So Ryan and I are THRILLED to announce that we received a referral for our daughter!!!! We just received our Pre-Approval from China (which means they are pre-approving us for her adoption-not officially approving us yet, but they're in the process of approving us) recently so we felt like it was now safe to share with everyone!
So I want to record the details so I will always remember (I need to journal it soon!) so bear with me. :) We received her referral on Thursday, October 11th. We just were logged into China on Sept 3 or 4th (can't remember exactly right now) so there was no way I was expecting it yet-we were told it could take as long as 9 months! So I was hoping it would be as early as April or May, never this early. But I was driving with Jackson to library story hour and I received a phone call that wasn't in my phone, but I thought it was maybe the same area code of my agency so I answered. And it was our agency telling us they had seen a child on the shared list they thought might meet our requirements and they put her on hold for us!! I could NOT believe it, I was shaking as I was driving and just so so excited. I sat in the parking lot talking to them on the phone, then I quickly called Ryan to tell him the exciting news!!! I then raced in to tell my friends who I was meeting there. We didn't know at the time whether we'd be accepting her referral or not (I figured we would be but you just never know so I tried not to get my hopes up TOO much) so we didn't tell many people at all, but I had to get busy right away so I left Jackson with my friends and raced home. We had 72 hours to decide whether to accept her referral, and in that time we were supposed to consult with our pediatrician and an international dr. It had been on my list to find an international dr, but I thought I had plenty of time so I hadn't yet!
So long story short, I got together a list of questions to ask the doctors and met with them, and Ryan and I decided to go ahead and submit the Letter of Intent for our daughter. That basically means that we want to begin the adoption process, but we still would be able to say no at a later date if something in her medical history wasn't what we were prepared for. Luckily both Ryan and I felt very comfortable with her referral and all of her information, and now know that she is our daughter!
Now for the fun stuff...details about our daughter! Her name is Gao Wenxia (pronounced Gow Wensha-kind of. Chinese is a VERY complex language and intonations make the same word mean different things. I've been having a lot of fun with "Google translate" on the ipad! I can't even come close to pronouncing most words in Chinese! ) We will name her Claire and then use at least one of her Chinese names for her middle name. She was born August 24, 2011 so she just turned 14 months old. She lives in Southern China and is actually quite tall for her region of China; she's in the 50th percentile on the American growth charts for height! She's off the chart (low) in weight though-she needs to get home to Mama to fatten her up! :)) She's absolutely adorable-has big brown eyes and basically no hair-I'm pretty sure they shave their heads in the orphanage to make it easier to treat for lice and things like that. We went the "special needs" route so her SN is an unrepaired cleft lip. We think that's it! We'll have her lip repaired when she comes to the United States, and also we'll have all of her developmental skills tested to make sure she's on target. Typically babies growing up in orphanges are going to be delayed, simply because there is not enough 1-1 attention for the children. Physically they reported that she can walk, she appears very social, smiley, and they said she's a happy baby. They also reported she doesn't like strangers which is a good thing from an attachment standpoint-that means she has attached to her caregivers. This also means that she'll hopefully be able to attach to us fairly easily-after she's grieved the loss of leaving everything and everyone she's ever known :(.
We have her picture posted all around the house; the boys are loving looking at her. We're trying to get Cooper especially used to seeing her cleft lip because I think he was a little concerned about it at first, but now he's kind of used to it so it doesn't bother him anymore. And Jackson never noticed it, he just says "cute baby sister!" Melts my heart. He also talks about his "baby sister in China" all of the time, I love it! We were walking down the girlie toy aisle in Target today and he kept saying "we should get this for baby sister!"
We decided not to post her picture online until we received the official confirmation that she's officially our daughter, so you'll just have to imagine a beautiful little girl! :) Sorry about that, I know that's pretty much all everyone wants to see! Soon enough hopefully!
There are a few next steps to our daughter, basically some big paperwork hurdles that we have to jump in order to receive the final document-which is the Travel Approval! That basically means we can travel to China! Our agency estimated the time-line to travel to China after receiving our Pre-Approval is 4-6 months. So we're really hoping for 4 months which would be February. We would love any and all prayers for our daughter-that she continues to be loved and well cared for while she is living in the orphanage, and that our paperwork is the speediest it could possibly be so we can get to her as soon as possible!!!! THANK YOU!!! Can't wait to share more updates!
11 years ago
