Doomed and full of tears + 19 days = :)

I invite you dear reader to visit my other blog The Red Thread, that chronicles the adoption journey of my wife and myself to bring home our daughter named until referral as "Little Blossom" from China.

International adoption is an emotional rollercoaster for many parents. I offer this post as a very a small slice of the turmoil behind the so called paperchase in dealing with government departments necessary to compile and authenticate the necessary papers for an adoption.

My wife posted the following nineteen days ago on the yahoo group APC (adopting parents from China) that has tens of thousands of people registered all at different stages of their adoption journey. The posting was titled Doomed and full of tears

Well I thought I would give you all an update on my saga of the I797 aka
I171H. On Monday and Tueday I have been holding my breath hoping against hope that
the I797 would be in the mailbox. As some of you know ...Marcia at the home
land security office in Philly sent a letter on June 23 that the CIS had
problems with our Homestudy and wanted an addendum from our social worker because
the SW paraphrased some lines so after finnaly getting a hold of our SW who was
on vacation for a week got us pages to replace the phrased ones. I sent that
to the Philly office which arrived on July 6th to Marcia who at this point said
she was going on a week vacation, a week and three days went by and I called
and I was informed that Marcia has been called to military service for a week
and will be back in the office Monday well now today is Wednesday and hope and
praying as I go to the mailbox today and again saw nothing I was near tears
and I called the office always fearing the worst and was informed that Marcia
was out of the office today. I just started to cry what do you mean she is out
is there someone who does paperwork when someone is away the lady on the other
end of the phone said we are short staffed and I said choking back tears can
I please speak to a superviser I tried to collect myself as I waited another
woman got on said she was the supervisor I told her my sagga and how I realise
that people have things to do but I have been waiting since my papers arrived
in your office July the 6th to hear anything, anything at all then it all came
upon me I started to cry I said to this lady that everytime I go to the
mailbox and hear nothing all I can think is that's one more day added till I see my
baby's face or that one more thing will be wrong sobbing I said please help
me. She asked did I send in I600 I said I sent in all that I was asked to send
in a I600A a homestudy the corrected pages and my fingerprints of my husband
and myself I gave her the file number she asked for my phone number I gave it
to her twice and she said your phone number is diffent on a message you left
with us before and corrected that number and said she would call me back.... she
didn't call me back today and now I am sitting here feeling like a fool I had
no idea I would simply burst into tears on the phone and since she has not
called me back I have had terrible thoughts like because I was sobbing down the
phone she won't want to deal with me so bottom of the pile etc.
I am having a really hard time being positive about all of this. I feel
doomed.
~Taney

Taney received nearly 100 emails of support from great people on APC who offered comfort, sympathetic words and support. It also created a very vocal thread of posts disgusted at the service provided by Homeland Security given the fees paid by adopting parents and the recent significant increases in fees. It was deeply touching.

NINETEEN DAY ON FROM THIS POSTING

I added the following post that is also available on The Red Thread blog.

Taney spent most of the morning, copying everything for our dossier, signing checks, credit card authorizations and sending our completed dossier documents to Colorado with the help of our local Kinko's and Fed-Ex.

Since we started writing our adoption agency application last December 25, it has taken 7 months, 16 days and a couple of hours, minutes and seconds to reach this part of our adoption journey.

When asked the value of the paperwork, Taney commented on the value of nearly eight months of blood, sweat and tears.

Adding up the miles that application forms, home study visits, trips to state capitals, fingerprinting, and Washington DC that have been made to move our mountain of dossier paperwork it is according to my estimates around 14,000 miles. It is only a little over 8,000 miles to Hong Kong from Hatboro and to our daughter. I would say that our dossier is one heck of a detour to China.

Nevertheless, Taney & I are thrilled and delighted that our dossier is heading to CCAI in Colorado where it is to be translated and then sent to China, (DTC) dossier to China anticipated in about a month.

The pressure of paperchasing is now behind us, the process of ensuring each piece of paper is correctly notarized and authenticated by the right people and more importantly in the right order. The confusion of having papers generated from the UK, and two states, Pennsylvania and New Jersey adding in the need to work with multiple government departments simply added to "fun" of the paperchase.

A deep sigh of relief can be heard from both of us today, August 10 will be a red letter day in the Friend family as the day the dossier was completed.

Now we wait for the call to tell us that our dossier has been sent to China. Then we wait a little longer for the referral of our daughter and our first photograph. Then we go to get Little Blossom!

I am not sure how I will cope with the waiting, at least for the past 7 months we have been active, doing something, getting papers together, making calls, chasing papers, chasing people, motivating others to get on board now we simply wait.

Taney and made it very clear in the last post that we have many people to thank. I want to add to the list a little more. To Taney who has truly managed the papertrail for us both and made sure that "one more day" was not an option.

If Taney has called me her rock, then Taney is my lighthouse who has lit the way along the adoption journey this far. Taney has made an awesome project manager in this part of our adoption journey and has created a binder that contains all our paperwork has grown and be ordered and organized just so that everything is easily to hand.

Thanks also to both our families who have provided an ear and a shoulder when the delays from Scotland Yard and the Homeland Security became unbearable.

Thanks to our friends and family who so kindly wrote such beautiful references as part of our home study.

To repeat Taney, also to Hilary, Manager of the Dossier Department at CCAI who has been a great source of help, advice and motivation.

And finally thanks to my colleagues at MSAA, especially those in my department who have heard the ups and downs of the last months and have been understanding in working with me around personal days used in the process, Terry, Tina and Brenda, not forgetting Gary, Peter and Mary.


There is very little I can write that portrays quiet as clearly the rollercoaster of adopting parents.

Every child deserves loving parents.

This is what we so badly want to give our daughter and that day has drawn so much closer today.