The Bad News

Disclaimer: If you want the good news first, scroll down to the post below this one.

Many moons wait. When we got into this, we knew that we would have a long wait in front of us. Lately, however, we have been doing our homework on the subject, and it turns out that 24 moons may not be accurate at all.

Before I tell you what we've learned, I feel that it's important to tell you about our sources. Many of you reading this are friends and family, but there may also be waiting families reading this blog, and I want everyone to know how we came to our conclusions.

When you are adopting internationally, you have several resources at your disposal:

1. Your agency
2. Fellow adoptive parents
3. The government
4. Books and other written literature
5. Websites

In this Information Age, we all know that the smart researcher will consider not only the content of the message, but also the source from which it came. As for the above list, there are good and bad things to be said of each.

Agency -- Our agency is great. We are using Children's Hope International. We love all of the people who have helped us through the paper chase, mainly our adoption specialist and our social worker. We've spent a lot of time with these ladies (one is an adoptive parent and the other is a waiting mom) and we really feel a bond with them. That being said, it's important for adoptive parents to remember that the agency is still a business. Like any corporation these days, there is something to watch out for -- the spin factor. When we talk about "the wait" with our agency, we are always told the same thing: the current wait is 24 months, and we expect this wait to grow in 2008. This statement is completely true and reasonable, but it's also just a tiny sliver of truth, scraped from the top of the ice burg of information available on this particular subject. This, my friends, is a spin.

Adoptive Parents -- If you want some real information, find some people who are in your same boat (i.e., the slow boat to China!). But take caution -- some of these people are at a completely different stage in the wait, and some of them have taken the 24-month story to heart (as we did). If you just want some inspiration, there are plenty of blogs out there loaded with pictures of adorable little girls who are now at home in the U.S. with their forever families. See my list of blogs I like on the right. 3 Peanuts and Katiebug's Journey are blogs I found back in February when we first started thinking about China. At the time, both little girls were still in China and both sets of parents were preparing for their trip. It was great to catch them right at that moment and follow their story through travel, coming home, and becoming a family. For those of you (Dad) who are not so computer-savvy, please note that you can click on the names of the blogs and be directed right to their site.

It's also important to meet people "in real life" who are adopting. We attended a seminar this week and met a handful of people in our area who are adopting internationally. We hope to establish friendships with these people. We're all in this together!!

Government -- Adoption is heavily regulated by state and federal law. Furthermore, because international adoption involves the immigration of the child to the U.S., adoptive parents and their agency must work with the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Consulate, the Embassy, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (just a name a few off the top of my head). The government is pretty reliable in their information as it pertains to Chinese adoption, but they don't always explain things in the simplest of terms. And their focus is not on the wait, but rather the forms you will need.

Books and other literature -- The world of international adoption changes at a head-spinning pace. Book content can be outdated before it even reaches the shelves of your local Barnes & Noble. Magazines and newspapers are probably a better option, but still, the focus is not typically on the subject of the wait.

Websites -- If you're adopting from China, it won't take you very long to find the Rumor Queen. As I perused the hallways of the blogosphere, I kept hearing about this Rumor Queen or about a rumor or about something found on "RQ." It seemed as if everyone (I mean everyone) was listening to this lady! I thought, "Well who is SHE? Why should she know something that my agency doesn't know?" And then I went to her site, and I saw how intense she was and how intense her readers were. And I thought, "These people are all CRAZY!"

But I kept reading, and I did my homework, and it turns out that she is a fairly reputable source. She gathers her information from insiders (international adoption agency employees from all over the world, many of whom who are willing to, anonymously, tell it like it is). She also gathers information from CCAA's website and puts it into one place for everyone to read. (The CCAA is the Chinese government entity overseeing adoption in that country.)

Rumor Queen has no spin. And she has some common sense. And she can do the math for the rest of us. Like most analysts, RQ estimates that there are currently 20,000 to 30,000 people like us waiting for a baby from China. (Read that again and let it sink in. 20,000 to 30,000 people. No shit.) And we are at the end of that long line. Approximately 300 to 400 babies are matched with their forever family each month. You can do the math, or you can let the Rumor Queen do it for you, "... that means it will take 71.25 months to get through the backlog. How long is 71.25 months? Five years, eleven months, and 8 days." And that was from June of this year, so Stan and I (LID 9-28-2007) are faced with the realization that our wait may be even longer. Click here to read this particular post at Rumor Queen's site, China Adopt Talk.

http://chinaadopttalk.com/2007/06/24/the-backlog/

So, my friends, it is not 24 moons to our daughter. It is 71.25+ moons.

If you're thinking things could change -- well, it is possible that things could change for the better. For one thing, many families are deciding to accept children with special needs (SN). Those taking the SN track can receive their referrals ahead of everyone else, thus removing them from "our" line. Also, it is estimated that approximately 25% of waiting families drop out (probably after THEY do the math). This 25%, however, was taken into consideration by RQ when she calculated the estimated number of families waiting right now. I believe, though, that this percentage will grow even bigger if the agencies start to revise their "24 months and likely to grow" spin into something closer to the truth.

If you're thinking things could change -- well, it is possible that things could get worse. I don't want to go into it too much (I believe the news above is bad enough to satiate even the most Pekar-ish of doomsayers), but the Olympics and the media attention on China could actually slow down the referral process. As ludicrous as it may sound, China wants it to be a secret that so many baby girls are adopted from its borders every year. And they certainly don't want people to know that the number of abandoned babies who do not survive their first year is far, far greater than the number of babies adopted. But let's save that topic for another day, or I'll never finish this post, which we can all agree is too long already.

Now, for the good news.