What's One More Week?

Make a note: please be gentle and sympathetic with mothers separated from their children, even when we only know them through a photograph we feel the pain of their absence EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Do not minimize the wait or the loss. Especially if you are an adoption professional, please remember the URGENCY is real: for the parents who are missing their kids and for the kids who need families and medical interventions. We are not impatient, we are doing what good parents do... advocating for our kids.

(Steps off soap box and tears open yet another chocolate bar...)



Well, less than 48 hours later and my best case dates are already out the window.

What is at most a 24 hour process for other agencies is apparently a 3-5 day process for mine.

Which just sucks.

And worse yet, the delay is completely avoidable.

Of course the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one.


Overall I like my China agency (and LOVE some of the people who work there) and I know no agency is perfect but ......Duuuuuuuudes,

you can need to do better.

What exactly could they do better?

Well instead of waiting until I got my PDF to review my paperwork and submit to China,  they could have had me send all the paperwork to them when I filed the I800.  If they had, then they could have reviewed the documents and forwarded them to China and then when I got the PDF (last Friday) all  they would have had to do is email the same PDF to China. Our Article 5 could have been dropped off the same day or next business day.

With a little advanced planning and processing our Article 5 could have been dropped off yesterday.  Instead it will go Friday or  maybe even next Monday.

Think a week isn't a big deal?  Well then tell me which of your preschool kids you're willing to send to "Chinese orphanage camp" for a week?  Didn't think so.

The wait is already long and these days, days of unnecessary waiting, they matter. A lot.