Searching for Our Sven (or Sveja)

A friend of mine asks me every now and then if I've found "Sven," her nickname for my Chinese son.  She had nicknames for both her kids when she was pregnant so she could refer to them as something other than "the baby."  Since we talk so much about adoption with each other, she took the liberty to give our future child a nickname.  I happen to love the name Sven, so I don't mind. Just to cover our bases, I added the name Sveja in case we have a girl. 

I feel like we're going to be searching for Sven forever.  Like we'll continue to talk about and imagine this mystery child, but never learn who he actually is.  Sven and Sveja are just place-holder names, but they represent an actual child living on the other side of the world.  I want to be able to say, Sven, Sveja, we're coming to get you. 

When we started this process, I thought receiving a referral was going to be straight-forward.  We would send our dossier to China and then sit back and wait for the next month's release of files from the shared list.  Each month started with hope, nervous energy and excitement and then ended in disappointment. 

I don't know what it was about the disappointment of this latest shared list release on Monday that nearly did me in.  It was totally unexpected when the CCCWA announced that they were releasing another list since the least release had been only two weeks ago.  Since the beginning of the special needs program, China only released new files once a month, so this really was an absolute surprise.  However, due to the short time between releases, we knew the list was going to be small, most likely really small.  I learned later it contained roughly 30 files and were all locked in less than five minutes by social workers representing adoption agencies around the world.  Even though the chance of receiving a referral was a long shot, when I got the "no match tonight" e-mail, I broke down and cried for a long time.  It felt impossible to think about enjoying the view from the top of the ferris wheel when I felt like ours was broken with us stuck at the bottom. 

Throughout this process I have continuously checked in with our agency as they awaited files from their partnership orphanage.  We also reviewed the files of a couple of kids on our agency's Waiting Child list.  The kids either had medical needs greater than Chris and I knew we were prepared for, or had files with vague and/or conflicting medical information or enough gaps that the information that was there really told us nothing. With no match from the shared list or our agency, I kept searching.

I joined a number of advocacy groups on Facebook and learned of other waiting children not listed by our agency.  The folks I have met on these groups have given me crash courses in medical needs I had never heard of before pursuing adoption from China, shared their experiences of life after adoption and connected me with medical specialists or even volunteers who've visited the orphanage where a particular child lives.  Despite all these resources, I've quickly learned that even if one of these children is our Sven or Sveja, we'll probably never get to them because they're listed with a different agency.  As the shared list has been getting smaller, adoption agencies have been forming partnerships with specific orphanages who agree to send files directly to them.  The CCCWA has also started sending "designated files" to agencies, who then try to match the child with a family already working with them.  

In order to adopt a child with a partnership or designated file, there are a couple of options, none of which are really going to work for us. 

1. Identify the child you want to adopt first and then sign up with the agency who has that particular child's file.  Obviously that ship has sailed for us.
2. Identify a child and switch to the agency holding the file.  I would consider doing this, but the few children I have followed up on already had interested families who were already signed with the agency holding the child's file.  I'm not going to switch agencies unless I can be assured that we will be able to match with this child.
3. Convince the other agency to transfer the file to your agency.  They'll only do this if they don't have a family from their own agency seriously interested in the child.   
4. Stalk the shared list. If children aren't matched either the night new files are released, or through a orphanage partnership or designated file, they land on the shared list, which social workers from any agency can access.  Our social worker checks the list daily to see if any children pop on the list who match our criteria.  Advocates will often announce on Facebook that a child's file is about to go back to the shared list or somehow can look at the shared list themselves, so I'm gone back to our social worker and have asked her to search for a particular file.  Unfortunately, the files of younger children with minor and correctable needs are locked almost as soon as they come back on the list.  

I'm not sure what our next move is going to be aside from keeping our fingers crossed that our Sven or Sveja is among the files released next month.  I've been feeling so emotionally exhausted that there are times when I wonder if it would be better if we just quit.  I feel hopeless wondering if we're ever going to find him or her or even how we'll do that.  But what keeps me going is the belief that Sven or Sveja is out there.