Waiting for a Referral

Different agencies have different rules. For some, you have to have your dossier all done and your I171-H received - some you just have to one or the other, some you don't have to have either. Our agency required us to have the dossier all done before we could be put on "the list."

Some people request a specific gender - and for families that do request - they almost always request a boy. Jay and I decided to not request a specific gender, so we were pretty sure that we would end up with a boy.

We sent our dossier to Jeannie and she received it on a Monday. She was going to review it and make sure everything was there and we didn't make any mistakes - then it was off to A Helping Hand to get us on the list. I thought we might get on the list by Friday of that week.

Jeannie called me on a Wednesday and told me that we were "on the list." We found out at that time that we were third on the list - but the two families in front of us were both waiting for girls. So, the next boy that was born would be our referral. But - if three girls were born, we'd end up with a girl. At this point, I told my mom that I thought we should have our referral by the end of May. You can never predict how long you will wait for a referral.

Thursday morning I went to the chiropractor and got to work in just enough time to drop my stuff off and go to a meeting. I came back from my meeting and noticed that I had a number of missed calls and I had a message. I checked my messages and it was Jeannie asking me to call her as soon as I could. I thought, "Oh great, they found something wrong with our dossier."

I called the office and Marie answered. I asked for Jeannie and I wondered what was up - Marie sounded so happy. (Not that she doesn't always sound happy when she answers the phone - just something was different)

Jeannie asked me if she could put me on speaker phone. Something told me I had better close the door to my office. She said, "we have your referral." I must have screamed - I don't remember doing that - but Greg (whose office is right next to me) sent me an email wanting to make sure everything was ok.

Jeannie sent me Alex's (ok - someone help me here - is it Alex' or Alex's - I need to figure this out as I have a feeling I'll be writing his name a lot!) picture - I cried - and laughed - and I think screamed some more. I just couldn't believe it. I called Jay immediately.

We then had up to 5 days to accept the referral. We sent his pictures and the medical information we received to our International Adoption Pediatrician for her to look everything over. There were some initial concerns that there might be something wrong with one of his arms. It was hard to tell from the photos, so we asked to have some new photos with his shirt off to help us make a determination. Jay and I didn't want to tell anyone unless we were sure that we were going to accept the referral. We talked about it, and decided that even if there was something wrong, we would still accept the referral.

We started calling people and I shared with folks at work. I was so excited, I could hardly stand it. Needless to say, I didn't get much done at work that day. :)