When we decided to adopt our daughter from China we had no idea of the roller coaster ride we had signed up for. Looking back on the experience I think if someone had told me what it would be like I may have had second thoughts. Of course that is a lot like pregnancy and childbirth. Once you are into it you are pretty much committed and in for the long haul.
Our adoption was different than most because we were adopting child number seven. The five other families that we traveled to China with had no biological children. When we had made the decision to adopt our daughter we contacted an international adoption agency in Utah.
I just did a Google search for international adoption agencies and they came up. They were closest to us so I went through them. When I called them I was almost apologetic about wanting to adopt a baby. I explained that we were probably too old but were really wanting to give a little girl a home.
The adoption agency worker assured me we were within the age limits and sent me the papers to sign and the list of about 100 things to complete. When I say 100 I may be exaggerating by about one or two but that is the truth.
After contacting the international agency we had to contact our local adoption agency to do our homestudy. I called Catholic Social Services because there were no other agencies listed. We ended up paying about $2,000.00 more than we needed to because they did not tell me DES would do a homestudy for a fraction of their cost.
It took us six months to complete our list of things to do. The biggest time factor is waiting to get documents, finger print checks, visas, etc returned to you. If you make a mistake it just makes it a longer process.
We turned our dossier in February of 2004 and I became pregnant. I mean that too, I ate everything in sight and gained as much weight as I had with my first biological child! We were all very excited and waited very impatiently for our baby girl.
Seven months later we got our referral. A referral is your daughters' picture and a brief bio about her. When we got the picture on the internet I immediately burst into tears and fell in love with the sad looking little girl in the picture.
At this point you wait some more for your permission to travel. The authorities have to get everything organized for your travel and ok it all with your child's orphanage. We got our permission on October 15th that we would be traveling the 25th of October. That gave us time to organize our kids and prepare for our trip to China.
When you travel to China you must stay for two weeks to wait for your daughters visa and all the necessary paperwork to make the whole transaction legal.
We spent the first three days sight seeing without actually seeing anything! I still don't know how they expected us to get involved in sight seeing when our babies were waiting for us just a few miles away.
The third day they told us to get in the van we were going to pick up the babies. We were all ushered into a big office room and stood around waiting for our daughters to be brought in. As the directors came in each with a baby in their arms we were all just silent.
The girsl began screaming as soon as the first one was placed in a strangers arms, and the rest soon joined in. Not to brag but our daughter was the only one who did not cry. She was stoic right from the start and just stared and stared at us.
I knew her the minute she came in the door. She had on the same little knitted red sweater she had been wearing in her referral picture and the exact same expression. They called our name and I went forward to take her. That night at dinner another mom asked me how it felt compared to having a biological child. I told her the feelings in my heart the minute they placed that baby in my arms were the exact same feelings I had for each and every one of my other six children.
Our adoption was a roller coaster ride for sure. But it was a ride that I would line up for again and again given the chance.
Roblynn Neumann and her husband live with their two youngest daughters in Costa Rica where they own and operate a study abroad massage school. She also has a blog site where she shares her stories about families and adventures of living abroad. http://www.hotmomsrus.blogspot.com