[flowerchildA]

What is the youngest age baby you can adopt in China?
Why is the wait sooo long? We are willing to wait...we have a new baby from Kazakhstan...but we are looking into China next.
Thanks!

[Trace7]

You can request as young as possible from China, but generally - when you request that - the baby will be anywhere between 6 -13 months at referral, and you get the baby about 6-8 weeks after referral. The youngest I have seen from China in the past few years at referral has been 5.5 months, but that is not very common. Most seem to be between 10-12 months at referral. Our baby was 11.5 months at referral and had just turned 13 months when we got her - and she is the absolute perfect age for us. I have also seen those requesting as young as possible getting a referral for a baby between 18 months and 3 years old - and even slighly older than that - and that is not in the waiting child program - so it is possible that you might get an older child that you are expecting.

Nobody is exactly sure why the wait is so long. We are told that there are not enough "paper-ready" babies available for international adoption and that domestic adoption in China is on the rise - but who knows. All we know for sure is the wait is currently 24 months and is growing steadily each month, and has been for the past two years.

[KarenInCa]

Our first daughter was 14.5 months at referral, and 16.5 months when we got her, and she was also perfect for us too, Trace. It almost feels magical.
No matter what age- 6 months to 24 months, there's so much "baby" left in them, that many people wanting a baby-baby find themselves pleasantly surprised.
China considers all children 24 months and younger, to be babies. When you make a request, the CCAA matchers use many variables. From what I understand, each matcher has a group of children to choose from, all within a certain Province for the agency they're matching. Then from that group, I've been told that they narrow it down according to compatible astrological signs, & Chinese zodiac signs. Then they look for facial similarities, so you will often find that the child looks similar to one or a combination of both of the parents. Our daughter is a Scorpio and a Monkey...DH is both Scorpio and a Monkey too, so they have very similar personalities and wit. But she looks more like me. Sometimes I feel as if they saw my baby pictures when they were matching us.
I've even been told that the Matcher also looks for similarities between the parents' hobbies and a particular specialty known to the people from your child's region. And then, of course, the age requested is attempted. However, if all the children the Matcher has to choose from, are between 9 and 18 months, then obviously 'as young as possible' is relative to that. And it's my thought that the age of the child (although taken into consideration) is less important to them than compatibility. Many people that request AYAP receive a child that's a toddler, and many that request a toddler receive a very young baby (6-9 months old).
All in all, they do a wonderful job matching though. And most people that I have kept in contact with, have pointed out how well the family 'fits'.
As for time delays, there's a lot of speculation, and good reasoning behind all of it. It could be because of the Olympics coming up in 2008, in China. It could be because of more domestic adoptions being promoted in China. It could be because of less abandoned children (possibly more birth control used or more abortions). It could be because China is seeing an imbalance between girls and boys in China, now that the first generation with the one child policy is growing up.
It's also speculated that after the matches have taken place from those with a LID of April 07 or earlier, matches will start to speed up again, because new regulations for adoptions went into effect as of May 07, so there's expected to be a sharp decrease in requests/referrals after that. With our first daughter, we expected to wait 6 months, as that was the norm. We got her referral after 10 months. Now the wait is 24 months and many people expect the wait to go to 36-40 months before it starts to trend back down again. I'm still of the thought that it will max out at 28 month waits, but that's slowly climbing.

[Couchkat]

Ours was one of the youngest at the time we traveled. 8 months at referral, almost 10 when we met.