Programs and Dreams

We've gotten a lot of questions about this (and I do mean a lot!) so I thought I would talk a bit about the two programs.

Traditional:

About 95% of the children are girls. The kids are usually 6-18 months old (the first 6 months, China tries to find the birth parents/relatives, or get the child adopted domestically) at the time of referral and are considered healthy. Healthy is a relative term here. Almost all of China's orphans reside in orphanages, not foster care. A typical orphanage has many children and only so many care givers (women who are called aunties) and as such adoptive parents have to help their new children overcome issues such as development delays and bonding issues.
The popularity of this program has lead to some major delays. A few years ago, things started slowing down from 8-12 month wait to several years wait. It only gets longer each month. To give you an idea, when Kevin and I started looking into adopting, the wait was up to 3 years. It's now up to about 5 years. Families that submitted their dossier in June of 2006 are still waiting for their children.

Waiting Child:

These are children that China considers special needs. Now before you start fanning yourself and searching for your fainting couch, be advised that what China considers special needs, we wouldn't. Many are correctable, minor issues such as heart murmurs, cleft lip, facial birth marks, etc. Being over a certain age is considered a special need. There are, of course, more major needs as well, but agencies allow you to fill out paperwork indicating which special needs you would consider as well as the severity.
In this program, there are actually slightly more boys than girls (about 60%/40%) and the children range in age from 6 months up to 13 years. At 13 years old, children are no longer considered eligible for adoption and essentially become wards of the state, typically living in the orphanage and getting little education and fewer opportunities. The wait time is anywhere from 1-12 months after your dossier to China (DTC) date.
How it works, is the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) puts out a list of waiting children to the agencies called a shared list. They will also send out small lists designated for specific agencies every few months. The agency looks at the parents requests and matches them to a child on the list. Essentially, they call "dibs" by locking down the file, which makes it so no one else can access the file, then they call the adoptive parents and release the file information to them. The parents can accept or reject the file, but they typically only have 72 hours to decide. If they reject the file, it unlocks and someone else can adopt that child. If they accept, they send a Letter of Intent (LOI) to the CCAA, who in turn will send a Letter of Acceptance (LOA) and the rest of the paperwork gets done, allowing the family to travel to China and pick up their child.
Whew! Lots to take in.
We are participating in this program and have known that was the case for over a year. I'd be lying if I said the long wait didn't have something to do with it, but I see it more as a means, rather than an end. The wait got us to look at our options and explore our openness to things. When we did that, it just felt right.

Special Focus program

China has recently changed some policies and has now begun a new program. They designate children as Special Focus if they've been on the waiting child list for more than 60 days. They amazing thing they've done is to allow families to adopt a SF child and a waiting child at the same time. They also are allowing families to adopt a SF child up to a year after the finalization of the first adoption and allow you to re-use your dossier. What does this mean? it means we may be able to knock several thousand dollars and several months off of a second adoption. Yes, we are planning on adopting from China again, but certainly not at the same time as this first one. This is a very new program and it will be exciting seeing what happens with it.

So there you go. The fact of the matter is, there is absolutely no guarantee that a child, either adopted or biological, is not going to have health issues. Heaven knows we've had plenty of our own issues to deal with and while we don't wish illness on our child, we are acutely aware of how it is to be "the sick one" and still feel completely normal (or not).

I'll end this post on a more personal note as a reward for anyone who managed to wade through all the words. The other night we had another niece enter the family. Anytime a child is brought into our families it's a bitter sweet experience for me. I rejoice that the child and mother are healthy and well. I am saddened that we are still so far away from our own girl. I wonder if she is well. I wonder if she is cold. I mourn as I look at the dozens of photos of babies that our friends and family have, knowing that we will likely have only a tiny black and white photo of her as an infant. One tiny photo put into a newspaper to try to reunite her with her birth parents, and only if we are able to hunt it down.
In the midst of all this turmoil, I dreamt of our girl. I've had several dreams about her over the last year or so. I've seen her at several ages, but the other night was the youngest I've seen her. You know how typically in a dream faces are blurry or indistinct? I always see her very clearly. Over time, her face fades from my memory, but each dream helps it stay a little while longer. I replay her features in my mind to try to help them stay.
Most of the dreams are deeply personal and not something I share easily. I hesitate to even tell Kevin about them sometimes, but there is one dream that I don't mind sharing since I think it helps explain things much better than I can. It was my first dream about her. Well, technically it was two dreams.
One night, I dreamt that the wait for China was just too long and we decided to look into domestic adoption. Very quickly, a birth mom chose us and we were on our way to be parents. A little girl was born. She had light skin, blonde hair and dusty blue eyes. Frankly, she looked much like I imagine our birth child would look. I should have been excited, but as soon as they handed her to me I felt so sick. I knew that this wasn't our daughter. I woke myself up sobbing and saying over and over again that we should have waited and that it wasn't right. I think Kevin was a little freaked out. I put it out of my mind for the day and chalked it up to weird dream.
The next night I dreamt that we were in China. It was the day we were being given our daughter and we were so excited. They brought her to us and she hesitantly let Kevin pick her up. Within minutes she was enamoured of him and giggling as he made faces. I can still recall her laughter. She kept turning away from me, so I decided to just speak to her. I told her in Chinese that I was her mama and that she was a beautiful and good baby (Yes, I do actually know how to say this). Once she heard me speak she reached out and let me hold her. There was no worry about right and wrong choices, there was just conviction that she was ours and we were hers.
Here's hoping that it wont be too long before we no longer have to rely on dreams to visit each other.