More waiting...

I woke up this morning feeling frustrated, defeated, sad, and a little angry. I have been trying to push down those feelings, but to be honest, it isn't working. This is the email we received from Children's Bridge yesterday.



"I wanted to let you know The Children’s Bridge received two children’s referrals from the CCCWA Online System last evening for two little boys but the special medical needs are not cleft lip and cleft palate. We will anticipate our next set of children’s files in December 2016 and I will also continue to monitor the online system for your family."



December feels like forever away right now and my logical mind keeps telling me that the likelihood of the adoption agency receiving another boy referral at that time is slim but I am trying to have a positive outlook even though it is very hard.



So now we wait some more and change our plans. We called our parents to deliver the news and to let them know that they will be on daycare duty longer than expected since our daughter will be in daycare part-time starting in January (see a previous post about this decision). We change our Christmas card photo plan since we were hoping to use our adoption announcement (we took these photos in July) as our card this year. We look at what this means for my job and my parental leave. We push everything back a little further and hope that we are travelling to China in the Spring of 2017.

A not so exciting update

Since our last update (when we were second on the list) we moved up to being first on the list to receive a children's file from China. Yes this is wonderful news, but ever since we found that out (which I think was mid-summer) we have been waiting for a phone call from the adoption agency. When I say waiting for a phone call I mean I wake up every morning and hope that today is the day. I check my email every hour hoping that we will get some news. So far no boy, no referrals, not really any news to report. When we talked to Children's Bridge about our status on the list they said that they expected the next set of files to arrive at the end of August or beginning of September. So once mid-September hit I emailed the agency just to check in so that I didn't have to receive the monthly update without our names on it.


The email response I received said:
"Thanks so much for your email message. Please call or email anytime. We have not yet received the individual children's referrals yet for September. I will contact your family to let  you know if there is a match for you once we receive and review the referrals. I know the waiting is challenging. Take care and have a good weekend-hope to have some news later this month."


I immediately printed the email response and put it on our fridge. To serve as a daily reminder that our time is coming and to give us some hope that this might still be our month.


So now, here we are, October 4th and late last night we received the monthly update in our email inbox just before we were about to go to bed. We both cringed and opened the email with our fingers crossed. It appeared there were no referrals this month. Sigh of relief. Then frustration set in. I said to my husband, maybe October will be our month. Maybe we will get an amazing gift for our wedding anniversary from China. Wouldn't that be amazing.


Today I received an email from Children's Bridge that said:
"I wanted to give you a quick update. We have not yet received the individual children's files for or WC China Program, and the CCCWA and businesses in China are on holidays for the next 8-10 business days for National Day and Golden Week holiday, and so we will not receive the files until after October 10th. I will keep you posted, and please don't hesitate to call me if you would like to chat."


I wrote back:
"Thank you very much for the update, we really appreciate it. We will try to keep our minds occupied until after October 10th. Our wedding anniversary is the 11th so a really great gift would be some good news. Fingers crossed."


And so we wait some more.............