The Pause Button

The Court session has ended for the day in India and with that their month long summer vacation begins and our hopes for bringing our daughter home has been paused.

This last leg of the process has been difficult for me. Maybe it is because I am accustomed to being in the know about upcoming dates and deadlines and that just has not been the case with this adoption. Maybe it is because my heart breaks each time our son says "when Mimi come home?"

Maybe it's because our home suddently feels very empty without her. Even though she has not been in her actual home where we live yet she has been in our hearts and we all know that home is where the heart and so in that sense I guess she kinda is home, which makes it hurt all the more that we cannot hug her.

No news is good news?

So I just talked to my agency and was told that all they know is that our case has been before the court's scrutiny body that reviews adoption papers before it goes before a judge since January 2008, which is right about 3 1/2 months from when we received our NOC (and were initially told that we should pass court in 2-3 months (with no guarantee, of course)).

The courts close in 16 days from today for a month and that makes all the difference of our daughter coming home in the summer or the fall, or later still (GASP)!

This is a very different experience for us than our Ethiopian adoption as we were always told upcoming dates which allowed for some understanding of where we were in the process and how long before we began the run toward the next hurdle.

The caseworker tried to make me feel better by saying that pregnancies take 9 months so at 6 months waiting I'm doing okay. I responded "but at least with a pregnancy you have a due date."