First Adoption Referral Part 2

by BooParry | Jan 26, 2013 | Adoption, Key

Continued from Part 1…

I forgot to mention that our decision for this first referral had to be made within 36 hours from the time we received the file. We had no time to waste.

I prayed and prayed and prayed some more that night. When I sent out a prayer request earlier that day to my close friends, a dear lady who is a mentor to me replied and said, “I am praying right now that you would absolutely know…that God would make it clear to you yes or no and that you would have peace.” I kept repeating the same prayer. I felt so much in the “gray,” which was so different from what I had expected to be feeling at this point. There was so much “unknown” – how much medical care will be needed for her genital condition? Will she require lifelong special care (such as special diet) as a result of her condition? Was there an underlying issue to her very small size?

Before going to bed, I was reminded that my focus should not be so much on the answer to my prayer, but that I will continue to TRUST in God’s goodness and faithfulness. He has guided us every step of the way so far, and He will not fail us now. He will not allow us to make the wrong choice.

My youngest woke up to use the bathroom at 2am, and I was not able to go back to sleep after that for 2-3 hours. However, more confirmation kept coming to me during the time I stayed awake.
-Despite considerable amount of money we paid to have her file medically evaluated, despite seeing her pictures, despite her birth date, saying “NO” would not be all that difficult for me. However, saying “YES” would be done with a lot of hesitation.
-One thing I did have peace about is that even if we don’t accept her file, another family will adopt her very soon.
–TRUTHFUL was my word for the year. I needed to do what was true & best for our family, regardless of how harsh this may seem to other people.
-I also prayed for Allan and I to be in agreement by the following day.

In the morning, I found another confirmation. I received an email from a local pediatrician who reviewed her file, and she repeated all of our concerns and red flags. She said we would be looking at some intensive testing/therapies for at least the first year and beyond. Before I even read this email to Allan, when he woke up, I began by saying, “So what I’m thinking is…” I paused. He jokingly said, “We go get her and then another one too?” I asked him, “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?” He smiled and said, “Yeah. At this point, there are too many unknowns for our family to take on this child.”

We thought this was the end of it. We were about to head out to yet another birthday party, when our adoption agency emailed us with updated measurements of this child (I had asked for this the night before, when the doctor we had spoken with mentioned this would be helpful information to have). It was incredible and very much unexpected that our agency was able to get her updated measurements so soon. We quickly forwarded this new information to both the international clinic doctor and our local doctor.

They both responded to our email during the birthday party. The international clinic doctor was more hopeful now – she was pleased with the growth of this child in the last six months. The update also included more insight into her genital condition, which still seemed to be correctable with a minor surgery. She still wasn’t sure why this child was so short, so she repeated that some testing would definitely be required when she arrived to the U.S.  The local doctor was not as optimistic. She felt that there still might be a possibility of underlying condition that we don’t know about.

We sent an honest email to our agency on where we were. We mentioned that if possible, we would like to see her ultrasound before we decide. However, if another family would like to adopt her in the meantime, we did not want to keep them from doing so. Our agency said an ultrasound before committing was most likely not possible.

In the end, it had to be decided between Allan and me. It had to be our decision and nobody else’s. Allan said it best: “What’s odd is that we’re both not excited about this at all. If we accept this child, we’d be doing so because we couldn’t find big enough reason not to, not because we feel really drawn to this child.” I couldn’t have said it better. This was not our child; this was someone else’s.

We sent our final decision email to our agency. It didn’t really hit us hard at first. The 36 hours flew by, and we were glad to be done. We learned a lot in the process! Next morning though, I could tell that Allan was in emotional turmoil. It wasn’t regret, but he simply felt bad for turning down the file. I was surprisingly feeling OK. We went to church, and our friends immediately crowded us, asking us what we had decided on. When I first had to say it out loud (I had previously sent my friends texts of our decision, but this was the first time speaking our decision out loud), I began to choke. Then, during worship, I began to sob, and sob, and sob… I cried out for this child…for her to find her home soon…for her to feel safe in God’s love. I prayed for God’s favor and protection over her life.

We still don’t feel regret. We have peace that we made the right decision for our family. But every year, on my birthday, I will think about this little girl from China, named Yuanchun. I will think of her and say a prayer of blessing over her life.

