China Adoption Journey – 2018

Adoption is something that I always knew was going to be part of my journey to build a family. I remember being very young, maybe 5 or 6, and first learning about the concept. A couple who lived next door showed up at our house, out of the blue, with the smallest newborn baby girl I had ever seen. They proceeded to tell the story of how they got the call and drove to the hospital to pick her up having NOTHING at home but a thermometer and a couple blankets. Even at that young age and having no real concept of how children were brought into the world, I knew I would adopt.

Fast forward a good thirty years and here we are. I am one and half years into parenting my third child, a son who joined our family through an international adoption from China. The story between baby Deanna first learning the concept of adoption and finding myself sitting in a cold hard room in a government building in Changsha, China is one that is covered in God’s grace and mercy.

In early 2018 and I was sitting in my office deep in the middle of strategic planning and my mind went completely blank except for one thought, ‘you have a child out there and you need to find them.’ When is say blank, I mean BLANK. Everything I was working on was gone, it was silence, and hands down the most intense, bizarre, and honestly terrifying thing that had ever happened to me. I tried hard to shake it off and blame it on the human brain being weird. But I could not shake it.

All day, every day, there was this little nagging voice in the back of my mind, ‘you have a child out there and you need to find them.’ Honestly, over time it became pretty distressing. All I could think was that if one of my girls was picked up and placed somewhere on this earth, I would burn the world trying to find her. All the while, I’m sitting here being told I have a child somewhere and I need to find them. How could I POSSIBLY find one specific child on this earth? Because mind you, I wasn’t being told “there are children out there that need homes.” I was being old, “you have A child out there.” Just one. Second to this terrifying notion that I was supposed to find one specific child in a world with 153 million orphans across 195 nations, is the fact that my husband and I already had two children. We had just built our “forever dream home” (2020 Deanna is laughing so she doesn’t cry at this notion) and felt our family was complete. So how exactly was I supposed to convince my husband that we should adopt a third child? Spoiler alert, it took no convincing. When I finally got up the courage to broch the subject he was very willing discuss and consider.

We began researching every type of adoption under the moon and putting pen to paper to determine how we could come up with 40 to 60 thousand dollars to make it happen. We prayed that God would open the doors that would lead us to our child and close those that where not right. Because we knew we could not do this with out some major help.

Within about six weeks we had decided that we were going to move forward. We knew a couple things at this point. We knew we would be moving forward with international adoption because we really felt called to those most at risk, those most in need. We also knew we wanted a little girl who was under 3 so we could maintain birth order. The only real things we were not open to from a special need’s perspective was significant mental retardation and major mobility issues. There were a few other minor things, including only wanting to travel once (oh the naivety…), a fast/stable process, and the obvious open to the US and had restrictions that we fell within. All this led us to China, we submitted our application on May 24th, 2018 and we were off (fullish timeline below for reference).

We started down the path of gathering data for our home study assuming we were in for an 18-to-24-month process as we were clearly told numerous times by agency. Of course, that isn’t how it worked out. Less than a month later we received a referral for a 10-month-old little girl with a congenital heart defect (TOF). After a medical review and a significant amount of prayer we knew we had to say yes. There is no way after being told we would wait at least a year for a referral for a girl under three, let alone less than a year, that we could walk away. It felt like God. He told us to jump and we had. At this point we were all in and counting on him to take to where we needed to be.

We submitted our LOI and started sprinting in an attempt to get to China as quickly as possible. After all, there a baby that needed open heart surgery waiting on us. So, by now, I am sure you are thoroughly confused because we obviously do not have a two-year-old little girl. A few months after our referral we received a call from our agency letting us know that she had passed away. To say we were devastated would be an understatement. We felt so helpless and in the following months struggled greatly to understand the “why”. Why would God do this? What was the purpose? What door was he shutting? What should we do now? Ultimately, what we decided to do was hit the brakes. We slowed WAY down and just worked through the home study process and a pace that felt comfortable. During this time, we decided to do a couple things. We decided to take some time to do more research on special needs. We wanted to get a better understanding of what special needs children who were placed for international adoption in China had. Mostly, we wanted to know if we should prepare our hearts for more death and heartbreak. We also decided to open up our home study to both boys and girls. By this point we had done more research and had our eyes opened to the prevalence of the preference for girls and really started questioning our own WHY.

To get a better feel for the special needs we might face we decided to sign up for one of the advocacy sites and really start looking at the waiting children. Up to this point we had avoided these sites, we were really hoping that God would place our child with us via a referral from our agency. We didn't trust ourselves. This, my friends, is where it all changed. On the sites, I put in our criteria; china and under three. One of the first little guys that popped up was Reece, known as Reed on the site and he was, hands down, the cutest little thing. I clicked the little heart icon to save his profile and showed him to my husband while making a comment that I wished we could find a little guy like him. The irony being that he was nearly the opposite of what we had originally stated we were open to, minus the age. A boy, with major mobility issues.

Fast forward a month of looking and researching and having his cute little face pop up every single time I logged. He was the only little one that we ‘liked’ the entire time we were on the site. After much stressing on my part my husband finally convinced me to ask our agency about him. I felt like it was completely useless as there was NO WAY he would still be available. But, long story short, we asked and though it turned out that he was with another agency they agreed to transfer his file to us. We were elated, and terrified. Of course, before they could transfer it he went back to the shared list, than vanished off it completely. Because OF COURSE IT DID.

Our agency requested the file from the CCAI and by the grace of God it landed in our hands. We submitted LOI and met him April 1st of 2019. Start to finish we were sitting right at 11 months from application to travel, with a final cost of right around the $40,000 mark.

Our journey to Reece had complete changed our lives. It is the best thing we’ve done, abet not the easiest, and we would do it all over again even with the mass uncertainty and heartbreak that came with it. The lessons we learned during the process have changes us for the better, our understanding of God, his mercy, and his want for our lives is so much more clear now. If you've been feeling the call to adopt I hope you act. God is faithful and he will pave the way for you. Don't be detoured by the hard, you can do it.

Good References for those planning to adopt from China:

Mine in China

Facebook - China Adoption Questions

Facebook – dtc support – china adoption

Facebook – china dossier and authentication help

Timeline:

5/24/2018 - Application Submission

5/30/2018 – Application Approval

6/14/2018 – First referral

9/27/2018 – Second Referral

10/3/2018 – Reed file lands in our inbox

11/1/2018 – Dossier in the mail/Certified/Authenticated LOI and LOP

10/10/2018 – LOI

12/12/2018 – LID

1/9/2019 – Adoption Agency Change

3/28 – Travel

4/1 – “family day”

4/9 – CA

4/14 – FINALLY HOME

If you have any questions at all I hope you'll reach out. I'd love to share more of our story and help in any way I can.