We have some exciting news! This will probably come as a shock to everyone, so find a seat. We normally wouldn't let all our family or friends know about something like this through the blog, but figured this was the best way to let everyone know without making a hundred phone calls. :)
We have decided to pursue an international adoption. Most likely through China.
What? How? When? What?! Are those the questions going through your mind right now? Yeah, us too for the past week and a half.
So here's the backstory:
It's no secret that Josh and I dealt with infertility for the first four years of our marriage. We had actually completed all the paperwork for adoption through LDS Family Services and were just waiting on a birth mother to pick us when we found out we were finally (and miraculously!) pregnant with M. We had prayed and prayed and prayed about pursuing adoption then and had really felt that was our answer. We were at peace with that decision. When we found out we were pregnant we were overjoyed, to say the least, but I also remember thinking, "Why did we have such a good feeling about the adoption then?" Then the pregnant misery took over and I really didn't think about anything else for the next several months. R came along quickly, surprisingly quick actually, and we figured our infertility problems were over. We never had any problems with it once we made the choice to have another baby, which is something I am VERY thankful for.
We knew we would have more children after M and R and we also knew that S would be our last pregnancy. But even as hard as that pregnancy was, I felt really sad that this would be our last baby. I have always said that if my pregnancies weren't so crazy hard and miserable I would have had more. I actually thought a lot about adoption throughout that pregnancy but I never mentioned it to Josh. I really thought it was just the hormones and everything making me a little crazy. Because, seriously, who thinks about adopting while they're super pregnant with their fourth? After S was born I thought even more about it, but again, I didn't bring it up to Josh. He would make comments about adoption quite often like, "There's always adoption. . ." or "The only way you'll get a sister is if we adopt." (This is what he would say to M when she would whine about not having a sister - haha.) So I actually thought he was thinking the same thing I was.
Apparently that was not the case though. I have been thinking about this a lot more over the past few months and decided that if this is something we were going to do we needed to get started at looking into it. Neither of us is getting any younger. So I said to Josh about two weeks ago, "You know, if we're going to adopt we'd better get started." He stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me like I was from another planet. If I'd known we weren't both thinking about this in the same way I would have used a little more tact and maybe brought it up a little more on the gentle side. Oh, well! I laughed, seeing his face, and I realized that we were not exactly on the same page in this. It only took him a few seconds to realize that I was serious. We talked about it for a little bit and I told him what I had been feeling. We immediately got on the computer and started researching, because he's pretty awesome like that.
After that night of initial research I came away pretty disappointed. China had always been the place I'd thought about in regards to adoption and to get a "healthy" baby from China could take anywhere from 3-10 years. Seriously? Hopes ---> dashed. We looked at some options to adopt domestically as well as other countries and agencies and decided to call it a night.
The next few days were spent with me trying to put this out of my mind while Josh, on the other hand, did pretty much nothing but research. I tend to be a pessimist about things and knowing that we did not want to wait three or more years, I figured that this was just not going to happen. Josh tends to be the optimist (so annoying) and figured he'd just have to work harder to find a solution. Yeah, he's pretty awesome. We talked it about (in private - not in front of the children) for the next week and threw around the idea of other countries and stuff but it never felt right. Then he found an agency here in Texas that offers international adoption and we found out about their Chinese program. We requested more information and found out that we could probably get a child from China with special needs in approximately 12 months. Hopes ---> welcome back! We both prayed about it and felt really good about going with them.
They have several different levels of what is considered special needs and the families can specify at what level they are willing to adopt. It's basically a list of children that have been deemed "unworthy" for the healthy list by the Chinese government. This can be for something as small and insignificant as a birthmark or scar or something more serious but fixable like a cleft lip or palate or both. Age is also a factor so there are a lot of healthy older children on the list. There are also children with much more serious needs on the list - anything you could probably think of. The reason it takes so long for a so-called "healthy" baby from China is that the Chinese government picks the child for you and it takes a long time to go through the bureaucratic red tape. With the special needs program the agencies are sent a list of the kids that the Chinese government puts together of their "undesirables" (what a crock!) and the agencies are able to give the families a choice and help place the kids with families. That takes a lot less time. China also only requires one trip to the country, for about two weeks, which is definitely a plus since some countries require 2-3 trips of 30 days or more each!
So that's where we are right now. We've told the kids and our parents. The kids are very excited - especially M. The likelihood of getting a girl is very high and that's definitely what she's hoping for. Mama too. We've applied for passports for all the kids in hopes that we'll be able to take the whole family to China to pick up the baby when we go. We've filled out all the paperwork and pulled together the documentation. We've done all the financial figuring and transferring of funds. We're gearing up for the home study to be done sometime within the next two months, hopefully. We know that nothing is definite at this point other than the fact that we are going to pursue this. It's going to be a lot of waiting and trying to be patient. It will definitely be a long and arduous process but we feel really good about this decision.
I think the reason we felt so good about adoption the first time around is that Heavenly Father wanted us to know that it was right for our family. We just didn't realize that He meant 12 years later. . . now.
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