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First Adoption Referral Part 1

by BooParry | Jan 25, 2013 | Adoption, Key

For those of you who may not know, the holiday season is extra crazy for our family. There’s Christmas, of course, then myself, Allan, and our youngest daughter have our birthdays almost back to back right after Christmas. Our oldest daughter’s birthday quickly follows in early January. We had a dual birthday party planned for our girls on the afternoon of January 4^th. THANK GOODNESS party-planning is not one of my strengths. I had planned from a while back that I would hold their party at a place that will take care of everything for me (venue, food, craft, and even cake). If I had planned to do it all at our house, in light of what took place a few hours before the party, it may have never taken place this year.

The girls’ party was planned for 3:30pm. At 12:43pm, I received a phone call. I didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t answer. Then it immediately hit me – I do recognize the area code…it’s our adoption agency! Before I could answer, the call was sent to voice mail. My heart started beating fast. We had JUST received our log-in date on Christmas Day (what that means is we’re officially in the China system as an eligible family for adoption). Our agency told us to not expect to hear from them for at least a couple of months. There were many families waiting ahead of us, and the time frame for the matching process was now averaging around 3-6 months.

I listened to the voice mail message. My prediction was right – it was our agency, and she had a file for us. I called her back right away. The first thing she told me was the child’s birth date. My heart skipped a beat. Now, I must give you a bit of a background on this. As I said at the beginning, all four members of our family have our birthdays close together. It was my secret desire for our adopted child to have a birthday close to us as well. But I knew I didn’t want that to influence our decision – I wanted it to be more of a confirmation after a decision has been made. I had thought about asking our agency to not tell us her birth date…but of course, I had forgotten to make that request known. Back to our phone conversation. She told me that this child had just turned two on December 28^th. That’s why my heart skipped a beat. That was my birthday. No. Way. God, does this mean she is ours?

Next few hours were a whirlwind. I don’t remember if I even took a minute to sip water for myself until later that night. Allan came home, we looked over the files and pictures, we called people we can think of who can give us insights (other adoptive families, medical professionals, Allan’s stepmom who is a retired nurse, etc.) – all this while trying to get ready to head to the girls’ birthday party! It was quite an afternoon to remember.

I can’t reiterate enough – I am so thankful that we hired everything out for their party. I was able to pause my mind on the adoption (to the best of my ability) and focus on celebrating our two girls at their princess tea party. It was a blast.

What we knew at this point about this girl (other than her birth date) was that her special need was a genital condition…oh, and she had an extra toe:)  From the few people we talked to so far in the medical field, it seemed that her special need was correctable with a minor surgery, although it would be hard to know exactly until she was carefully examined by a specialist. On our drive home from the birthday party, I remember Allan and I saying to each other that so far, we have not come across any reason to say no to this file. Was this really going to happen – so much sooner than we had expected!?

After the girls went to bed, we talked some more with Allan’s parents. They were so helpful and encouraging. They did reiterate that an ultrasound would be helpful to determine the extent of her medical need. We then received a phone call from the International Adoption Clinic (we had paid for a rush-order a few hours back for a medical doctor to review her file). She was very helpful as well. She had similar opinion as others on the genital condition. But she brought something else to our attention that we never noticed. “She is really, really small for her age.” At first, it didn’t alarm us at all. We were used to hearing this about both of our girls, especially our youngest. At one time, we were recommended to bring her to a geneticist to make sure that there was nothing wrong with her (thankfully she gained a few more pounds before the appointment and we were allowed to cancel). So to hear that she’s small was nothing alarming to us. Thinking back though, this was coming from a medical doctor whose main career involved reviewing adoption files, most of them from China. She out of all people knew how typical it was for children brought up in orphanages to be smaller than average. Yet she was still concerned about her size. She recommended that we compare her size to the size of our daughters at that age. At this point, she said she would consider this child more in the “moderate” side of special needs than “minor”.

After we hung up the phone with her, I pulled out the growth chart of our youngest daughter (the one who was referred to a geneticist). According to the doctor, this girl’s size (at 18 months) was the size of a very small 9-month-old. She was absolutely right. Our daughter’s size at 9 months was almost identical to this child’s size at 18 months. I shared this finding with Allan. I then saw his countenance and heard his voice change. “Wow. Really?” was all he said. It was as if a brick had hit us hard.

To be continued…

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