Wow, we have been going through a roller-coaster of changes for the past several weeks. Many situations has popped up with some unexpected exciting and bad news.
Let's get down to the nitty gritty.... we received a great news from our adoption agency that they found a deaf, ten-month old baby boy in Tianjin who would be a great match for us. We spoke with our adoption agency about him and everything. We received his file and everything looked good on paper. Our agency said that we could apply for pre-approval to get this boy. The pre-approval process is usually a lot quicker, which meant that we could possibly get him within six months. We filled out everything and sent our passport information. We were a minute away from submitting our final forms for pre-approval to China.
Then something came up. In fact, two things did. Our home study agency claimed that we would not be able to adopt the boy. Our expected child needed to be 6 months old first before we could submit the forms. We could get him within seven months after submitting. Mathematically, our newborn child would be 6 months old next in January 2016. Add seven more months... which is approximately summer 2016. Our adoption agency thinks there may be a loophole around this and could get the boy much earlier than we anticipate.
Second thing- we spoke with two adoptive families who adopted several deaf children from China and they strongly advised us to WAIT. To be realistic and practical, what's the rush? We are expecting our first child this summer and the first few months of parenthood is usually the hardest and we need to be thoroughly prepared for this before bringing another child in the picture. Adopting a child is different because most orphans usually come with potential additional emotional issues (i.e. attachment/attention issues or global development delays, etc). We need to be 100% prepared for the unexpected when it comes to adopting. The adoptive families shared their experiences with their adopted children and that they required a lot of time and attention to nurture and bond. They said if they were in my shoes, they would not be able to imagine raising a newborn baby while dealing with an adopted child in such a narrow time frame. With lots of ongoing discussions between us, we decided that the best and most rational thing to do was wait until our child is closer to one year old before proceeding with the adoption. Of course, we want everything to work out right away, but the timing of it all made a huge impact on our decision. We felt that this was the most practical route for our growing family.
How do we feel about holding off our adoption process until next year? Frankly, we have mixed feelings of disappointment and relief. We were truly "first-and-goal" away from getting this beautiful boy. It's a strange feeling knowing that he will not be ours at this point.... unless he is still available next year, then it's meant to be! Who knows. There are a lot of available deaf orphans in China and we know we will eventually bring one home. IT WILL HAPPEN. Just like this quote: "It might take a year, it might take a day, but what's meant to be will always find its way."
What will we do until then? We will continue fundraising and reaching out for various adoption grants. We received some awesome support from other adoptive families and we are excited to work closely with them. With sufficient timing and support, the stress factor will be lower and be able to truly appreciate and enjoy our upcoming introduction to parenthood.. plus the adoption journey.
We will not leave you out with our pregnancy process-- we will post about it soon! :)
Much love,
Brooke & Brian (and our little peanut in waiting)
