What happens after our referral??

So what happens after we get our referral?
Lots of folks have asked what the timeline/steps are after we get our referral.

Referral day: Receive THE call from our agency, and email of information about our baby, including photos! Then we celebrate, whoop, holler and freak out a little.
Post photos immediately for you all to see and make A LOT of phone calls.

Day 1 (after referral): Receive overnight package from our agency with all the paperwork. Send all medical information to adoption clinic at OHSU for them to review.

Day 2: Sign paperwork and send it next day back agency. This means that we are accepting the referral.

Day 5: our agency collects everyone’s paperwork that was in the referral batch and sends it back to China. The more speedily they can do this the better.
Our agency will also request updated photos and information about the baby

Week 2: Our agency works with us to arrange travel in China. We also have a conference call with all the families in our referral group.
We send our passports to San Francisco to get our Chinese Visa stamps
Send care package to baby’s orphanage

Week 4-6: China sends our TA (travel announcement) and that means we can go to China and get our baby!
Once our agency schedules our consulate appointment and then we can book our flight to China!

China Trip:
Fly into Beijing or Hong Kong and spend 1-2 days getting in the right time zone. Seeing the sites, being extremely nervous!

Fly to the province our baby is at. Baby’s are usually brought to the hotel that afternoon. It is commonly referred to as “Gotcha Day”

Start the paper work, spend approximately 7-10 days in baby’s home province doing paperwork, bonding with the baby, seeing the sites

Head to Guangzhou. That is where the US embassy is and where we will finish up paperwork and get our baby’s VISA so we can come home. Spend approx 7-10 days there. Most people stay at a hotel called the White Swan. There is lots of site seeing and shopping to be done there. They really cater to the adoption crowd and it is supposed to be a really fun part of the trip.

Home… fly home with the baby. This is the part Andy is most scared about. All those hours on a plane with a little baby that barely knows us. Fun!
I keep saying it will be okay. Let’s hope I am right.

Once we land in the US our baby is automatically a citizen! And after we get home and settled we can start the re-adoption process in Oregon so we can get her a birth certificate.

So that is it… I am sure that the 5-7 weeks after our referral, before we travel will be insane with things to do, stuff to get for our trip. We are bad procrastinators so I bet there will be last minute runs to Fred’s the night before we leave.
We have started working on the baby’s room and I will post something about that another day and put some photos up.