Delays :-(

So far, our adoption story has been pretty low-key. No big surprises or glitches. Until now... We've been reading some China-Adoption groups on Yahoo and it seems like the wait time for a referral from China has increased from 6-7 months to 8-12 months.

Here is one of the posts talking about the current delay:

Hello,
I actually spoke to a rep from my agency via e-mail and she said it is looking more towards 8-10 months because of the split months recently as there was not enough "paper ready" children to match the entire month. Because of the two split months and the end of the year it has caused a delay which has in turn caused a ripple effect of slowing things down. She said it will mostly affect those logged in now and is not sure what will happen in the next few months. Has anyone in the group seen this before and if so does it normally catch up??? Of course I am thinking "woe is me" now that we are finally getting logged in the wait goes up. I know that is not fair because it used to be much longer but I guess I am being selfish :)
Thanks,
Danielle

I just spoke to our China liaison and she confirmed that the wait time is up to 8 months. She has people with LID of April still waiting for a referral. So, this means our referral could be anywhere between May and Sep, not March as we had hoped. We are sad, but it gives us more time to prepare and save. For Bob, the biggest impact is our daughter won't come home until after his next birthday milestone in May.

Now we pray that the bird-flu scare doesn't further delay or halt adoptions as the SARS outbreak did a couple of years ago.

The waiting game

It is starting to seem like we're not really adopting. I mean, we spent eight months of intense paperwork and other adoption preparation. And, now we've done nothing for the last two months. It is all in the hands of the Chinese government. If the wait time is indeed 6-7 months, as it has been for recent Chinese adoptions, then we expect to get our "referral" in Feb or March. That means traveling in March or April.

Until then, we still need to figure out what we're doing for day care, pick a name and otherwise get ready. But, since we don't have anymore paperwork and since there is no physical reminder that a baby is on the way, it's hard to remember that she'll be here in about six months!!! YIKES!

Latest on the name game:
We are trying out a different name each week, using it when we think of her, pray for her, talk about her. Last week it was Abby/Abigail. This week it's Jada (or Jayda).