Fight or Flight.

Just got the message today from The Agency saying that we will be DTC this Friday, July 14th. (They only send dossiers out once a week on Fridays.) I am hoping hoping hoping hoping that we will squeak out a July LID. I should be popping champagne and feeling very very happy that “all” I have to do now is Wait.

I am not sure what to feel, though, when the word from The Agency on wait times is 14-16 months. Even though RQ is still hanging on to a 12-month wait for referral, I imagine that no one really has any idea. No one’s even really mentioning the Beijing Olympics yet as a potential slow-down issue, but it has entered my mind that China won’t want the bad press associated with thousands of their orphans being sent away. How will they handle that? Or won’t it matter?

My point is that 2008 is suddenly looking like a real possibility for travelling to China for our daughter. Yikes. So, that brings me to this strange phenomenom that seems to be setting in…should we stay or should we go? I can’t even believe I’m writing that, on the one hand. I mean, we’ve just finished The Paperchase, and–since The Agency is a China-only one–we would be looking at starting from nearly square one if we were to make a switch to a different country/program.

On the other hand, believe it or not, we’ve done some research in the past week, called some other agencies. Because even if we were to start at square one, or nearly so, we would still end up with a daughter much, much earlier than we will if we stick with China. Aye, there’s the rub.

The appeal of switching to Guatemala, for instance, is that if I could re-do the paperwork that needs re-doing (just about everything, but the homestudy only has to be tweaked and the I-171 doesn’t need re-doing) in a month, then we would get an IMMEDIATE referral. Meaning, I would know who my daughter is in September. And then the wait is 4-7 months to travel. Like December-March. That shaves off (potentially) a year. A Year.

So, you can perhaps see why I sit here contemplating The Seismic Shift. Contemplating whether to fight the good fight and wait for the CCAA to stop its waiting-time-freefall, or flee to another program. Because I’m tired of waiting to be a mother. I should be better at this by now, after 12 years of infertility, but I’m not. It’s so tempting just to make it happen any way I can and not worry about being the good girl, who doesn’t want to upset her agency or piss anybody off. Because I’m changing my mind. Because I didn’t do enough research before signing with a China-only agency. Because I’m turning 40 in two months and don’t want not to be a mother. (Because double negatives are becoming a lifestyle choice lately. Ugh.)

Stay tuned for further tales of the misbegotten non-mother.