How old will Grace be when she comes home?

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas, we did. We got a few gifts for Grace for Christmas; Jen's parents gave us a cute ladybug outfit and some decorations for the nursery and Jen's brother Stephen and family gave us some stuffed animals and books. Jen cried when she opened the gifts but they were happy tears. Now, back to my promise of answering some of our frequently asked questions.

How old will Grace be when she comes home?

When we sent our application to China we requested a 6-12 month old or as young as possible. The youngest we have seen at referral is 6 months old, and we will be traveling about 2 months after referral so the youngest she would be when we bring her home is 8 months. Since Jen and I are on the young side (China requires that you are at least 30 to adopt) we expect that we will get a child that is younger, but that is not guaranteed. There is a rule we read while researching Chinese adoption that if you are over 45 you will be referred a 18 month - 3 year old. But we have seen that doesn't always hold true, most referrals are under 1 year old. They do try to honor parents requests but I think, in general, it comes down to the ages of babies that are available for adoption at the time.

Merry Christmas

No new adoption news but we have been reflecting back over the past year and are amazed at how far we have come. For us last Christmas was "rough". We had just gone through our first IVF cycle and Jen was on bed-rest so we couldn't visit with our families like we usually do. While Jen and I love being together we missed our routine that we have been going for the past few years. Our families and friends were great though, Kristen and Biren came by on Christmas Eve to hang out for a while and brought us lunch and Jen's parents came by on Christmas and brought us leftovers from their Christmas dinner. So we did get to spend some time with family and friends but there was still something missing. A few weeks later we found out that our first IVF had failed and then the next two failed as well. Through all of this pain we came to the decision that we would adopt from China. Even though this holiday season there is still something missing we know that Gracie is out there and hopefully by next Christmas we will be celebrating with her.

DTC!!!

We got some great news today, we are Dossier To China (DTC)!!!!! This means that all of the documents and forms that we have been collecting and filling out over the past few months have been authenticated, certified, translated and sent to China. This is a huge step in the process and we are very excited. Our agency tells us that in a few weeks China will send them our Log In Date (LID). This is the date that China logs our request to adopt into their database. From there the real wait starts. Our agency says that the wait time is running about 8 months from LID to referral. Referral is when we get a picture and health information about the baby that we are matched with. So if the wait stays at 8 months we should be getting our referral in August and traveling to China in October. There is a fairly good chance that the wait times could increase going forward, but we are hoping for the best and staying positive.

Why China?

We still haven't heard anything from our agency on the certification and authentication of our documents but we are coming up on the 3 weeks so we should definitely hear something this week or next. I have felt kind of guilty that I haven't been providing updates much lately but there just hasn't been anything new. After our documents are sent to China there will also be spans of time that we have no updates so we came up with an idea to keep everyone interested in our adoption process. When we tell people we are adopting or discuss the process with them there is usually some common questions that people ask us. So, what we are going to do is answer some of the common questions that we get. We do love answering questions and talking about the process so don't be afraid to ask us anything. This is just to answer some of the questions some of you wanted to ask but did not for whatever reason. I will try to do at least one question a week....The first question....

Why China?

The simple answer is because that is where our daughter is. Sounds like kind of a smart-ass answer but it is truly how we feel. I think though, when people ask us this question what they are really asking is why did we choose to adopt from China rather than the US, Russia or some other country. When we first started researching adoption we bought a book called "The Unofficial Guide to Adoption". The book basically discussed all of the options available and the pros and cons of each country. It would seem that domestic adoption would be the obvious choice and for some couples it is. For us, though, the main reason that we decided against domestic adoption is because the birth mother or father can change their mind and decide that they want that child back. For us that was a show-stopper. Most of you know that we dealt with infertility issues the past couple years and the loss of having to give up a child that we have had in our house and bonded with was something that we just did not want to deal with. We ruled out Russia because there seems to be some instability and corruption in the adoption program. Many of the Russian children are also affected by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. We ruled out Korea because the wait is up to two years. We ruled out the South American countries because of some corruption in the adoption programs there. Adopting from China appeals to us because:

• The program has been running for over ten years, thousands of people from the US and abroad adopt from China every year. It is a well traveled, well documented path that we feel minimizes our risks.
• The need is the greatest. There are millions of little girls in China waiting to be adopted.
  The children are generally healthy. Very low incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome or HIV
• They will not give us a child that they know to be sick.
• There are great support groups like Families with Children from China that we can get involved with where our daughter can interact with other children adopted from China.
  China has such an interesting history and culture. We look forward to traveling there and learning more about it.
• The Boston area has some great resources to teach Grace about her culture. From Chinatown in Boston to all of the museums in the area that have great exhibits on China. We look forward exploring these places with Grace as she grows up so she keeps a connection with her Chinese heritage.

This doesn't mean that adopting from China is without risk. We will be dealing with and traveling to a communist country that can change the rules or close down its adoption program at any time. There is also been recent news about bird flu that concerns us a bit (I will post a question and answer about this at some point in the future). Overall though, adopting from China just seems right for us. We know the risks and are ready to deal with them.

Ultrasound

Not really much new adoption news this past week. We did get an email from our adoption agency to confirm that they got our checks for the fees. Not much else though so we assume that they are having our dossier authenticated and certified. I'll leave you with this....something we found while surfing around other adoption websites......we though it was appropriate. Jen finally has confirmation that she is "expecting"!!!