Why Adopt?

My desire to adopt started about 21 years ago. I was sitting in Mr. Webb's world cultures class watching a video about China, particularly about the One Baby policy. I saw pictures of the little girls in orphanages and God planted a seed of desire in my heart to bring one of these girls home. Fast forward many years later and I marry a man who also has a desire to build our family through adoption. Needless to say, we didn't act on that desire right away, but it was always there. Our first son was born in July of 2000 and turned our lives upside down. I never imagined how much I would love that little guy (or how tired I'd be!). In April of 2002 we lost our daughter Abigail when I was 30 weeks pregnant. She was delivered by emergency c-section when it was discovered that she had a lot of fluid in her body, but the doctors were unable to save her. Our second son was born in Jan. of 2004. He came into this world tired and unwilling to eat. He's now an extremely energetic 6 year old with a very healthy appetite. After he was born we felt that we still wanted another child. My 4th pregnancy started out great. I felt good and an ultrasound at 18 weeks revealed that we were having another boy. The doctor did note that he was unable to see part of our son's heart and wanted us to follow up with a pediatric cardiologist, but I wasn't worried. I didn't think there was any way that God would allow us to go through the loss of another child. Two weeks later as I sat in the cardiologist's office I was confronted with the heartbreaking news that our son had a serious heart defect and would probably die. As any mother would, I cried uncontrollably and I begged God to heal our little boy. For the next 10 weeks our family was caught up on a rollercoaster of emotions that took a heavy toll on us. We were given so many conflicting reports about our son's health that I didn't know what to think. We went from believing he would die soon after to birth, to thinking he would be just fine after having surgery. A pocket of fluid which developed around his lungs was the news that made us realize we might not be getting the miracle we desperately wanted. Just like his sister, Noah was born at 30 weeks. He was quickly whisked away to the NICU and I wasn't able to see him until the next morning as they were getting ready to take him by ambulance to another hospital where he would have heart surgery. His surgery went as well as could be expected and he seemed to be holding his own the next day, but by that evening the doctors were having great difficulty getting his breathing stabilized. They tried several ventilators, but our Noah's lungs were too immature and we lost him at 3 days old. I honestly don't know how to put into words the heartbreak of losing a child. It's a grief that never goes away. It isn't my constant companion anymore, but when it comes it's just as strong as the day he died.

In the summer of 2007 Jon and I were able to take a much needed vacation together without the kids. One night Jon gave me a letter he had written. Unbeknownst to me, he had been thinking alot about adoption. As I mentioned before, Jon had always been interested in adoption, but he didn't have strong feelings about adopting from China the way I did. His letter explained that he was ready to start looking into adopting a little girl from China! We began researching adoption agencies and eventually chose A Helping Hand which is located in Lexington, Kentucky. We sent in an application which was accepted and in the fall of 2007 we began the "paper chase". For the next few months my mind was consumed with paperwork, our homestudy and images of a little Chinese girl who would become part of our family. At that time we knew that the Chinese adoption process had slowed down a lot, but we were unprepared for just how long it would take us to get a referral. Our dossier(a fancy name for all the paperwork we had to do) was logged in on May 28, 2008 and we began the process of waiting......