the long and winding road...

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES

and not in a good way. Last time I posted was on 12/17, I was, at that time lamenting that the CCAA was only doing an average of 7 days per month. I was complaining that this meant that we would have to wait another 9 mos or so for referral and another two months for travel. I WISH!!!

So, they only did 5 days this time. Not too much of a difference you might think, but those are 5 really small days, 2 or 3 of them had no LIDs at all. If they would have gotten to 12/20 (a big day) things would be fine, sort of, I mean not great but, you know, OK. Getting to only 12/19 is not fine, not fine at all. Getting only through 12/19 sucks, really bad. What this now means is this: CCAA has cut the quota or whatever you want to call it for how many NSN kids they're going to refer in a month again. They're only referring about 25%-30% of the babies they were referring 2 yrs ago. If CCAA continues at this rate, and doesn't cut any further, and doesn't shut down for the Olympics, and nothing else goes wrong, we'd now be looking at referral in about 18 mos, from now. That would mean a total of 41 mos or so from our LID until referral, that would mean we'd get our rferral in June 2009 or so!!! And this is the "good" case. The "bad" case, I don't even like thinking about it, but her goes... The bad, and sadly more likely, case is that referrals will continue to slow, the quota will drop further, more and more SN referrals will be made per month pushing the NSN people back further and further. The bad news is the NSN program in China appears to be quickly winding down. The bad news is that if things slow more we may not get a referal until 2010, or even longer. The bad news is, I think its likely we may not come out of this process with a referral.... ever.

I cannot completely put into words how incredibly devastating this is. This child that I have dreamed of and hoped for, named and imagined spending time with is disappearing before my very eyes. I've gone through a fairly substantial period of depression. I've been sleeping a lot. Its not healthy really but, for awhile, its felt good. I'm coming to terms with the fact that it may not work out and it hurts like hell. Today, I feel numb, I don't really want to think about it anymore but I can't help it. I think about it all the time. I'm on the RQ site constantly looking for something that will make feel more hopeful about the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in: 2-1/2 yrs after beginning the process, 2 yrs after submitting our paperwork to China and I feel further away from completing the adoption than I did then. Pathetic.

I've started investigating other options. Its not that pretty. China has been the most common sending country for international adoption for several years. Now that China has become so unpredictable, families already logged in are doing several things including interim/concurrent adoptions from other countries while staying in the China line, ditching China for other countries and switching to SN in droves. People just starting the adoption process are also choosing other countries and going directly to SN. This means that the other programs are also getting over burdened. I feel like we're a day late and a dollar short, 3 hrs too late to the party, etc. We're also starting to age out of some of the programs. We're not too old to adopt necessarily but we're often too old for a child under the age of 2, some programs do not let families choose gender, some countries are less predictable than China!!! Now that's kinda scary. Domestic doesn't work for us for a number of reasons.

I would gladly consider a SN adoption, have been interested in doing so for over a year and half but, guess what, my agency has this ridiculous policy that families who are logged in over 6 mos cannot switch programs. Its a ridiculous and stupid rule which allows families who are just starting the adoption process NOW to choose and bring home a child while we will may find ourselves never doing so. Does anyone else see the insanity of this situation? Why do they do it?? My personal belief is that new families coming into the agency mean new dollars coming into the agency. They already have MY money so its kind of a fuck you!!!

So, here we sit, waiting 1 yr, 10 mos, 3 weeks and some odd days so far, ever "hopeful" that this process will not shut down before we recieve our referral. Hopeful but not secure.

Today's a bad day, tomorrow's not looking so good either.