And baby makes Seven!

To what exactly am I referring to - seven and baby in the same title? Well, I'll tell you. After starting our international adoption from China more than 5 years ago, we're finally getting a baby girl! How did this happen? Well, let me tell you how it happened. I'll start with a short version of what prompted our decision back in 2007 to start an international adoption in the first place and then I'll move on to what's happening now with the adoption. In July 2006 I was doing a search for something (I couldn't tell you what) on the internet and ran across information about adoption from China. I read about the experiences of families that had already adopted or were in the process of adopting from China. Most of the babies available were girls and there were lots of healthy babies and people seemed to be getting fairly young babies - sometimes as young as 6 months. Vanessa at the time was about 6 months old and I really and truly wanted her to have sister. I also liked the idea that we could be a family for a little girl that needed one. I wasn't sure what Matt's reaction would be to this idea. I was expecting some resistance from him. Vanessa was so young and here I was talking about adopting another little girl. I had actually sent away for the application from the adoption agency and it came with an informational DVD but he didn't know about any of this. I asked him if he would watch the informational DVD from the adoption agency with me. We watched the 10 minute DVD and when it was over I asked him what he thought and he said maybe, let's talk about it. We talked and eventually agreed to do it but to wait until January before we started any of the paperwork. By February of 2007, our initial application to adopt had been approved and we started working on dossier paperwork that would eventually be sent to China where it would be kept by them until we adopted. Needless to say, to do a complete dossier is a long and complicated process. Even though the agency had broken everything down, it was so huge it took me a few weeks to feel ready to even start it but once I did, as long as I followed the directions I got it done. I worked on the dossier until August, when it was all approved and sent to China were it was logged in in September of 2007. We assumed that we'd wait 18 - 24 months to be matched with a baby. We'll you know what they say about assuming. We were wrong. Very, very wrong. The amount of time it was taking to be matched with a baby was growing so fast. We stayed hopeful. Our original home study and immigration paperwork was getting ready to expire so we went through the process of getting it renewed. Time passed and it was all getting ready to expire again. This time we let it expire. It was too expensive to keep everything current and the wait time was sooo long. During this time I got pregnant and then had a miscarriage at about 20 weeks. A little boy we named Joshua. About 4 months later I got pregnant again. This time the pregnancy was healthy, and we had a baby girl thatwe named Aimee. I think part of us had given up on the adoption ever happening. I don't remember exactly when, but I did suggest to Matt at one point that maybe we should switch from the traditional program ( no known special needs) to the waiting child program (special needs). You can specify what medical needs you are willing to consider but with Sam's heart problems our heart wasn't in and the discussion didn't go very far. I would've been okay with it but it's not something only one person can be up for. You have to be in it together. We really stopped thinking much about the adoption. It was definitely on the back burner. Then in July 2011, our social worker called out the blue and told us she was cleaning out her family files and she wanted to know what we wanted to do. I told her we were completely discouraged by the wait times and she suggested that we look into the waiting child program. I told her we would think about it and call her back. I told Matt what Terri (our social worker) had said. I was totally up for it. Matt had a harder time. I think he had long ago given up on the adoption and he was okay with the 4 great kids that we had. I got on our adoption agency's website and looked at the files of the waiting children that they had up. I thought we could consider a boy with a cleft lip/cleft palate. It seemed like there were lots of kids that matched that description - alot that were just around a year old. Matt said no, that if we did it we would get a girl, even if it meant waiting longer.

When I was looking again at the files, a new file was on the website, without a picture, but info about her. It said she had a malformed lower limb - we thought maybe a club foot. That was something we could do. The next morning there were pictures up. She was adorable and her foot did kind of look like it was a club foot. I showed it to Matt and he agreed that I should request the complete file. So I did, and they emailed it to me. We would have about 7 days to decide. During that time we needed to find a pediatric orthopedic surgeon to look at her. I did a little searching and found a doctor at Phoenix Children's Hospital named Dr. Lee Segal. I called he office and left a message with his nurse practitioner and sort of explained the situation on the message but I didn't get a quick response from them, so I tried making an appointment through the normal appointment schedulers. The first appointment wasn't for about 6 weeks. I was starting to get desperate. We tried several other people that we thought might know an orthopedic - any orthopedic to look at her file. Nothing! I just felt like I couldn't make a decision without talking to a doctor. Finally, Dr, Segal's office called back and Matt talked to his nurse and explained the situation. She said she's talk to the doctor and she'd see if she could get us a consultation. She did for a few days later. We asked how much the appointment would cost since we wouldn't be able to bill it to our insurance. She said it would be very expensive. Again she said she'd see what she could do. We went to the appointment and after looking at pictures of her and her leg for about 2 seconds, he said she has fibular hememilia. More severe than club feet. She's actually missing part of her fiba bone and two toes on her foot. It's a lengthy process to fix with no guarantees that the procedures will correct her foot although they could lengthen the bone in her leg out. He said that the other option is amputation. I lost it when he said that. He said, that the kids that have the amputation "fly" afterwards with the prosthetic. It was hard to hear, but we needed to. He said the prosthetic wouldn't slow her down. She'd be able to do anything. He didn't charge us anything for the visit. We felt like getting to meet with him and get the info we needed and to have no charge on top of that, was a miracle, an answer to prayer - literally. Once we had a chance to process the info he gave us, I felt like she was still the right baby for us. Matt came to the same conclusion and we told the adoption agency we'd like to adopt her. Her name is Dang Yu Lan or Jade Orchid in English. Her birthday in July 18, 2010. She is in Nanyang, Henan province in China. We found out she's in a foster family that is sponsored by our adoption agency and has been almost from the beginning. We now sponsor her foster care. We sent her a care package. We are working on getting our paperwork current. Our home study update is finished, now it's all about our US immigration paperwork. Slow and expensive. We don't expect to travel until Feb/March of 2012. We are really excited. It's agonizing to know that she's there, getting older by the day and we are stuck here doing paperwork. If I didn't have four other kids to keep me busy, I'd go crazy. I feel like she's the baby for us. It's strange to think that this process we started so long ago was for a baby that literally wouldn't be born for years! I know that there will be challenges but we're good parents and my guess is, is that she'll make us better parents. I'm literally praying that the miracle of quick paperwork processing will happen so we can go and get her but when it comes right down to it, I'm trusting in my Heavlenly Father's plan for her and for us. It's all good! I really feel that. I'm impatient for her to be here with us but I'm at peace about it. Does that make sense? We are waiting for baby to make seven!