In the matching room

Today is October 10, 2006. That means it has been 21 months and 1 day since we first attended a "Spirit of Adoption Seminar" with America World Adoption Association. That also means it has been 20 months and 6 days since we first mailed our initial application to AWAA. That would also mean that it has been 14 months and 7 days since we mailed our dossier (adoption speak for 4 pounds of paperwork proving we are fit to be parents) to AWAA for translation. It also means that it has been 14 months and 5 days since that dossier was shipped to China. Finally that means that it has been 13 months and 14 days since we were officially "logged in" in the long line of prospective parents anxiously awaiting their referral. But who's counting the days?...

On Friday, March 24th I saw that the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs had finished reviewing all dossiers logged in before August 31, 2005. (Apparently that was a huge hurdle for us ~ the CCAA never had to contact us to question anything and I've learned that there are often problems with paperwork. Guess we did a thorough job of getting our stuff together!) So since then we've been waiting to make it into "the matching room".

Anyway, I found some interesting information about what happens in "the matching room" online today.

First, they review the baby dossiers and make sure there are no issues with them. Parent dossiers were reviewed months before, baby dossiers are reviewed when they arrive and then immediately matched.

So now they have a stack of baby dossiers. They look to see how far this stack will go in the month without sending out a partial day and they pull all of those files. That is the likely cut-off date. Sometimes something happens and they don’t get this far. Sometimes something happens and they get farther.

Next they match orphanages up with agencies. This orphanage has six babies, this agency has six families. These two orphanages are in the same province and have a total of 12 babies, this agency has 12 families. When they are through with this is when (I believe) some agencies start to get information about the cut-off date.

And then they start matching individual babies to individual families. At some point during this part of the process most agencies hear from their person in the matching room to let them know how many referrals they will be receiving and from what province(s).
taken from chinaadopttalk.com ~ A review of what we know about the matching process

So there we are. Right now they have all the August dossiers in the matching room... On September 25 they made dreams come true for prospective parents "logged in"up to August 9, 2005. Will they make it to us later this month? Are there enough baby dossiers to give us happy news in the next two to three weeks?

Right now I'm singing, "Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match..."