Slow Boat to China

Once we had decided on international adoption, we had to pick which country met our needs best. Since we already had a son, we both wanted a girl. (I can't resist all the pretty clothes.) That narrowed the countries to China, Guatemala and several obscure places like Nepal and the Marshall Islands. We ruled out Eastern Europe due to alcohol exposure and attachment disorder, which are common there.

Mainland China seemed like the best option. We were guaranteed an infant girl, and Asians mostly don't drink alcohol due to Asian flush, and China kills drug dealers, so there is not much of a problem there.

We changed our paperwork to China. What should have taken 3-4 months to complete took almost 10 months due to agency problems. One week shy of submitting our dossier to China, the adoption agency notified us they were closing and we needed to transfer to another. After much stress and heartache, we partnered with a large Chinese adoption agency. After several weeks (1 year into the process), they decided they would not accept our home study and we would have to restart it.

We changed agencies again to one that would accept our paperwork as it was. Due to the delays, half of our paperwork expired and had to be re-done. We finally were DTC, "Dossier to China," in November of 2006 and LID, "Logged into China," December 2.

During the final months of submitting DTC, China began to experience significant delays and regulation changes. What had taken 6 months before was now taking 2 years and expected to increase. As I write this, a referral would take over 3 years. Also, some people have waited for their referral only to find out China would no longer accept them as adoptive parents. For them, it was several years and thousands of dollars down the drain.

We couldn't risk waiting that long and not having it work. We have left our dossier in China "just in case," although we expect nothing to come of it. Mostly, it is just peace of mind. We will pull our dossier when we get closer to our travel date. With the changes we were forced to make and those we willingly made, we probably lost $5000.

It was all part of the process to getting where we are now.