The Long and Winding Road

I've heard people say that the best of intentions do not matter when God has other plans for you. How true that statement was for our journey to Baden.

On November 28, 2005 we turned in our application to WACAP to adopt our second child. The plan was to pursue the non-special needs route again for a girl. It had been very clear to us from our first night with Savannah that her personality was that of an oldest child, and our plan was to stick with a child younger than her. When we adopted Savannah we waited 7 months from the time our dossier was logged in at the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) in Beijing to actually receiving our referral. To us that seemed an eternity, though not long before that the wait had been so much longer due to SARS. As we began the paperchase for #2, getting our fingerprints done again at the police station, answering the questions for the social worker interview and gathering all the letters of recommendation and other paperwork together the wait began to creep up. First the wait was 7 - 9 months, then 10 - 12, 12 - 16 and continuing to creep up from there. One of our travelmates from Savannah's adoption happened to be the head of WACAP's China program and I finally asked her what she though the wait would end up being. Her response was that if they were to begin the process for #2 at the same time she would tell her husband to be prepared for a wait of 3 - 3 1/2 years. Ugh. My mom and her sister are four years apart, and though they get along now as adults they weren't necessarily close as kids. With a wait of 3 1/2 years and the child being approximately 1 year old at Gotcha there very well could be more than 4 years between Savannah and our youngest. Neither Scott or I wanted that much of a difference between our kids. As the months ticked by it was soon March and we were getting to a point where we needed to make a decision and commit. Just when it looked like a door was a closing, a window began to open up. WACAP had announced that they were launching a new Vietnam program and that they were looking for "pioneer" families.

We talked about it and Vietnam didn't seem like a real stretch ethnicity wise for our family. My sister has three children, all who have been adopted from Asia. My two nephews were both born in and adopted from Korea, with our extended family we had Filipino as well. So we made the choice to pursue adopting from Vietnam. Thankfully a good deal of our China dossier transferred over to meet the documentation requirements for Vietnam. After obtaining a few more required documents we were the first family accepted into their Vietnam program. The only problem was that the program still hadn't cleared all the hurdles because of ethics issues involving provincial government where WACAP hoped to be working. WACAP had already implemented the charitable causes that the Vietnamese government was requiring, there were just a few issues to work out for final approval. Each month we'd hear "any time now," knowing that the WACAP staff was just as frustrated as we were.

Finally it looked very close and we were told to go get finger-printed with the US Customs & Immigration. Scott and I took a chance and drove to Yakima, in South Central Washington, to the USCIS office that handled fingerprinting rather than wait for an appointment in Seattle. That was July 2006 - eight months after we'd turned in our initial application. Once we received approval from USCIS the clock began ticking. Though our fingerprints do not change, there is a timeframe for the background check done through the FBI and other government agencies. We had 15 months to travel and bring our child home without having to pay extension fees and be re-fingerprinted.

August became September, October faded into November and there we were in virtually the same spot one year later. We had snow that weekend after Thanksgiving and on the evening of the 28th Savannah and I were outside playing in the front yard when I glimpsed the moon. I often talked to the Moon Lady (a character in Chinese legend) and on this one particular night I simply asked for who ever was looking out for my child, wherever they were, to please keep them safe and let them know that I'm trying to get there as fast as I can.

My prayers were answered the following day while my sister was helping a friend of hers from NY look for their daughter on special-needs lists with agencies in NY. As she was contacting various agencies looking at pictures of girls her eyes locked on the picture of a little boy and in an instant she knew that this was her nephew.

Teresa called me and told me that she'd found my son and that she'd e-mailed me a picture of him. When I pulled it up the the first similarity I saw was his big brown eyes and how much they were like Savannah's. At the time Savannah was taking a nap and the moment she woke up I was in her room showing her the picture and asking her who the child in the picture was. With sleep still heavy in her voice she responded "That's my brother" with a big smile of contentment on her face.

I was excited and nervous all at the same time. Here was this wonderful boy sitting on a slide holding a stuffed Mickey Mouse that was just like the Minnie Mouse we'd bought Savannah at Disneyworld the previous January. My nerves were because he had been born cleft-affected, with both a bi-lateral cleft lip and palate. Though the big initial repairs had already been performed by doctors through China's Tomorrow Plan, I still had no idea of what of what was inolved with raising a child who'd been born cleft-affected. What would the impact be on Savannah? Neither of us wanted to take on something that would negatively impact her if there was a choice in the matter.

