The not-so-slow boat to China

***********Adoption Update*************

Wow, what a whirlwind we have had the past two weeks. Two weeks ago today (10/25) we got a call from our agency telling us we have been matched with a little girl in China. She has some minor correctable special needs to her hands and feet. Our next step was to look over her file and make sure we wanted to move forward with the adoption. Well by Sunday night we had spoken to our pediatrician (who runs the international adoption clinic here in town) and he had forwarded all the information to a surgeon. We were only waiting on this surgeon's confirmation that these needs were correctable (which were already knew from our own research, but needed the confirmation!). Then the bad news came. Sometime between 10pm Sunday and 8am Monday another agency had "locked" this little girl's file and we could no longer adopt her. This is a difficult process to explain, but basically multiple agencies here in the US have access to "waiting children's" files. They are not supposed to "lock" the file until they have a family who is 100% committed to adopting the child. Though sometimes, an agency will see a child they think they can match and they will lock the file before having a family on board. Once the file is locked, the agency has 48hrs to get all the family's paperwork wired to the Chinese adoption agency. If they don't have a family, or the family backs out, then the file becomes open again. Our agency follows all the rules and will not lock the file until the family has truly committed to the adoption. We were a little suspiscious of her "lock" since it occurred in the middle of the night, but all we could do was hope that it would open back up 48hrs later (Wednesday morning).

In the mean time we got word from the local surgeon that this condition can be surgically corrected for normal function. It was devastating thinking we had waited too long and may have lost her, but all we could do was wait. Fast forward 2 days and our agency calls again around 7am on Wednesday (10/29) morning. The little girl's file opened up again and we had the chance to lock her in for adoption. We jumped at the chance!!!! We scrambled around to get all our paperwork wired to China. The next step was waiting for something called a Pre-Approval (PA). Our agency said to expect this in about 2-3 weeks. We did not want to tell anyone our news until we had this first step of approval. Well last night we got an e-mail from our agency that they received our PA (in 8 days!!!). So now she is officially locked to us!

The next step is for us to get a Letter Seeking Confirmation (LSC) or some people call it the Letter of Approval (LOA). This is the official referral from China. Originally our agency said this arrives 6-12 weeks after the PA. In our e-mail last night our agency said they are seeing the LSC arrive in 30-60 days after the PA. So we are hopeful for a quick process. After we get the LSC we will travel 4-8 weeks later to pick her up!!!!

Needless-to-say we are thrilled!! We will keep you all updated as we get more information. We can't post any identifying information here until we get our LSC. But let us assure you, she is beautiful!!!!!