Letter of Intent

We have received a referral and submitted our letter of intent (LOI).   I wish I could post some pictures, but we have to wait for PA, pre-approval.  Sometimes it arrives in a few days, sometimes a few weeks. I can tell you about her though!!!

 

So on Monday, I was at swim team practice with Connor. As we were driving home, I realized I had somehow missed a call. When I realized it was from CO., where our agency is located, I wondered if it really could be a referral.  I called back and spoke with the waiting child department and they told me I had a referral.  I was so excited.  My normal reaction to anything emotional is to cry, but I was driving and so I just screamed and got really giddy.  Connor was really excited.  He learned his new little sister's Chinese name right away during the call and he can say it better than any of us!  Our sweet little girl is 14 months old. She was born on July 28, 2011.  She would be the age of my baby class this year, so every Tuesday and Thursday until we get her, I can watch the babies and have some idea of what she should be doing developmentally.  

 

Her special need is that she has an unrepaired bilateral cleft lip and palate. It is incomplete on the left (meaning she has a little gum line and even a couple little teeth) and complete on the right (meaning it is completely open in to her sinus cavity.) The surprising and good news is that she still looks like a really healthy little peanut despite this. She almost has a little chub to her cheeks and she has bring pink healthy lips and clear eyes.  This thrills us to no end. It was sobering to talk to our local cleft team at Childrens' Hopsital in Atlanta and hear that a lot of cleft children in China orphanages do not make it to their first birthday.  So we know she is a strong little fighter. She only weighed 14 pounds at a year, so she is still small, but hopefully very healthy.  It is very possible that her lip will be fixed before we get her, but it hasn't been done yet.  In the states, this is a correction that is done at about 3 months, so it is long overdue.  Her palate will not be done before we bring her home.  This will be our first surgery for her, happening as soon as 2 months after she comes home.  She will have several surgeries ahead of her to close her lip, soft palate, hard palate, create a gum line and fix her nose.  She will also have a lot of speech therapy and dental procedures in her future, but it is a completely fixable special need. What would cause her to be an outcast in China will be unnoticeable in several years. 

 

Unfortunately her file did not tell us a lot more, so we talked to our doctors and put together the best care plan we could with the information we have and we submitted our letter of intent to make her a part of our family!!!!  Our information shows that our little girl lives in the main part of the ophanage, but we are hoping that we will find out she is actually in foster care.  Given her healthy look, this would not be surprising and would be a much better scenario.

 

Everyone's next question is when do we get her?  Well, surprisingly probably another 6 months.  This may be the hardest part.  We will wait for our PA and then we can feel more secure that this really will happen.  But we still have to wait for a lot to happen after that.  The next big step after PA is LOA.  This is China's letter of acceptance, approving us to adopt this exact and special little child.  This will probably happen about 60-100 days after we receive our PA.  Once we get that we spend the next approximate 12 weeks organizing all the China details with the US details, getting visas and then finally, at the very end, making travel arrangements.  We won't know exact dates and therefore be able to plan travel until days to a couple weeks before travel.  Very scary for this control freak mommy!!  :)

 

Pictures coming as soon as possible!!

 

 

Update 1/26/12, It does not appear that our little girl is in the main foster care center connected with her orphanage, Eagles' Wings.