Patience is a Virtue???

December 1, 2005, Jason and I submitted our application to adopt a child from China.  At that time, the wait was approximately 8 months from application to travel.  We were told that we would most likely be parents by Christmas, 2006. 

Oh how wrong they were.  We had major issues getting some of the paperwork needed…mainly, my employment verification letter.  My HR Department wanted the Chinese Government to call their 1-800 employee verification hotline.  Ummm, would you willingly tell a Communist Government to do that?  No way!  They’d laugh in your face!  Getting the letter written and having it use acceptable terminology was close to a 3 month process.   That form was faxed back and forth between the US and China more times than I can count on one hand.  I’m honestly surprised we weren’t charged for the fax bill.

Our paperwork was DTC (Dossier To China) on June 13, 2006.  Still doable for a Christmas referral as at that time, the wait had shortened to 6 months.

Then came the period between September, 2006 and February, 2007.  The program came to a virtual screeching halt.  The number of referral days started dwindling until they hit March and April of 2007.  Things seemed to have stopped at that time.  Now, I have no idea what really caused it.  We can only speculate.  China was preparing for the 2008 Olympics…officials claimed that there weren’t enough paper ready babies to refer…yada, yada, yada.  All I know is the data.  They barely did 2 months of referral days in 2007 and 2008.  2009 saw only March of 2006 referred.  We’ve seen a bit of a speed up in 2010 so far.  The next batch will probably be the last batch for 2010.  I’m guessing they won’t complete May of 2006, but will come close.  I expect the cut-off to be May 29, 2006.  I’m guessing that date based on past data.  That being said, based on the small numbers from the October batch, we won’t be getting a referral until April of 2011 now.  Hey, I suppose that’s good news because at one time, I was predicting 2013. 

Fact:  I do know that the Special Needs program has increased the number of children to be adopted.  They’ve been putting most of their focus on that. 

What I don’t understand is if you want to put that much emphasis on the SN program, why wouldn’t they close the Non-Special Needs program and solely focus on SN?  It’s kinder than letting those parents now logging into the NSN program to just sit for years and years. 

So in five years, I’ve been told MANY MANY times to be patient.  At this point, I don’t know how much MORE patient one can get!