying to catch up on Camden's memory work for Classical Conversations. Around 3:00 my phone rang, and I saw that it was our agency SW. I assumed she was calling to remind us that the shared list was coming out that night and if we were matched she would call us after 9:00pm CST. But this was not the case...
I answered and the agency SW immediately begins to tell me about a file of a little girl from the orphanage partnership,but she wasn't sure if we would be interested because it was not a special need we requested. She told me the age and the special need of the little girl, and she suggested I call Aaron to discuss it over with him. If we were interested in seeing her file, she would email it us.
To be honest...I wasn't certain we would even look at the file. The only requirement we gave ourselves is that we would need to have close access to the specific medical care the child needed. We don't have access to much here in Oklahoma, and there was no way we could travel farther than Dallas or Kansas City for surgeries. We knew we had access to surgeons for cleft lip/palate repair, orthopedic doctors for clubbed foot, and pediatric cardiologists for heart issues. I already have a rockin' speech pathologist and pediatric occupational therapist and both lived close by. But the special need of this little girl? I was clueless about it... and almost certain there was no way we could help her with the specific surgeries she would need when she came home.
I called Aaron and told him what the situation was and he almost immediately suggested we request the file. I agreed and emailed our SW. About thirty minutes later, an email popped up in our inbox.
Re: File Request.
Our SW sent the file, photos, and videos. She reminded us that we had two weeks to keep the file, it wouldn't affect our chance at the shared list that night, and she was praying for us. I forwarded the file to Aaron. Took a deep breath. And opened the attachments.
Part Two coming tomorrow :-)
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