General Information: Part One

Why Adopt?

I find this to be an interesting question—there are so many children in the world who do not have parents and who need love and a home. I can’t imagine a person asking a pregnant woman, “Why are you having a child when there are so many children already born who need a home.”

Yet so many people feel it is perfectly acceptable to ask adoptive parents why they are adopting.

I have always wanted to adopt a child. I’m not exactly sure why, but I have long believed that adoption would be my path to parenthood.

Wim and I discussed adopting children before we decided to get married. It was one of many topics that we discussed and something that was not negotiable for me. Lucky for both of us that Wim was agreeable.

The next question we seem to get from folks is why aren't we adopting domestically.

Why China and not Domestic . . .

First, let me say, that every child deserves a loving home with parents who love them. Not just children born in the U.S., but all children in all countries.

I am not going to go into great detail about the adoption process in the U.S. If folks really want information about it, google it. I will say that their really isn't a need for adoptive parents of healthy, caucasion newborns in our country. I will say that from what I have read and folks that I have talked, adoption in our country is filled with heartache of stories in which the birthmother does change her mind at the last minute. Yes, there are stories of folks who adopt domestically almost instantaneously and everything works out great. That is not the norm.

The Foster care system in this country focuses on reuniting kids with thier birth parents regardless of the amount of abuse that has been documented. By the time kids in foster care are available for adoption, they have likely experienced much trauma and have a lot of difficult emotional and behaviorial issues they need to work out.

Since Wim does have Gabrielle and Xavier to think about, we felt that pursuing foster to adopt was not viable for our family. We simply do not want to risk exposing either Gabrielle or Xavier to abuse by an adopted child who has not learned appropriate behaviors.

Why China . . .

China has good history of being reputable with international adoption and for having a stable program. Most babies adopted from China are in good health and the process is predictable.

There are many organizations that provide support to families who adopt from China and to the children adopted. This will make it easier for us to keep our daughter in touch with her culture.

When we first began our adoption, the wait to being referred a baby was also 6-8 months which was also huge draw. Even though the wait to referral has grown enormously to 2 years-- the process is still very predictable-- it is just slower.

The China Adoption Process . . .

Let me begin by stating, that adoptive parents are NOT buying children.

By far, the majority of the money involved with adopting from China is paid to the American Adoption Agency and toward travel costs.

Another huge chunk of change goes for various processing fees to our own government. The amount of money we do pay to the orphange does not even begin to cover the amount of money it would cost to care for a child for a year-- which is about how long most babies spend in chinese orphanges before being adopted.

After choosing an agency (we are using Great Wall China Adoption—based in Texas ) and finding a social worker you begin the paper chase.

The Paper Chase:

The paper chase involves a series of home studies by a social worker. The social worker visits your home 4-5 times. She gathers information about your family, hoe you celebrate holidays/culture, general hobbies, how you deal with stress, general child rearing philosohphy and also answers questions for you about the adoption process.

During this time you also gather the following paperwork:
Medical exams;
Proof of financial stability;
Proof of income (statement from employer);
Divorce Certificates;
Marriage Certificates;
Birth Certificates; and
Background Checks with fingerprinting.

All of the form must be notorized and the notory must be authenticated to ensure that everything is on the up and up.

All of the documents are bundled into what is called a dossier—this also includes the home study report. The dossier is sent to the adoption agency who then sends it to their office in China where they hand deliver it to the Chinese Government office in charge of adoptions.

The dossier is then translated into Mandarin so that the Chinese officials can review our documents and request to adopt a child.

The Review Room:

The dossier then moves into the “Review Room.”
Each agency has their own review person. They know how to put a dossier together based on how their review person wants to see it, and based on the things their review person will approve or deny.

Each review person has their own assigned agencies, or maybe their own assigned country.
Sometimes one review person has twice as many files to review as someone else does that month, but the next month they may have half as many.

This means that one reviewer could be several months ahead of another reviewer, and may stay that way until their agencies have a big month and they get slowed down again. It is normal for one reviewer to still be working on February while another reviewer has made it to April.
The review room notice on the CCAA site won’t show that a month is complete until all reviewers are through with that month. It took about a year before our dossier made it through the review room phase of the adoption.

The Matching Room:

First, they review the baby dossiers and make sure there are no issues with them. We are told that they then count up all of the baby dossiers that are eligible for matching that month and then look to see how far this stack will go in the parent dossiers without sending out a partial day, and they pull all of those parent files. That is the likely cut-off date. Sometimes something happens and they don’t get this far. Sometimes something happens and they get farther.
Next they match orphanages up with agencies. This orphanage has six babies, this agency has six families. These two orphanages are in the same province and have a total of 12 babies, this agency has 12 families.

Then they start matching individual babies to individual families. The next question that comes up is generally how the matchers match families and babies. I’ve heard from several people who have had the opportunity to speak with someone who works in the matching room. The various conversations seem to all agree that they first look for something that stands out: a matching birthday, a baby who looks a lot like a parent, or a baby who likes music and a parent who teaches music. Several matching people have stated they match by bone structure of the baby’s face and the parent’s faces (this is why they need our passport photos, so they can compare our mug shot with the baby’s mug shot). Some have stated that they used Chinese astrology, also.

Once they’ve matched the obvious matches they then start to look at things like age of child requested. The age requested is not a priority for them, they feel they are matching families and not filling orders.

Referrals:

China sends referrals out every 28 to 34 days—kind of like a menstrual cycle and when you have been waiting nearly two years—let’s just say PMS doesn’t even begin to cover it.

When referrals are sent out, they are sent for a range of time and they are sent to all families whose dossiers were registered as received in china during that time. All families regardless of which agency they are using or which country they live in will receive a referrals for the time frame that the referrals cover. For instance, the latest batch of referrals covered folks whose log-in-date was December 1-8, 2005. So all families whose log-in-date was December 1-8, 2005, regardless of their agency or the country they live in, received a referral.

The referral includes as much medical information as possible, but it usually is not much, developmental report about the baby and at least one picture—usually 2-3 pictures.
Families have about 5-days to accept or reject the referral. Typically, you only reject if there is something to indicate serious medical problems with the baby.

Travel:

About 4 to 8 weeks after receiving referral, families travel to China where they will meet their child and bring them home. It takes a few months because we have to get a Visa to travel to China and the adoption agency has to secure appointments for their families with the US Consulate and various other government offices.

When we travel we will fly into Beijing where we will be met by representatives from our adoption agency and we will meet other adoptive families with our agency who are also adopting. We will go sight seeing for a couple days.

Typically you meet and take custody of your baby on the third day. On this day the families will break into smaller groups and travel to their Child’s province. The adoption agency takes care of all the in-country arrangements—in country flights/hotels/ sigh seeing etc. I believe we will be there for about 2 days. Everyone in your travel group meets again in GuangZhou . This is where the US Consulate and most of the government offices are located. We will be here until all of the paperwork is cleared and we get a passport for our new baby.

Then we will fly home.

Travel in China is anywhere from 10-days to 15-days.

This is the process, in a nut shell.