Waiting ...

We spoke with our case manager at WACAP on Friday. She told us the stock information that we could expect a wait of one to ten months for a referral, but then she went on to say we should expect to wait about four or five months since we are open to either gender. Later she said she thought it would be into winter. She was thinking early 2010, probably January or February, but before April. She said that right now there are twenty to thirty families wanting infants ahead of us, but 80% of them have specified girls, so we are figuring there's about six families actually ahead of us open to a boy.

I think they are expecting a bit of a delay right now while the Ethiopian office gets revamped, they move locations, and they muck through the rainy season. They are expecting a large number of referrals next time, but because of administrative red tape, they think those referrals won't happen until September or October. She believes our referral won't be in that group. We can expect it will be December to February before they are able to offer the next wave of referrals. Hopefully that batch will be us! She said it takes two to four months after referral to travel, so the group ahead of us could complete their adoptions and free the beds for more children as early as October to late February.

I'm still hoping and feeling our referral will happen during the Christmas season. I've always felt that it will come sometime between Christmas and New Year's Day. That may be optimistic.