Our adoption process really began in earnest shortly after I
started my midwifery training. I am
currently doing the academic portion of my midwifery training through Midwife
to Be, an online/correspondence program headed by Lisa Aman, CPM. Midwife to Be, or MTB, participates in
mission trips to the Dominican Republic several times a year to both get more
hands-on experience with births and to provide needed equipment to the
Dominican nurses and midwives.
After Lisa’s church returned from a mission trip to Uganda,
she started working on setting up a midwifery-mission trip there. The minister’s wife whom they worked with is
a midwife at a hospital that delivers 20-30 babies every day. It is also located near an orphanage run by
the couple that serves over 600 orphans.
She said if people were interested in adopting one of the orphans from
Uganda, there would be opportunity to pursue that.
*PERK*
Adoption? We’ve
always wanted to do that. There was one
problem, however: I could be interested all I want, but I’m only HALF of the
parents in this family. What would Lashi
say? I figured he’d say what he usually
says about my great new ideas: no.
Usually, he’s right. If left
unchecked, I’d not only bring home half of the Ugandan orphan population, but
I’d also start 3 new businesses, buy a farm and a herd of milk cows and run for
office all at the same time, while learning to speak Arabic.
Can we say burnout?
So, I took a deep breath and told him about the trip and the
hospital, the birth opportunities, the orphanage and all the little kids –
probably very fast and all in one breath, but I can’t remember – and then I
waited for his response. He took his own
deep breath, looked me in the eyes very seriously and said, using his finger
for emphasis, “You are allowed to bring home ONE child. Do not even look at twins, sibling groups,
anything. I know they’re cute, but I
don’t care how cute they are. ONE
CHILD!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! He was ready to take the step and go for it
without a big to-do. I couldn’t even get
him to do things he really wanted to without at least some hemming and hawing.
I got to work searching out Ugandan adoption
requirements. Turns out, there were
several major problems. One was the residency
requirement. Though they “sometimes make
exceptions”, the Ugandan government requires a 3-6 month residency for foreign
couples wishing to adopt a Ugandan child.
We couldn’t move the whole family to Africa for that long. Lashi has work, the kids have school. If we left them here, who would take care of
them for that long? Would I be
travelling alone? No, that looked like a
problem. Bigger yet, though, was that I
found that many of the children in the orphanages are not true orphans, but
children from poor families who cannot care for them, but visit
frequently. I don’t think it would be
right under those circumstances to remove them from their family and
culture. There were many other
“variables”, such as the time a visa might take, if the child we’re working to
adopt becomes “qualified” at the right times, if the US would allow them in,
etc. Too many “ifs”.
I looked at intercountry adoption in general, using the
State Department website and calling all of the adoption agencies in town to
get as much information as possible. I
filled quite a few pages in a notebook and printed numerous charts and lists of
requirements.
Many countries had residency
requirements that we just could not comply with.
Many others had limits on the
number of children allowed in the family.
Even more had wait times that
were 3-5 years or longer!
In the end, the countries that “fit”, meaning they were
willing to deal with us and we were willing to deal with them were: Russia,
China and Ethiopia.
Both Russia and Ethiopia were fairly stable, but had had
some diplomatic issues in the past. Both
required two trips to the country.
Ethiopia has rampant AIDS, and although the children have to test
negative before leaving the country, not all cases are caught. Russia has a higher rate of children with RAD
(reactive attachment disorder) after placement.
China looked like a long shot. The income requirements looked very high:
$10,000 per year per family member, including the child to be adopted. That’s quite a bit if you’re a large
family. Second, the family has to have a
net worth of $80,000 or more to qualify.
I was just counting up our liquid assets, and it doesn’t come close. That worried me. Third, they disqualify anyone who has had a
history of depression. I was on
medication at the time for postpartum depression. I thought that would disqualify us.
Turns out I was worried for nothing. Income includes the benefits package (health
insurance, vacation time, etc.) which more than took care of that qualification. Net worth includes a lot more than I thought:
our home’s appraised value, our contents value (based on the insured amount),
and more! Finally, postpartum depression
is not a mental illness - which is what China frowns on – it is a situational
stress from a temporary hormonal state.
I was also ready to wean off of my medication (as the youngest had
weaned from breastfeeding a couple months before), so that was not an
issue.
Hooray!
Another issue with China is that because we have more than
four children, we are allowed to adopt only a special needs child. Uh-oh! Two of my siblings are “special
needs”, did NOT want to deal with that!
Lashi, wanting to make sure we had checked all of our
options off of the list, asked me to check out a couple other options first.
What about domestic adoption? There are tons of children in the foster
system that need adoptive homes. What
about them? I called Denver county,
because my mother said they had been so good to work with during my sister’s
adoption. They were very kind and
friendly, but the story was clear: all of the children available through the
county systems have serious issues from abuse, neglect, drug exposure, severe
medical needs, or a combination of those.
