Our first entry - better late than never

July 16, 2012

This is our first post to a blog that we created several years ago when we first started our journey to bring our Chinese daughter home. I guess what's weird about this is that now we do have something to post about.

After we had Austin, which was a another journey itself, both Ginny and I came to the same conclusion: we wanted an older child that would fit in with our family. Since we had Ryan (10) and Ashlyn (7), we decided we wanted someone who would fit in between Ashlyn and Austin's ages. We had also decided before that we would consider an adoption through the waiting child program since the timeframe for bringing home a little girl via the traditional "healthy child" track was increasing every month. When we began this journey, the wait time from log in date to referral was about 34 months. Today, it's over 60 months and increasing each month. Using one of the online calculators for China adoptions based on log in date, we would have expected a referral sometime in the middle of 2019!!

So, back to our story... Back a week ago Friday (July 6), I received a phone call from our family coordinator at America World Adoption (our agency). She said that she had found a recent referral file that mostly matched our requests. I agreed to look over the file with Ginny and to try to find some doctor within the United States to review her medical information over the weekend. By the time Monday arrived, we were so anxious to lay claim to her file on the shared referral system. This meant that we had 72 hours to do all the doctor checks, make a decision, and file all the necessary electronic paperwork in order for us to accept the referral.

We're so happy to say that last week Wednesday (July 11), we did just that, and thus started the process of bringing our daughter Mia home.

The next step in this phase is to await China's approval of our acceptance of the referral (also called the PA or pre-approval). This comes approximately 2 weeks after we submit the EA (electronic acceptance). After that, we will receive the official approval (RA - referral approval), which then starts the process of obtaining the necessary approvals for travel over to China, which will likely be sometime in the late fall (October/November). Once we obtain our PA and RA, we will post some more information regarding Mia and her background.