Part 2/8: Hurry Up ... and Wait
As winter stretched into a dismal April, it became evident that this adoption might not go as smoothly as our first. Personnel changes at FRC delayed our case, and the usually brief "homestudy update" ended up taking more than four months.
Meanwhile, we assembled a dossier: birth and marriage certificates, letters from our doctors, financial statements, personal references. With a few twists (notably, a stronger interest in financial documents on the part of the Thais), this was familiar territory. There were some surreal experiences -- for instance, the endless quest to find a place that could shoot eight passport-sized photos of both Rod and me, requested by the Thai government. The first place we tried was out of film; the second place had a broken camera; the third place was also out of film. We hit the jackpot on the fourth try, with a longsuffering Alice -- now 2, and talking -- begging us to please take her home!
We barely squeaked our fingerprints and I-600A filing into the INS before fees saw a major hike. Finally, in late July '98, our dossier was completed, and our I-171H INS clearance arrived. I retrieved it from the mailbox and waved it triumphantly at Rod as he loaded Alice into the car for an outing. "Look," I shouted. "Here's our ticket to Bangkok!"
In mid-August, WACAP informed us that our dossier had been authenticated and sent on to the Thai Red Cross: one of three nongovernmental agencies authorized to place Thai children. (The Thai Dept. of Public Welfare also makes direct placements, and depending on your agency, you may or may not get a "DPW" child.)
Now, there was little to do but wait, perhaps for more than a year. We had requested a girl, fairly healthy, and fairly young: 12 to 24 months. All three requests were guaranteed to slow our Thai process. Still, we felt emotionally (not to mention financially) committed. We started boning up on Thai culture and researching local resources. And I launched a project that had been gestating in my mind for months: a digital database/directory of adoptive families with children from Thailand. Haunted by the idea that Alice would have a multitude of peers, I was determined to find some peers for my Thai-American child. (Selfishly, of course, I hoped to uncover Chicagoland families that had already been down the path we were taking.)
Even as I sent letters to agencies, soliciting their help, and posted announcements on more than 20 international adoption listservs, rumors began brewing on the China adoption front. The two largest China adoption listservs, representing more than 5,000 subscribers, were buzzing. The referral logjam caused by the 1997 reorganization of China's adoption bureaucracy was breaking loose. Referral times began dropping precipitously, down to 6 or 7 months for a "healthy" child and not much longer for an "SN" child. Suddenly Thailand looked very slow.
Even more jolting was the fall 1998 rumor -- quickly confirmed as fact -- that China was changing its "second child" policy for adoptive families and completely dropping its special needs requirements. The new rules were to take effect in April 1999. Our rush to start the adoption process meant that we'd finished all the crucial steps before the big news came down; had we begun a few months later, we might have taken a different course. (I couldn't help but wonder, too, what was going to happen to all those "SN" kids in China who were no longer being referred.)
It would mean reassembling a dossier, and possibly some financial sacrifice, but the China door was open. Feeling pangs about the Thai child I felt sure was waiting for us -- and my database "baby," which I hoped might eventually help many families -- I explained the new rules to Rod as objectively as I could.
Fortunately, Rod unhesitatingly confirmed his commitment to the Thai program. Like me, whatever his initial reasoning had been, he was now emotionally convinced that Thailand was where we would find our child. About the same time, the "line" in front of us at WACAP began to move rapidly, and we optimistically spoke of having a referral in the spring, instead of summer or fall. Surely, we thought, our girl would be in Chicago with us to celebrate the turn of the century.
Responses to my "database" letters began to roll in, and I bought some software and taught myself how to organize the information. In January 1999, I compiled and mailed my first bimonthly "cyber newsletter" for the 90 families that had joined our loose group. I was feeling good about the adoption and our prospects.
Alas, 1999 was to bring some completely unexpected events that made me doubt the wisdom of our decision to adopt a child from Thailand -- or anywhere at all.