the days are dragging along

Seems like every day lasts so long now that we have so much to look forward to. The adoption world has been rather eventful over the last few days. I'll try to not ramble on too much about the drama, but basically I called the facilitor I had been working with to get the actual scoop on what is going on. Our dossier is finished and ready to go to vietnam, but as it turns out, the 2 referrals that the agency has been given have been matched to families, but their dossier's have not acutally been approved by the government. Well, that affects us because if their dossier's have something wrong with them (1 of the families hasn't even finished their dossier yet), our agency might not get more referrals. This is information I kind of uncovered on my own, and asked the coordinator about. When she agreed that yes, this was indeed true, I said that I thought maybe we had better switch agencies to one that already had referrals coming in, since our dossier is ready to go. She said ok. Well, like 5 minutes later the China coordinator called. She said the Vietnam coordinator is new, and she is very unfamiliar with international adoption (great), but from now on she (the china coordinator-with many years of experience) was going to handle our case, as long as we felt comfortable staying with the agency. She said they would basically do whatever it took to keep us to stay, but if we wanted to switch she would understand. She was very upfront with the situation. So she called the in country guy, Charlie, and basically told him the situation. He apparantly talked to the government (whatever that means), and arranged for the agency to be promised the referral of a baby girl for us. Soooooo, according to the new coordinator lady, they have the referral of a baby girl. They have her picture (she looks to be 6-8 months she said), but her medicals aren't ready yet since she just arrived at the orphange. She said the medical should be ready in about 2 weeks, and at that time, as long as there is nothing concerning on her medicals, we will get to see her picture.

I'm not sure how to feel. I want to be excited, but I am still so hesitant about it, because it is still in the preliminary stages. I haven't even told our families yet that our referral will be in the next 2 weeks, just in case something falls through. There is so much unknown. So scary. My biggest fear right now is that we will get the referral, and then have to wait months and months and months to travel while we wait for our dossier to be processed.

we went shopping today, but we don't want to buy anything yet, since we aren't sure how old she is, or how old she will be when we finally get there.

So that's about all the excitement. I have to work all day tomorrow, and I'm sure that the day will seem so long. I am in my 2nd year of OB/GYN residency at an Army hospital here in Hawaii. Usually Sundays in labor and delivery are a little slow, but we do 24 hour shifts on the weekends, so the day literally seems to last forever.

Hope everyone is well, and you guys that have your babies are ejoying loving on them. hopefully those of us who are still waiting will not ourselves insane!