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.............

The waiting game.

Likely everyone reading this post is hoping that we have some good news. Unfortunately, that is not the case. In my last post I mentioned that Children's Bridge sends out a monthly newsletter giving updates on each of the countries they facilitate adoptions from. The last few months I have dreaded receiving the update in our email inbox. The reason for my dread is that I am scared to open the email and read that families have received their child proposal when obviously we have not. The May update arrived and I had mixed emotions when I read that no referrals arrived that month. Deep down I had hoped that meant that there would definitely be referrals in June and that we would receive one. Normally the updates come on the last day of the month or sometimes a few days later so when I came home last night and checked my email I was surprised to see the Children's Bridge update waiting for me. As I opened it I hoped that once again there were no referrals this month since obviously we didn't receive one. Much to my dismay, I read that two families had received their referrals. My heart sank and I fought off tears. As much as you try not to get your hopes up, you obviously do. And after a busy and stressful week it was the last thing I wanted to read. I really tried to be happy for the two families that now have the information they have been waiting for. They have likely been doing the same thing we have every month when the newsletter comes out. But it is very hard in that moment to not be jealous and mad that your name is not printed in that email. So many thoughts go through your head.

Why not us?
I thought we were second on the list?
Were there no boy referrals?
When will the next set of referrals come?
Are we going to have to wait another 2 months?

An amazing friend that I talked to after reading the email said, "It will happen when it's supposed to. Those two children weren't meant for you. And four extra weeks (or however long it ends up being), although agonizing, will seem like a distant memory when you get that file of the child that was meant for your family."
So for right now, I am just repeating that in my head over and over and hoping that the next monthly update has our name printed on it.

Finally an update!

I have been hearing from people a lot lately that they keep checking our blog for updates but that there hasn't been one since February. Unfortunately that is the reality of the adoption process.We have been waiting as anxiously (if not more) for an update too. I promise that we haven't been holding back information from you. This is just part of the process, waiting, waiting, and more waiting.
That is until 3 weeks ago. Both my husband and I received a call (which we both missed) from our adoption agency late one afternoon. I remember being very excited and very scared to listen to the message. Unfortunately it wasn't the news I was hoping for. According to the adoption agency, China had contacted them requesting more information regarding the financial statement we submitted with our application. You might remember that we submitted our application to China in early February so I was disheartened to hear that they were just reviewing our file now. Thankfully after talking to our agency we found out that we had been verbally approved in China, we just needed to send some updated information regarding our finances. Both my husband and I contacted our employers for new letters of employment and changed a few numbers on our statement in order to prove to China that we would have enough money (through a bank loan or otherwise) to cover the adoption and provide a financially good life for our child.
After we submitted the documents I had a lot of questions. Most important was I wanted to know if this put us further behind in the process. Since this was the first we had heard from our agency in a few months we just assumed that everything was on track (up until now). Also, the last set of files that our agency received from China was smaller than usual. Meaning usually they would receive  an average of 4 child proposals at a time. In March when the Children's Bridge newsletter came out we read that they only received 2 child proposals that month.
After a few days of phone tag my husband was able to connect with our adoption agency and get a few answers. For the first time in this entire process we found out exactly where we are on the list! We are currently second on the list. SECOND! Yes this is amazing news! That means that, fingers crossed, we could get a child proposal when the next set of files comes from China (in the next 2-4 months). Now of course there are a few reasons why we may not receive a proposal in the next round but we still celebrated the good news. If the next set of files does not include any boys we would obviously not be eligible for a proposal. Or if there is a boy but he is more than 18 months younger than our daughter we may not be eligible. The adoption agency did say that if the child proposal was for a boy that was only 16 or 17 months younger than our daughter that they could speak to the Ontario Government and see if it could be approved anyway (hopefully it doesn't come to that). So I am remaining cautiously optimistic that sometime between now and July we will receive a child proposal for our little boy in China! When I say cautiously optimistic I mean that until I wrote this post I didn't really let it all sink in. So right now I am a bit of a blubbering idiot.
My hope that is my next post will be some of the best news we have ever received....I will keep you updated.

Happy Chinese New Year

February 8, 2016 ushers in the year of the Red Monkey according to the Chinese Zodiac. Monkeys are considered the tricksters of the Chinese Twelve Animal Signs and this means it is likely to be an exciting and “interesting” year. So Happy Chinese New Year to all of our friends and family.

Although it is technically not the New Year in China, we have already had a fairly eventful beginning to our new year. Due to the unpredictability of our adoption timeline we have recently found it to be difficult to arrange daycare for our 2 1/2 year old daughter. Since we will receive our referral for our son only six months prior to travel and because we have no idea when we will receive our referral we are currently trying to figure out what we can and should do for daycare next year. We adore our current daycare provider and want to keep our daughter (and eventually our son) with her until she goes to school but we likely cannot afford to keep her in daycare full-time while I am off on parental leave. And it is unfair to our daycare provider to pull our child out of full-time daycare mid-year (also she will not allow it). So right now we are trying to predict the future, weigh our options, and try not to freak out. I know it may not seem like this really is an adoption related issue but I am writing about it because it wasn't something that I thought we would even have to worry about. And its adding another layer of things we need to figure out. Luckily we received an email from our adoption agency today that has taken our mind of things...at least temporarily.

The light at the end of the adoption tunnel...today we received the following email from our adoption agency Children's Bridge:

Hi Palmer Family,

I am pleased to let you know we have sent your Waiting Child China dossier by courier to the CCCWA in Beijing today. The CCCWA usually takes 2 weeks to log in your dossier. Once your dossier is logged in, your family will be eligible for the next set of individual children's files form the CCCWA.

