How We Got Started Part II

We started in the China adoption program thinking we would do what everyone did, adopt an infant girl.  As we were working on our paperwork, the wait for an infant girl was growing longer and longer.  As of right now that wait is about 5 years.  Now, we're not getting any younger and even though we had hopes that the time would decrease, we knew that we needed to investigate other options.  We were still really drawn to China and didn't want to start over with a new country, so we decided to look into the "Waiting Child" or "Special Needs" program.  Our agency had just completed what they call a "Camp" with some of the waiting children in China and it really made us curious to find out more.  These are children (both boys and girls) with minor to major special needs of all ages.  When an agency does a camp, they visit a specific SWI (Social Welfare Institute or Orphanage) take photos, videos and interview the children and then share that info with their clients in the hope that these children will be matched.  We saw quite a few children in that camp that we were really drawn to but having only been logged in for a couple of weeks we knew we were pretty much last on the list to get matched with any of them.  It did, however help us to decide that this was the direction we should be heading.  We ended up meeting with a pediatrician to discuss what special needs we might be open to and get her advice on what she felt might be right for us.  As of June 2010 we have been in the line for a special needs child and are hoping for a match any time now!