Our LID!

We were "logged in" to the China program on March 10, 2006. What that means is that the CCAA (Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs) had added our family to their list of families looking to adopt from their country. It's an important date because it represents your place in line, so to speak. China has a very organized program. It basically goes like this, 1. your dossier is received in China and then logged in to the registry of families looking to adopt, 2. your dossier is reviewed by the review board and approved (this normally happens about 3 to 4 months after you are logged in), 3. you are given a referral (you get matched with your child (this is usually 3 to 4 months after your approval)). Once you accept your referral, you travel about 6 to 8 weeks later to receive your child.
Each month (about every 4 to 5 weeks), the CCAA gets a "batch" of children ready to be matched with their families. They start with the oldest log in date and work their way forward. This is what I meant when I said your log in date represents your place in line. For example, last Monday (3/5/07) the CCAA sent out a batch of referrals, it was for the families who had log in dates starting with October 14, 2005 thru October 24, 2005. Yeah for them!!!! What this means for us is that that there are now just under 5 months of families ahead of us waiting to receive their referral. So, when the next batch of referrals comes out (probably the first of April) they will start by matching families with a log in date of October25, 2005 and go forward. How far forward they go will depend on how many babies they have in that batch vs. how many families they have logged in. Does that makes sense? I know it's confusing!

Anyway, we had been logged in and were thrilled!!! All we had to do now was wait to be approved...little did we know that things were starting to change dramatically in China. A huge slow down was under way. Our wait for our approval was not going to be the 3 to 4 months we thought it would be....ultimately, it ended up being 11months, but I'll get to that later.