Hooray, another step closer! So hopefully that means we can possibly get our referral for our son within the next 5.5 months (when we asked our adoption agency what the average wait time was they said 1-10 months (that is not an average according to my math teacher husband) so we are going to go with 5.5 months). That would mean we could possibly have our son home with us in the next year. So maybe the predictions are true, the year of the monkey may prove to be very interesting.

Delays and learning to deal with them.

During our last post I said that we were hoping we would get back our Ontario Government approval  (Letter of Approval) before Christmas. Unfortunately, we received an email on Christmas eve from our Adoption Practitioner letting us know that the person reviewing our file from the Government wanted clarification on a few things (it ended up being 5 things) from our application. I chose not to read the email until Boxing Day because my initial reaction was frustration and anger. It turns out the items they requested more information on were fairly simple. I did have to go back to my Doctor's office and request that my new Doctor (as my previous Doctor who filled out my medical has since retired) fill out some additional information on my report. Although it was frustrating to receive our application back we know that this will likely be one of many delays that will happen in our adoption journey. It is good to know that adoption applications are looked at very closely, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating. Especially when we were expecting good news before the New Year. We added the information the Government requested to our report and our Adoption Practitioner had our paperwork ready to be sent back to the Children's Bridge (for them to send it back to the Government) for when their offices opened back up after the holidays. And then we waited...again.
Today, after waiting for 2.5 months we finally received our Letter of Approval. Hooray.
The letter basically says that we have been approved to adopt through the Children's Bridge by the Ontario Government and that they agree with our Adoption Practitioners recommendations in our homestudy report. One interesting section of the letter states that once the adoption is finalized, Ontario legislation recognizes the child as a full member of the adopting family and as such the child is treated in the same manner as all other children of legally constructed families. And that, Ontario welcomes the child from China as the legal child of the applicants. We both found it surprising that the Ontario Government would need to tell the Chinese government this information, but I suppose it is just part of the process.
So now that we have received the green light the next steps in the process are as follows:
1. Children's Bridge sends our Letter of Approval and China Application package to be notarized by their Lawyer (this should be completed by next week).
2. Children's Bridge will then send all of the above documents to be authenticated through Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Consulate in Toronto (this will take approximately 3 weeks).
And then we wait some more....

More paperwork!

Remember how in the last blog post I said I would write about the weekend course we had back in October? Well here I am, and now it is December. Oops.
The two day course in October was a mandatory session held by our adoption agency. Although it was a crazy weekend of driving to Newmarket and back twice (we came back to attend a beautiful wedding on the Saturday night), we found the session to be very informative. Most of the information provided to us was specifically related to international adoption which meant that everyone in the room was also adopting internationally. The part of the session that I enjoyed most was how to prepare for your trip. The two people running the session have each adopted two girls from China so the information they provided was very helpful for us. I know that I am providing a very broad overview of the session but I feel like the next part of my post is much more interesting...I hope.

Last week I went to the post office to send a very large package to our adoption agency which included all of our documents needed for our application to China (this is separate from the package we sent to the Ontario Government). When I was preparing the package and asking to purchase the waterproof envelope (because I am crazy like that) I started to get emotional. I felt like I was sending our lives away in this package. This is another huge item to check off of our to do list and it felt amazing to have it done, but also scary to think that the Chinese government would be basing their decision on the stack of papers and photos in the water poof envelope. Just to clarify, I didn't send the package to China, first it goes to our adoption agency where they get notarized copies of everything (but not before they receive a large sum of money, which also made me cry, but for different reasons). Our agency is hoping that they will get back our approval from the Ontario Government before everyone goes on Christmas holidays. So we were in a bit of a rush to get the documents to Children's Bridge in order for them to send it to a lawyer for notarized copies (which apparently can take 3 weeks). Everyone keep your fingers crossed that we receive our approval within the next week or so.

Here is a list of the items that were in the China application package:
Letter of application to adopt
Home Study - the same one that went to the Ontario Government
Guardianship statement - included in our homestudy
Letters of employment
Financial statement
Physical examinations - these were different physical exams than the ones required by the Ontario Government, we were required to get blood tests, they also look at our body mass index
RCMP Interpol Clearances
Local Police Clearances
Marriage Certificates - notarized copies
Birth Certificates - notarized copies
Photocopies of our Passports
4 additional passport photos
Application form of Notarization/Legalization
5 more adoptive applicant reference form letters - thank you to all of those who filled out a second reference form for us
Photos - we had to create a photo collage I guess you could call it but it had very specific requirements. It had to include a photo of the exterior of our home, lifestyle photos, and a 4x8 family photo. We weren't supposed to submit photos with sunglasses or hats on and no photos that included alcohol (duh). The photos had to fit on 8.5 by 11 paper and we could not submit more than 5 sheets of photos.

Yesterday we sent two forms of payment to Children's Bridge. One was a Cheque payable to The Children's Bridge in Trust and the other was a US bank draft payable to the Children's Bridge in Trust. The cheque paid for our balance of agency fees and notarization, visas, authentication and disbursements, coordinators disbursements (which basically means adoption facilitation). The Us bank draft was our fees for the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA). As far as I know we will not have to pay any more money until we travel to China (which gives us a little breathing room). Right now it seems like an impossible amount of money to pay back (I will not hide the fact that we had to get a loan from our bank). But I know in the end it wouldn't matter how much money it was, it will all be worth it in the end. We are one step closer to adopting our little boy. Just typing that makes me start to cry.

And so with that I am going to sign off and wish everyone a Merry Christmas from the Palmer family. You probably will not see any posts on here until the new year unless something really exciting happens. Have a safe and happy holiday everyone.