Starting the Process

Kelsey and I have decided to adopt a baby girl from China! We are so excited. It has taken many years, but finally the parenting bug hit us.

You probably have many questions. So do we. Here are some answers:

What can we do? (I had this at the bottom, but it really is the most important question.)
Pray. Pray. We are nervous to finally be parents at our old age. And we are nervous about the mental and physical health of our baby. Everything we hear is that babies adopted from China are generally very healthy. But, as there is no record of their family's medical history and they are raised for about a year in an orphanage...you never know. So, please pray that the girl God has for us will be "healthy as a horse." :-)

China? Why China?
When we started thinking about adoption we quickly ruled out a domestic adoption for several reasons. The most compelling reason is the possibility (likelihood) that the birth parents and our child would connect some time in the future. I don't think I could handle suddenly having to share my child with another parent in the future. The vast majority of children adopted from China are baby girls abandoned by their mothers (and fathers). This is mainly due to the government's "one-child" policy and centuries of the culture valuing boys over girls. (For instance, traditionally elderly parents are taken care of by their son and his wife. If a couple has no son - due to the one-child policy - they will have no one to take care of them when they are old.) This has led to as many as 200,000 to 300,000 babies abandoned in China each year. These children will likely grow up in orphanages and get only a 5th grade education.

Ok, a baby girl from China. When!!?
The whole process takes about a year. The three main parts are:

1. Prepare the mountain of documents, including a home-study by a social worker - 4-6 weeks.
2. Send the dossier to BCIS (formerly INS) and wait for approval to bring a foreign born child into the country - 4-6 months.
3. Send all of it off to China and wait for a "referral" of a child - 6-8 months.

It could happen as quickly as some time near the end of 2005. That would be awesome. More realistically, it will be early 2006 when we bring her home.

Well, that's not much longer than a pregnancy. But, how old will the baby be when you bring her home.
We would like her to be as young as possible. We'll request a baby under 12 months old. Most likely she will be 10-14 months old when we come home.

Come home!? Are you going somewhere?
Oh, yeah. We will be traveling to China to pick her up. When we receive the referral we will have about 6-8 weeks to make travel arrangements and head over to China. We'll be in a group of 5-10 other adoptive parents. The whole trip will take about two weeks while we receive the child then process her outbound paper work in China. We had always wanted to visit China anyway. We'll just be coming home with more precious cargo than souvenirs.