waiting child

Pssst.......lean in.........I'm going to tell you another secret! I wasn't going to tell anyone, but this blog is meant to document our adoption experience—the good, the bad, and the wonderful…... and as my husband said….”you put everything else on there!” So, here it is.

After much thought and prayerful deliberation…….we faxed a waiting child check list to our agency. Actually, we sent it back in early November. Now, we are by no means the only ones to consider this option in mid stream………matter of fact, from what I hear, CCAI has received many lists since the slow down in LID to Referral times.

And……..it doesn’t mean that we’ll find our daughter on the list, especially since we still request a baby under 12 months old, and many of the waiting children are older---but not all. Sometimes they do get a file on a young baby with a minor or correctible special need. In the world of China adoption, a “special need” might be something as innocuous as a birthmark, droopy eye lid, or club foot.

Of course, there are also children on the lists with very serious special needs, and I absolutely admire and respect families who are open to more involved special needs. We are first time parents though, and don’t feel equipped to (knowingly) adopt a child with serious medical issues. Because this is our first child and maybe our only child, we also want to experience parenting a baby, so we have set our parameters to a young baby with minor or correctible special need. (Its important to do your research, since some seemingly minor issues can be part of a syndrome of bigger problems—knowledge is power—if considering this option do your research! You can start with with the waiting child yahoo group and the CCAI website)

We have done our research, submitted our list, and now we continue to wait. CCAI gets a new list of 50 to 55 waiting children quarterly, and if Amelia doesn’t show up on the list, then we’ll get her with the rest of our LID group……as scheduled. Because our parameters are fairly narrow, we probably don’t have a great chance of being matched on the waiting list………but still…………..its an intriguing possibility, isn’t it?