Frequently Asked Questions

First things first; online rumors over the weekend are a bit less rosy than they were last week. I'm not going to go into the details because I don't like putting negative stuff out into the universe. Stewart and I are still very optimistic about August. Please keep the positive energy flowing as we move closer to our daughter and she to us.

As a distraction, I thought it might be fun and helpful if I answered some of the common questions I get asked. I imagine other friends and family must be wondering the same sorts of things, so here goes:

When is the next batch of referrals going to arrive?
They should be mailed anytime between July 30 and August 13, with the most likely day for them to show up in the U.S. being August 6th.

When will you know if you are included?
The day the referrals arrive at our agency, they begin making calls to their clients who were matched. We won't know anything until we know pretty much everything. We'll get THE CALL out-of-the-blueish, meaning the agency won't call ahead to tell us they'll be calling.

Do you know you will have a daughter for sure? How old will she be?
No, we don't know for sure/sure if we'll be matched with a girl but most of the children available from China are girls. My impression is that there are a couple of boys in every 600-700 girls matched. Those parents are very surprised, exchange their pinks for blues, and are very excited. We'll do the same! I've seen children, at the time of referral, as young as 6 months and as old as 17 months. Most likely, she'll be around 9-10 months.

When you get THE CALL, what will they say?
They'll say something like "You have a daughter!" and then give us basic info like name, age, weight, and what Province she's in. We'll go to the agency a couple of days later to pick up the translated packet of info which includes more detailed information.

After you get THE CALL, what happens next?
We have one week to accept. During that week, most parents send off the baby's health information to the University of Minnesota International Adoption Clinic for their input. We're so lucky to have such an amazing clinic right here in our own backyard.

When do you leave for China?
After we accept our match, we'll wait (again!) to be assigned an appointment at the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou. Once we have that date, all the other business we need to do in China gets back-dated from that appointment. The Chinese business is at the beginning and the U.S. Consulate business is at the end. After referral, we'll travel anywhere from 5-6 weeks to 8 weeks later.

How long will you be in China? Who will you be traveling with?
We plan to do a bit of sight-seeing, hopefully in Beijing, before we travel to the Province where we'll meet our daughter. All together, we'll most likely be in China for about 3 weeks. We'll travel with the other families from our agency with the same log-in date (11/21/05). Additionally, our agency's China staff will be with us, acting as guides and letting us know what to do and when. I'm not sure at this point if another group from our agency will travel with us.

If anybody has any other burning questions, feel free to post a comment and I'll try to answer.