The following morning I was able to reach the adoption agency in upstate New York that had him on their list and request that his file be faxed to us as we were interested in pursuing him. The agency director had told us that this was the second time on the Waiting Child list and that soon his file would need to be sent back to the CCAA. She and the other agency staff couldn't figure out why this little boy hadn't been snatched up yet, with his file being with them for nearly six months. The wait appeared to be ending for him and for us.

That afternoon I called the pediatric adoption specialists at the University of Washington, Dr. Julian Davies and Dr. Julia Bledsoe, to schedule a referral consultation appointment and much to my surprise they had an opening for the following afternoon. When we consulted with them on Savannah's referral we had to wait nearly a week to get a phone appointment scheduled. Talking with Dr. Davies helped ease our concern and make the idea of cleft less daunting. We understood that the best case scenario would be approximately 5 more surgeries . The first being before he started kindergarten when a lip revision would be performed, with perhaps a nose revision after that. The next would be when he's around 8 or 9 for a bone-grafting to provide a place for his permanant teeth to take root in (taking part of his hip bone and grafting it to the upper jaw bone). Finally when he was later in high school the finishing touches to his nose would be done. Each surgery was timed to have his face grown enough to that point and to provide his face with room to continue to grow. There was the strong possibility that he would need speech therapy and tubes in his ears to combat infections as well. Dr. Davies added that he couldn't be coming home to a better part of the world as the Cranio-facial team at Seattle Children's is outstanding. Dr. Davies did have some questions about his physical growth that he wanted updated measurements on just to rule out any other syndrome tied to being born cleft-affected. He'd told us that in Asian countries for some reason children born cleft-affected have that as an isolated birth defect and not the outward sign of something else being wrong. That part of the face is formed before some people even know that they're pregnant, so his birth mom could have been exposed to something that led to him being born cleft-affected. I'd also learned from a friend of my parents who is an orthodontist that stress during those first weeks of pregnancy can also be a factor. I have no doubt that mother's in China are stressed when they first find out if they're pregnant or are trying to become pregnant as the possible causes are deep and dramatic. For instance, did they receive permission from their cadre leader (government representative that they report to) to try and become pregnant? Did they already have a child and would now be violating the One Child policy? Was there pressure to give birth to a son and not a daughter? For all of my friends who have been pregnant they, for the most part, have enjoyed their pregnancies. I cannot imagine one of them being in a position where they were afraid for some reason.

The next day I phoned Family Tree with the questions Dr. Davies had so that they could get a medical update request sent off to the CCAA. At this point all we could do is wait. Over the next few weeks I hoped and prayed that everything would be fine. Part of me was afraid to become to attached to his face and the idea of him out of fear that something would arise that would be too much for us to handle. Finally one day, as I was driving along with Savannah happily singing in the backseat, I tossed a prayer out asking for a sign that everything would be okay. The next song on the radio was this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_zi4OxJpY0

With tears in my eyes I felt a renewed sense of faith and hope just when I needed it. On December 22nd we received the updated information and the response from Dr. Bledose that everything looked good. Hooray!!!! What a Christmas gift that news was.

Remember that we didn't want a huge age difference between our two children? We had never thought that only 4 1/2 months was a possibility either. But that's what we have. Baden was given the birthdate of October 30, 2003 and Savannah was given March 17, 2004. (I say "given" because neither of them was left with a note specifying a birthdate and the medical officials at each SWI (Social Welfare Institute) estimated their birthdates based on their physical condition when they were found.) Baden's referral paperwork described him as wanting to be treated like the younger brother. We knew that if that was the case, we would still be in good shape as everything about Savannah screamed older sister.

Thankfully by now we were well versed in the art of waiting. Though we had identified him, we still had to create a third dossier and have our home study amended to specify Baden. We had to prove that we had looked into his special need and understood the possibilities that could come with being born cleft-affected. Winter became Spring and Spring turned into Summer. Finally in mid July we received the phone call we'd been waiting for - China had given their permission to come get him by issuing our Travel Approval! The rest of this story has pictures, so look for the actual trip to China to come soon.