The Information Meeting

I was so excited about the meeting because if we liked them, then we could start the process, whatever that entailed. The weird thing is that I couldn’t tell anyone about this at work. It’s like having this great secret that you cannot share with anyone. I didn’t want word to get out about this until I was ready to share that information; still, it made the day go by excruciatingly slowly. I even left a little early because we had to be in New York City by 6:30 pm.

We’re true New Jerseyians; we do not take public transportation into NYC. We drive and then complain about having to pay $50 to park the car. We got into the city pretty quickly and set about to find the meeting place. It wasn’t at the adoption agency’s office. It was on West 14th Street at the YMCA. We found it easily and there was a parking garage only a block away. So far so good, right? We went to the YMCA and there wasn’t any sign indicating there was a meeting for the adoption agency. I asked someone at the desk, but they knew nothing about it. They asked someone else, who said they were unaware of any adoption agency meeting. I immediately went into panic mode.

Maybe this whole thing was a scam. Why on earth would an adoption agency have a meeting at the Y anyway? Just my luck to pick the wrong agency, right? I whipped out my cell phone and called CHI. Maybe we had the wrong address. It was 5:30 and no one was answering the phones. I was put into general voicemail and I left a rambling message about being at the Y and they didn’t know anything about the meeting and perhaps I had the place or date wrong and could someone please call me back as soon as possible if anyone is there and….Well, you get the rambling idea.

I hung up the phone and proceeded to burst into tears. Not that I attracted any attention whatsoever. I mean, this was NYC after all. AR couldn’t understand why I was so upset. To me, this was the start our journey to a baby and I didn’t want any roadblocks so early into it. He calmed me down and we decided to get something to eat and would come back closer to 6:30.

We only walked about half a block and found a McDonalds. I never eat at Mickey Ds because 1. I was a vegetarian and #2., I can’t get things my way there, but I really didn’t care at all on this particular evening. We sat down to our meal. I had a diet coke and French fries. AR had a Big Mac. Gross. It was at this point that I started to notice all of the unsavory characters in the joint. Looked like gangland to me and I wanted to leave the second we were done.

We walked back to the Y and Albert went back inside to see if anything had changed. Perhaps a sign had gone up or someone else would know something. Nope, no change in that regard. At 6:20, 5 people dressed professionally walked past us, smiled and went into the Y. We just knew that they had to be the adoption agency. We trailed after them and sure enough, that is who they were. I was relieved. This wasn’t a scam, and everything was going to be all right.

They took a few minutes to get set up and put signs around. Other people started showing up. There were about 8 other families/couples there for the meeting. They began by talking a little about themselves and CHI. Then they asked each family to introduce themselves and say what country they were interested in adopting from. We went first and said China. Everyone else was interested in Russia or former parts of Russia.

The coordinator of the China program went over all the basics of who can adopt from China, how long the process will take and costs and travel time. To adopt a healthy child, Chinese law requires that the parents be over the age of 30. China has an upper limit of age 55 for parents. Parents aged 50-55 must be prepared to accept a child of 3 or older. The parents also need to have sufficient income to support the child and to be in reasonably good health. We we fit all of these requirements.

The wait time in 2003 from when your dossier (documents) were all completed and sent to China was 18 months from log in date (LID) to a referral. The LID is when the Chinese government actually officially acknowledges receiving your paperwork. They ensure all the requirements are met and then they match your dossier to a child. When the match is done, your agency is sent a referral for you. The referral is contains some photos and some information about how old and where your baby is in China.

Once you have your referral, you then will travel to China eight weeks later to get your baby. You usually spend 12 days in China, but some people arrive earlier to sight see before meeting the baby. The agency arranges all in China flights and hotels and you arrange the flights to arrive in China and go home.

The process takes a long time. There are a lot of documents that you need to get together for your dossier. Even if you are an eager beaver, you still are subject to delays because of government delays at the local, state and federal levels. Once the paperwork is sent to China, the paper chase phase is over. Everything is out of your control at that point and you are then officially waiting. The good news is that everything is pretty well organized and time frames are predictable.

We listened to the spiel about the Russian program too. Things were not so predictable there. The program is not centrally administered through one area as it is in China. Each province of Russia can have different forms to be filled out and different fees. The time frames are not predictable. Once Russia has your dossier, you could get a referral in as little as 4 weeks or as long as 6 months. You do not get a photo. You must fly to Russia to meet the child. If you decide that you would like to adopt the child, you fly back home and complete more paperwork and then you have to fly back to Russia to finalize the adoption and bring the child home.

I asked how many referrals were refused in Russia. The answer was 1 in 3. I was shocked! Even though you specify that you want a healthy child, the referral you receive might be for a child with special needs, so that is why the referral gets refused. If you refuse the referral, they will try to show you two more children to adopt, but if you refuse them, you go back home and wait for another referral. Then you have to fly back and do the meet & greet again to decide if you will accept the referral. Again, if you accept, you fly home and complete the paperwork, and then you have to fly back to get your child. Three flights to Russia is not uncommon for one adoption, and this can get very expensive.

They had answered all of our questions and they had families who recently returned from China and Russia there with their children. They told us their experiences and answered all of our questions too. We were very pleased with the meeting. AR and I decided to hand them our application and check for $100. They were surprised, but I told them that we were sure about them and adopting from China. I also asked them to ignore my crazy voicemail that I had left for them. I was hoping that when they heard it that they wouldn’t brand me a lunatic and throw out our application.

Now we had to wait to see if they would accept us as clients. Our first test of many to come.