Beginning the journey

About a month ago I alluded to the fact that we were pondering great, big, deep things. That I needed some time to digest and think it through without the blog. But since it is now official (meaning that we have sent money in), I can share our deep ponderings. We are planning to add to our family through adoption. While much is uncertain, I can share what I know at this point and how we arrived at this decision.


You might be wondering why we are choosing to adopt. And since we are planning to pursue adopting a special needs child, I know there will be additional questions. There are a lot of reasons that go into this. And because I understand you have questions, I will try to answer some of the ones I have heard already. Hopefully I am successful.


Why add another child, you already have 3 children?

ANSWER: While that is true, we have 3 beautiful children. Andy and I have always talked that we would like 3 or maybe 4 children. And have felt recently that our family is ready for another. For us, it is not about the inability to conceive. I am sure that if we wanted we could conceive another child. But we are choosing to add to our family through adoption. I think that the idea of adopting started when I was running after school programs in Cincy. I saw so many foster kids come through. They would be with us for a couple weeks. Then gone. Sometimes back again. I just knew that if they were rooted in just one home with love these kids would flourish. Andy and I talked then that we would be interested in fostering children or adopting down the road. Then we moved to China and the idea was put on hold. But the idea came back again. And again.

Why adopt from China?

ANSWER: The first easy answer to that is we are here. As we prepared to move here, we were still talking about the possibility of adopting. Much as we had been led to China in Andy's job, we also felt the pull to look at adopting from China as well. Over the last year Andy and I have both felt the desire to adopt from the country that is our current home.


Why are you considering/pursuing special needs?


ANSWER: This is perhaps the hardest question to answer. Each child that is adopted is in fact a special needs child. They will need extra love and care. They will possibly have medical issues that are unknown. And if we had a biological child with special needs, we would be walking that road and giving that child all that we have to offer. But as we have felt that we want to pursue adopting, I have felt from the beginning that we should at least be open to a special needs child. During these past months Andy and I have both moved from just being open to special needs to seriously considering it to deciding that it most likely the path we will take.

I know that this has probably just whetted your appetite for more information. But hopefully this gives a little insight into our some of our reasons. And the next big question is:

How long will the adoption take?


ANSWER: This is also a hard one to answer. Our timeline is going to be different from someone waiting in the US. But I think that the overall process should be about 18 months to 2 years. A lot of this will depend on how long it will take to gather our paperwork (an added challenge for us doing it from the other side of the world). But overall there is a lot of uncertainty about the time and there will be a whole lot of waiting.