Our Journey to Chinese Adoption

Seven years ago, Bob and I were blessed with our son, Nathan. Nathan was born with a rare chromosome disorder that resulted in him having profound disabilities. He is medically fragile and has severe mental and physical disabilities. In spite of all the challenges he has faced or will face he is such an amazing little guy. He smile is infectious and his laugh is the best sound in the whole world. As challenging as life is at times, we wouldn't trade it for a moment.

We waited five years before we made any sort of decision on what to do as far as adding more children to our family. Since we weren't having any success on our own, we decided adoption was the right course for us. After much research and prayers we decided our little girl was waiting for us in China. Nathan was more stable, we were used to taking care of him and he had just started school. We felt it was just the right time.

In March 2006 we sent of our application to Chinese Children's Adoption International. We chose them because of their stellar reputation. We started the dossier process in April. After tons of paperwork, mailings, headaches and confusion we finally sent our dossier to CCAI at the end of July. They sent it off to China in August and we became officially logged in (LOI) September 5, 2006.

When we first started the process we were told that the wait to referral was around 10 months. The wait has slowly increased and families that have been logged in since 11/05 still haven't received referrals. The rumours are that the wait could go as high as three years. It was an emotional blow to both Bob and I. We had waited so long to add to our family and then we were facing a long drawn out wait.

After much soul searching we looked into the Waiting Child Program. At first we thought "We have had our turn at special needs, now we want a 'healthy' baby." The more we thought about it the more we were drawn to a waiting child. Most of the items on the checklist were things we had already experienced with Nathan. We also knew how easy it was to love a child with special needs. We already have an "in" with the system and though why not, let's see what will happen. Most of the conditions that China classifies as special need would not be classified as special needs in the US. Some can be easily corrected or managed in the US.

We sent in our MCC (medical checklist) 9/27/06 and was told the average wait time was between 8-10 months for referral.