At this point in our lives, we cannot risk the well-being of our other
children on such a risky situation. I
know lots of kids that were adopted through the system, and their stories are
not pretty, their adjustments are not pretty, and many of them never are able
to recover from their past. We just
can’t go there.
What about domestic infant adoption? We actually had one agency that thought we
could get an infant within a couple years: A Act of Love. (Terrible, un-grammatical name, but I digress…) They were also very kind, optimistic, and
good to work with. However, they said
that about 7-10% of their birth mothers back out of the adoption AFTER the birth of the baby. That’s a pretty high risk. Also, quite a few babies are still special
needs or drug exposed.
So, the choice really came down to China or A Act of
Love. Act of Love was a sure shot –
eventually. We would someday have an
infant through that agency even if there was a lot of heartache and
false-starts in the process. China
adoption meant special needs for sure, but we could pick which special needs we
are open to! We discovered that “special
needs” in China means anything from serious medical problems to deafness or
even a red birthmark or prematurity.
Almost anything can get you put on the “special needs” list. Even some of the little ones on their
“special focus” list, which is for harder-to-place and higher-needs children
are all but perfect in my opinion! The
cost between Act of Love and China was about the same. We decided to give China a shot, and if we
did not meet the Chinese government didn’t accept our family’s qualifications,
we would still have Act of Love to fall back on, and that was an option we
could be happy with.
During this debate, I looked at the only two China-focused
agencies I could find: Great Wall China Adoptions and Chinese Children Adoption
International (CCAI). Both of them seem
like very good agencies, but every family I knew that had adopted from China
had worked with CCAI and had only the best, glowing reports about working with
them. There was a huge support network
here. Best of all: they were located IN
Colorado, just one hour drive from our home.
They also run the only Chinese Cultural center in the country, and were
the first Chinese Adoption agency in the US.
After talking to Joshua Zhong, director and founder of CCAI, and having
all of our worried alleviated, it was settled:
We decided to adopt a
special needs little girl from China through CCAI.
I called Hillary, the applications manager at CCAI, and she
sent us the information packet right away.
Our packet arrived within days by mail with a packet about
CCAI’s traditional China adoption program (healthy infant), another about the
Waiting Child Program (special needs), forms for getting started, an
application, schedule of orientation meetings, a DVD highlighting both the
agency and their charitable arm that funds orphanages and cleft palate
surgeries. I poured over all of it until
I had it nearly memorized.
I spent several days going over the Medical Conditions
Checklist. Because of my midwifery
training, I was familiar with many of the defects and conditions that were
listed on it, but I still had to look up some of them, like gastroschisis
(rather shocking to see the first time), and strabismus. After that, Lashi and I had to discuss each
condition and whether it was something we thought we could (or should) deal
with. We had the options “Yes”, “No”,
and “Maybe”. We discovered that I was
much more willing to say “yes” to conditions than Lashi was, but that came as
no surprise. We indicated on our sheet
that we are particularly interested in a little girl 0-18 months with hearing
loss of any degree.
I spent so long on the process of filling out the sheet that
we didn’t send it in for over a month.
Finally, I submitted both the Medical Conditions Checklist (MCC) and our
Family Information Sheet online, which put us in the waiting pool for a child
match.
The very next day a little girl’s profile was posted to the
Special Focus list on the website, meaning that she has languished in their
waiting files for months with no MCCs that match their conditions. Had I submitted our sheet earlier, she would
have been matched to us. She was a
perfect little 9 month old with [I remove the specifics of her condition here just to be on the safe side of CCAI policy. Needless to say, very minor conditions as far as we were concerned]– an absolute angel, gorgeous child. I called Lashi, who was still very concerned
about the amount of money that is due early in the process that we would not
have saved up for several months yet. I
called my grandparents, Jim and Vera Spain, who very sweetly gave us a loan of
$4,000 to get us started on the process.
I called Pam Rodriguez at CCAI, and requested the file for the little
angel. I was told that 20 other families
had requested her before us, but we were put in the queue. Pam said that sometimes the first family ends
up adopting the child, and sometimes they go through dozens who all turn the
match down. I could hope, but it was
slim.
One week later, Little Angel was matched to her family. It was bittersweet. I was happy for her – the whole point is for
the little ones to find their forever families.
But I mourned for the lost opportunity.
She would have been perfect for our family. I can only trust that there is another little
one out there who is the right match at the right time and is meant to be
ours. The other little girl I had been
considering was also matched to her family. [Again, removed her specifics. She did require more therapy and medical attention, though.]
Even though CCAI said that hearing loss is very seldom seen,
we have seen two children just on the Special Focus list with hearing
loss. Maybe
I never finished that thought back in September and I don't remember what I was going to say. I was so focused on the possibility of having a deaf or hard-of-hearing child that I didn't give much thought to the other conditions we had indicated on our MCC. Just goes to show - God often has different plans than we do and His turn out quite well.
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