Referral Day!

Referral Day!

Who knew “Lucky 13” would turn out to be so lucky?!?! I am thrilled to be able to tell you about our referral day!

Our adoption agency has a Yahoo group for all of the parents in the Ethiopia program. It is a great way for us to all stay in touch, track progress and raise and answer questions. Frequently on this chat board, parents will post the exciting news that they have accepted a referral. We approached the end of May without much of any news of that sort on the chat board, so I expected there wasn’t much action happening with our agency in the month of May.  Being as we were number 13 the last I had heard, imagine my shock when we got a much different phone call on Thursday, May 24^th!!!!!

I was at work and saw an out of area number pop up on my cell phone. I decided to ignore it and keep working. Only a minute or so later, my desk phone started ringing, and the caller-ID said AAI (our adoption agency). I picked it up, expecting that our caseworker had a question for us. She asked me if it was a good time to talk, and I said yes (never dreaming what was coming next). She said she was calling because she had a referral for us! I said “NO WAY!!!” She laughed and said that I sounded shocked. I had to explain to her that my manager had just asked what type of progress we were making on the adoption front, as she and I are trying to prepare for my absence during travel and time off after our baby comes home. In what is now laughable, I had told my manager, “Oh nothing’s happening. As far as I know, we are still number 13. We will get another update from our agency at the end of the month, but I think it will be another few months for referral.”

Now, hours later, here I was listening to our caseworker tell me about our wonderful little guy named Terefe! He was born December 3^rd and has big eyes and a full head of beautiful curls. She went through all of his medical background and plenty of other information with me over the phone, and kindly said, “Don’t even try to take notes, I am emailing you all of this as well.” Thank goodness, cause I didn’t listen and still took notes…those notes are by far my worst chicken scratch ever! Too much excitement! I was definitely shaking!

Our caseworker went over this all with me, and he seems to be in pretty good health. He is staying in our agency’s transition house, which from what I can tell, is smaller than an orphanage and it is run by our agency, so he is now in their care, which is nice. I then tried to call Mike. A coworker answered, I asked that she have him call me as it was important. Ironically someone in his branch joked with him that I must have been calling cause a stork dropped a baby off for us…little did she know! When Mike called back I told him he’d better sit down. He asked what was up- I said “We just got a referral.” A very shocked Mike said “No kidding!” He quietly listened to me explain everything that I knew, and share the best part for him- that it’s a boy! Then reality must have started to kick in, because his speech pattern gained speed and he kept saying “We have so much to do! So much to do!” (Remember that crib?....... It’s still not put together!). I told him that despite having the email with the pictures of our baby sitting in my inbox, I would wait to look at them until we were at home and we could look together (this was SO HARD!). My coworkers knew something was up so I had to tell them, and they can vouch, I never peaked at those pictures! My manager graciously offered that I go home early so that I could be there when Mike got home and we could see this little guy. I took her up on that offer, and of course got stuck in some SERIOUS Pittsburgh traffic (never fails), and made it home at the time I normally do.

It was love at first sight! We were sent three photos of him sleeping that provided a great profile shot and a great look at his ringlets. Two others were of him wide-eyed and awake. One of these is a full-body shot in which we think he looks pretty long! The other is a close-up with a big grin! He looks like he enjoys a good time (and that he might like to cause some trouble?!?!?). We definitely agreed that he is adorable and we noticed how crazy it was that Mike’s “lucky” number has always been 13, so to think, the last we knew, we were 13 on the wait list, and then, we got a referral! We just hoped that there were no causes for alarm with his referral review.

His referral contains several pages of medical background from a doctor that examined him at the orphanage as well as any other notes that may have been made by caretakers either prior to the orphanage or while at the orphanage. The really fun thing is that you get to see it all in Amharic and translated in English. Of course, Mike and I are capable of reading the English version and saying “sounds great” but it is recommended that a pediatrician with experience in International Adoption review the referral and pictures.

We sent our referral information to the pediatrician the following day (Friday, May 25^th) and waited for most of the long weekend with our fingers crossed, although we didn’t expect her to find any major issues. Of course she called Sunday while we were at church and she was gone by the time we tried to return her call. We ended up finally talking with her on Tuesday, and she said that from what she can tell, he is a fairly healthy guy. Although, to be honest, she says that these referrals are fairly limited in information, several pages really just tell you that he isn’t missing any major body parts and that he can do things that most babies his age can. She also went on to say that these medical assessments can be skewed too, because who knows how the baby is acting or feeling that day for the 10-30 minutes being spent with him. In a way she said, there’s really no good way to know how he’s doing, other than his measurements. He is currently underweight, which is to be expected, but is by no means malnourished. He is long for his age as well. She says the best way to ensure his health is to continue to monitor his measurements as often as we can until he comes home. With that, Mike and I said, “He’s ours!” In some ways, it’s risky. I know a lot of people would like more concrete information, but we figured, it’s not much different than having a biological child. No matter how you become a parent, you’re really hoping for the best, but knowing that a multitude of things could be wrong, or go wrong down the road. From here on out, we are just praying for continued health!

We officially accepted Terefe’s referral on Wednesday, May 30^th and haven’t stopped smiling since! We are not sure how to pronounce his name, even our caseworker who is pretty good with Amharic, says she’s not sure on this one and that we will have to wait till we are there, as even Googling it won’t turn up the same result as how it will sound in Ethiopia. Consequently, Mike and I have started referring to him as “T.” We will probably move this to his middle name (after learning how to pronounce it). No we have not yet decided on his first name- there will be a big announcement when we do. For now, we are just trying to get the house and the dogs ready for his arrival, cause it’s going to happen before we know it.

Once we officially accepted T’s referral, our agency’s staff in Ethiopia began filing our paperwork with the court system there. We are now waiting on our court date. We are told that we probably won’t hear about that for another two weeks, and when we do, it will likely be two to three weeks from then. If all goes well, we could be in Ethiopia by the second week of July for our first trip!

The first trip is the longer one. It is meant for us to meet the baby, see the country and his home village and of course, appear in court, testifying that we have met him and want to proceed with the adoption. Once we do that (which I just learned will be all of five minutes), the paperwork begins to finalize the adoption and get him a passport and visa. After about 7 days in Ethiopia, we will come home, without T.

If all goes smoothly from there, which we are REALLY REALLY praying for, we could be headed back by the end of August to bring him home!

We can’t thank you all enough for sharing in our excitement and for all of the well-wishes! The number of texts, Facebook messages, hugs, and calls has been overwhelming in such a good way! We feel so loved and know for certain that this little guy has a strong network of family and friends cheering him on and already in love! We can’t wait for the next step in the journey!