there is a very slim chance we could get a phone call, well, "The Call" tomorrow from our agency. For those not in the adoption world, this is the phone call that all prospective adoptive parents wait for. For us, that would be 85 months, or just over 7 years! Imagine awaiting a phone call for that long! To tell you the magnitude of this, Larry just asked me what time it is in Spain. Why Spain? Well because we have friends in our face book group from Spain and they are ahead of us in the time zone and if someone from there is getting a call about now then that means tomorrow we could get a call, get it, complicated I know. Why in the world would we be worried about what time it is in Spain when we're adopting from China! Hmm, there you have it.
Back to "the call" . . . when we get this long awaited call it will include info about our baby, like the sex, birthdate, the location, ie., foster care or orphanage. You see it would be the equivalent of delivering your baby and the doctor announcing, "congratulations, you have a fill in the blank". So that's why the call is so important and it's the first step in the referral process in which we get to announce our child's info to our family and close friends.
For months, (well every month since we've been waiting), when it gets close to referral time I watch my e-mail like crazy and every on-line group we're part of as well as scour the internet for hints of information regarding referrals and how many days worth of LID's have been processed. Ironically this time, as we've gotten so close, Larry has been the one tracking face book and e-mail. He's been texting me at work any updates. He's suddenly obsessed and I've been too sick to realize,and busy too, that I wasn't expecting referrals yet. In the past, I always knew we were never close enough to be included I still watched (like a hawk)! It was an exciting time and it was always good to see families being connected to their children for the first time. The number of babies referred and families matched always gave reassurance that we were one step closer. Seeing others' dreams come true always encouraged us.
Now we are so close. It's unlikely to be tomorrow but in the next couple months we will get to see the first glimpse of our little one via an e-mail photo.
So what do we do to prepare our hearts for this? I ask myself, what can I do? It's always seemed so far away and now our Little One is within reach and we may see her picture in the coming months. I awoke early thinking about how we'd share the news and with whom first. We have circles of friends that have walked this path with us and some that are closer than family and some that understand on a much deeper level than others. But to make it fair and uncomplicated, everybody will hear it from us eventually and we cant guarantee they wont hear it from someone else first. We live in a small area and news travels fast!
So will it be a boy or girl? Light or dark skin? Fine or coarse hair? How old? What province? Foster care or orphanage? Oh so many questions. Stay tuned!
