A Bit of History

We started the the paper chase for our second adoption in August of 2005. While researching China adoptions we found that referrals were coming in six months after paperwork was logged in with China. I told Pat that maybe we should wait a year before we do the paperwork to give little Pat more time to adjust. Pat suggested we just keep moving along with it because in the international adoption world you never know what happens. Boy was he ever right, and I'm glad I listened to him (insert by husband: This is the first documented case of this).

After finishing our paper work, it was sent to China on December 1, 2005 and then was officially logged in by the Chinese government December 15, 2005, which is our LID (Log In Date). Soon after this we found out that there was a dramatic slow-down in the number of referrals each month, China was referring, on average, only two weeks of referrals for every month. That meant every two months the wait grew about another month; this went on until May 2007, at which point the average number of referrals given each month was about one week, sometimes even less. It took 4 months just to get through files with LID October 2005 and then 5 months for November 2005. They are finally into December 2005 LID. The last batch of referrals went up to December 14, 2005. Missed it by one day....... So we went from thinking it would be a six months wait to actually having a two year wait. Thank goodness we did go ahead and put the paperwork in because the wait keeps getting longer each month. It is predicted it may eventually get to four years.