Baby News

The announcement about Jake's May arrival has some people worried about Mei Mei, and whether or not she will still be joining our family. The answer is yes. Here's how it shakes out.

When we began the adoption process, we expected to receive Mei Mei right about now. Paperwork had been taking about 6 months, and expedited families usually picked up their child about 1 year after having submitted their paperwork. Those dates should have worked out to December 2009.

However, the Hague treaty foiled us a bit, causing our paperwork to take 10 months rather than 6. And the Chinese government seems to have put a hold on expedited families. For many months, no expedited families received a match. And so that wait grew from 1 year to 15 months, and then 18 months, and then 20 months.

We looked at our family. The way this gap continued to grow, we could easily be facing a 3 year wait. With that, Sophia would be 6 years old when we finally picked up Mei Mei, and Lilly would be 7. That gap was not how we envisioned our family, and hence Jake. We prayerfully decided that we should just pop another kid into the middle there, and even out the numbers a bit.

Pregnancy has no major impact on the legalities and details of our adoption. It means that we need to file some extra paperwork, and it puts us under one stipulation: Jake must be at least 12 months old when we receive Mei Mei. Fine by us, I say. Mei Mei will be between 6 and 9 months old, and we're all too glad to have an enforced gap - however big or small it may be. We also have the option of voluntarily extending our wait time by 6 months - this would not keep Mei Mei in an institution for 6 months, but simply keep us on the list longer.

Finally, we received word this week that a few expedited families had been matched to their child. It seems that the wait time for them was about 22 months. That will be our minimum, with the possibility that it could rise over the next 1-2 years. So, here's the timeline:

2010, May - Jake is born
2010, June - We hope to move to DC
2011, Jan. - We likely move to our first posting
2011, Jan. - 22 months from when we logged in our paperwork
under this, the shortest expected time span, we would choose to extend by 6 months
2011, May - Jake is 12 months old
2011, July - 22 + 6 months from when we logged in our paperwork
We potentially receive match info for Mei Mei
2011, Aug. - We travel to China and pick up Mei Mei, who will be between 6 and 10 months old

Under this scenario, here's the family lineup. In August of 2011,
Lilly will be 6 years old
Sophia will be 4.5 years old
Jake will be 15 months old
Mei Mei will be 6-10 months old

For those of you hard up for calculators or calendars, that is a 5-9 month gap between Jake and Mei Mei. But luckily, as Jake will be born near the end of the school year, they would land in different school years. Once they reach school age, they would become 1 year apart rather than simply a few months.

This is not exactly the gap we were hoping for. A difference of about 18-24 months would be preferable, but we trust God's timing in each of these dates. And hope to live somewhere we can both A: afford household help and B: host grandparents / aunts & uncles / friends who like to help out for long periods of time.