LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERYDAY...

Timing is everything!~  Case in point: the girls are little angels all morning..that is until I get an important phone call from our agency and then they start fighting in angry tones right into the phone...I couldn't run away fast enough!  Yes, we look like a family that needs another child! ;)

So, I just got off the phone with the director of the India program, Tami. It was just a good time to ask some questions I had and find out where things are currently.  I learned many things that I had assumed differently (or just made up apparently!) about where the babies originate from and how the process works. For some reason I had thought the babies from the orphanage we deal with were "abandoned" (as in left on the street or outside an orphanage as can be common in India) but this is not the case. The babies that are at the orphange we use in Kolkata are actually "relinquished" (signed over to the orphange by the birth parent) and so we will get a birth mother's name eventually.  That to me is excellent news! I had dreaded the thought of not even having a name to give our daughter as she grew up and started asking questions about her birth family. I may not have a ton of information but a name is something wonderful and it might mean a lot to her one day.  Another thing I learned is that the current large number of referrals that came through is not the norm.  We recently had 9 babies,.. 6 of which were accepted by families already and the other 3 that are being considered by various families at this time.  Usually there is about 2 babies every few months or so that are referred to families waiting for a child.  The government office that decides which babies are allowed to be referred to foreign families is called the ACA office.  They(and every part of the adoption process in India) must renew their license with CARA (The Central Adoption Resource Authority) from time to time and although the ACA office just renewed in April they only received a temporary license (2 1/2 months) and it expires in a few weeks, sometime in June. So we will not be hearing about any more referrals until they get their license renewed again.

Hopefully when it is renewed, we will have another huge batch of babies that will be available at once and perhaps we will be lucky enough to be one of the families that receive good news then!  Typically babies that are referred are anywhere from 5months-7 months old before we even hear about them.  We have our youngest child Emory, who is 14 1/2 months old now and we are not expecting a referral for our India baby until Sept at the EARLIEST (CARA's rules state the adopted baby must be a year apart in age from your youngest child). We are in for the long haul of course and even as quickly as we reached the top of the waiting list for a referral, we know that this is not indicative of anything down the road..it's just the way the process goes. (Not to mention once we get a referral it will still be another 6 months at least until she is ready to be picked up.)

Another thing we learned is how babies get to the referral process to begin with. Every baby at the orphange must be looked at by at least 5 families domestically (by people living in India) before they would be considered to be adoptable by foreign families (us). This is because every country, not just India, would love for their babies to stay in their own country. This makes sense to me actually, even though I'm very thankful that India is open to referring outside of India.  By the time these babies go to the ACA office to be considered as a "referral" for foreign families, they will then be approved by that office and their paperwork stamped appropriately and then sent on to our agency to see if they are a match for any of us waiting for a baby.  That stamp reassures us and them that everything up to this point has been done to find a family in India and if they can not, these children are free to be adopted outside of India. I am relieved that by the time we hear abour our baby, that the government in India has done everything they can to make sure she is adoptable locally.  I like knowing that she was not taken from her birth family unwillingly, or that there is not someone else that is considering adopting her from India, when we get the referral.  To me, that approval means that she is OURS..no strings attached, no chances that we would love her and lose her..OURS.

It was a wonderful conversation with Tami and it gave me perspective on the wait time and an idea of where our baby comes from to get to us.  What an awesome agency we have been blessed with who educates and supports us throughout every step of the process. I thoroughly appreciate all their hardwork and help and look forward to the lifelong relationship we will have with them long past our adoption.