Why adoption? Why China?

Shortly after my husband and I were married we sat in a small cozy booth of a nearby restaurant and wrote down what our goals, hopes, dreams were for our life together. A big part of the equation was kids. We both knew that we wanted kids and, while dating, had been surprised to find out that we were both interested in adoption. We thought we would have our first child the old-fashioned way and adopt our second child. After that we hoped to have another biological child and adopted child in no particular order.

A short while later, Jack was born.
And a very short time after that (6 months to be exact), we were pregnant with Logan. The boys are 15 months apart to the day.
So it's not exactly what we thought would happen. But a very good start none the less.

About a year after Logan was born, we started doing some very basic adoption research. I've always loved to travel...to meet new people, experience new cultures with all their unique food, music, language, dress. To me, it always seemed natural that we would adopt internationally. We looked at several countries...in my usual form I made charts and thoroughly compared every last detail. After all was said and done, China was the clear winner. And then I began my research into China. And the more I found out, the more I liked what I was learning about China and adoption from China.

Now, we can’t imagine not adopting our daughter from China. We want a daughter and our sons need a sister. There will be a little girl in China who needs a family. Though initially separated by thousands of miles, she will belong to us and we will belong to her.

Unfortunately, it took me a lot longer to put together our dossier (the 3 inch set of documents sent to China to notify them that we are interested in adopting from their country) than I anticipated. And the longer it took me, the longer the wait grew to adopt from China.

When we started researching the current wait for a NSN (non-special needs) referral from China was approximately 21 months. I arbitrarily added some time (9 months) thinking between the paperchase and the increasing wait time it would probably be 2 1/2 years before we had our daughter at home. That timing seemed perfect for our family. However, it took me a lot longer to put our dossier together and I hadn't taken into account the serious backlog. At this point it could very well be 8 years before our daughter is home.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says, “An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break.” We have a long (and probably tangled) wait until we find our child on the other end of the red thread but we know she'll be worth it.