Perfect Timing - part 2

We were dossier to China, finally, after 9 long months. I had been online reading forums and chatting with other parents in process of adopting from China. I was devouring all the blogs I could read, and gazing with longing at all the baby photos. It was a during March of 2006 that I started forming a friendship with a lady online who was planning to go SN. Special Needs?! Huh? Why?

My vision of SN was skewed. It was the vision of medically fragile children. Medically hard to raise children. I knew life did not have guarantees, and I knew if I were to get pregnant then my child might have a SN, and a serious one at that. But to knowingly CHOOSE to go down that path. I was interested in reading more blogs about these wonderful adoptive parents.

April of 2006 I was emailing Dh asking if he might be interested in SN, at least joining the interested families with our agency. He was resistive because, like me, he was thinking in that skewed viewpoint. What changed our minds? the children, the families, the knowledge we gained. Knowledge truly is power. I mean, a short year prior we had decided against a specific program because they would only allow SN adoptions.

When we started the process we did not realize that SN adoption from China mainly meant that the child had a need that would require medical attention. Some are VERY minor and some are more major. I learned that we could review a file, think about it, and then if we decided that the medical need was too great we could decline it without any penalties to our NSN spot. Okay. Why was I closing this avenue off when I had trusted Him about leading us to this specific agency, to China, to trusting that the timing would work out (okay, so I didn't do so well with that part). What if...what if our daughter was going to be on one of the Waiting Children list that AWAA got?!

It was now May, I'm more on board with SN than ever...dh is still trying to figure out the catch. We both start realizing the wait it going to be MUCH longer than the 9 months we were thinking NSN would take. Being the list maker I am, I start researching the SN that we would be most comfortable with. I send multiple emails to dh outlining the steps, showing him the MINOR SN that are out there. Why these children are considered SN. It's now June, and we're getting closer to DTC. I've progressed from researching abstract conditions, to looking at photolistings and blogs of children. I see how major some are, and how minor others are. I know we can do this. In July, I finally explain it in such a way that Dh is on board. Both of our boys had a birthmark on their foreheads. Yes, they did fade and are mostly not noticeable. This alone would have made them SN.

August 1, 2006 we got the word that we were approved for SN with our agency and were on the Interested Families List (we'd applied during the month of July).

How was this Perfect timing? Well, it works out for us being matched with Katie. See, if we had applied and been accepted on the list in, oh say, April 2006, it's likely we'd have been referred a little girl by around August, or December 2006. It was not meant to be. We were meant to be Katie's family, and she was not born until August 1, 2006! There was another little "thing" that helped delay us getting a referral for a "heart baby" as well, it was the fact that we did not fully understand the "Yes" and the "Maybe" checklist on medical SN.

There were other heart babies on the various lists AWAA got from August 1, 2006 until our referral June 26, 2007. Why did we not get a call? Well, different things kept happening and as hard as it was to live through, Katie's file was not ready and not sent to AWAA until mid-June 2007. That is the reason. She was almost 11 months old. Could she have had her file sent sooner? Yes. why not? I'm not sure. But I like to think it had to do with when we were meant to travel and who our travel companions were meant to be.