Why Does It Take So Long?

After a year of working on our adoption paperwork, we sent it to China and received our official "Log-In Date" (LID) on March 27, 2006. This was the beginning of our Long Wait as 3 1/2 years passed until our Match Day on October 13, 2009.

Match Day was a joyous day! We saw a picture of our daughter for the first time, and memorized the few meager details of her life. We happily signed the acceptance letter and overnighted it back to our adoption agency.

Now, we are waiting for China to issue our Travel Approval and set our Consulate Appointment. This time, the wait will only be two to three months, but it is a harder wait, and seems so much longer than the Long Wait. Every day that passes is another day that Carly isn't in our arms. She is our daughter, but she's not with us, yet.

Why does it take so long when China's orphanages are overflowing? There are two reasons.

First, all of China's international adoptions are approved and matched through the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA). This government agency is truly dedicated to placing orphans in good homes throughout the world. Their criteria for qualified parents is rigorous and exhaustive (just ask us!), and it's even tougher now that the Hague Convention rules went into effect in 2007. The Hague Convention is an international treaty governing adoptions.

Combine these tough rules with a flood of parents wanting China's children, and you have an overwhelmed CCAA. The chart below details the number of Chinese adoptions over the last several years.



As the number of parents desiring to adopt from China escalated, the staff of the CCAA became burdened with a huge backlog of dossiers that they had to review and approve. In other words, the CCAA is three years behind in its paperwork.

Second, in 2005, during the peak shown on the chart, China's law enforcement discovered that criminals were stealing babies to sell. These criminals were deservedly prosecuted. These babies were not orphans. They belonged to families that loved them.

The sad side-effect of prosecuting these criminals was that orphanage directors became afraid to refer their children to the CCAA for fear that they would be accused of baby trafficking. Remember that China is a communist society. Their courts of law are not always rational.

The wait time for parents hoping to adopt from China grew to three, and possibly, four years, as a backlogged CCAA now had to deal with orphanage directors that were afraid to refer their children for international adoption.

So, you see, the Long Wait became the norm.

We weren't happy with it being the norm, but we survived it. Now, Carly is a part of our family. We just need to bring her home.

This photo of Carly is my favorite. We received it about 2 weeks after our referral date. She is 9 months old in this photo. She appears to be wearing at least a couple of layers of clothing. This is normal. In China, babies wear several layers of clothing. It is not unusual for them to have 5 layers. We have been told that we will be scolded by the Chinese if we take her out in public while we are in China without bundling her up in this manner.

These photos were sent to us from Carly's orphanage. They were taken in July 2009, so she is around 6 months old. It's nice to think of her as running around and playing in the walker, but the reality is that she probably did not get to stay in it for very long. As Sandy and I have researched and found other orphanage photos of other children, we have noticed that almost all of them are placed in a walker or an inflatable chair for a photo. This makes us believe that a line of children are waiting behind the photographer, and will be placed in the chair or walker just long enough for the photo.

A Little History...

In 2005, Sandy and I realized we wanted a daughter from China. This began a flurry of paperwork. We filled out applications, completed immigration forms, had a homestudy done, were fingerprinted, had background checks, had medical checkups, and, it seems, wrote a check to anyone that could possibly be related to getting all of this paperwork finished!

On March 27, 2006, our paperwork arrived in China. We had our Log In Date (LID)! The LID is the date you begin the final countdown. Now, we were waiting for China to match us with our daughter. Imagine it this way: our paperwork goes into a huge stack of files from parents from all over the world wanting a child from China. Someone at the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) diligently sorts through available orphans to match with the parent file on top of the stack. This is a long, long process. Our file would not reach the top of the stack until October 2009!

On October 13, 2009, Beth, from our adoption agency Chinese Children Adoption International (CCAI), placed a three-way call to Sandy and me (Sandy was in Little Rock at a conference). Beth told us all about our new daughter!

Her Chinese name is Feng Yue Yi. She was born January 14, 2009, and has lived in a foster home since the second day of her life. On that day, she was brought to the hospital in the city of Fengcheng in the Jiangxi Province of China. The doctors examined her, and placed her under the care of the Fengcheng Social Welfare Institute.

We do not know where she spent the first day of her life, nor do we know why she was given to the hospital. We can only assume that she is one of China's many victims, mostly daughters, of the One-Child Policy. Chinese parents desire sons. A daughter is not as valuable to them, and so, are given away so that the parents can try, again, for a son.

We have renamed our daughter Carly Anne Yue Yi Russell. We are, once again, in a countdown as we wait for our Travel Approval, visas, and a Consulate appointment.

Carly, we'll be there soon!