The divine Deanna of Hope Springs has tagged me to add my thoughts to the question "Why China?"
Our first adoption took place in the olden days -- before the formation of the CCAA, before the great APC/PAC schism, before ladybugs roamed the Earth. It was a simpler time. There were no "Journey to..." web sites, no CafePress stores selling "Made in China" onesies, no celebrities turning international adoption into a media circus.
When Big A and I got married, we planned to enjoy being a couple for a while before starting a family. I dreamed about the child we would have someday, a little girl with dark eyes and hair like A and me.
Two years later, I found myself facing the unsatisfying diagnosis of "unexplained infertility" and a difficult series of choices. I'll save my infertility story for another time. If you've been there, you know it was sheer misery.
When we started infertility treatment, adoption was the furthest thing from my mind. I was still thinking about my dream child. Three years of measuring out my life in 28-day portions changed that. I was surprised at how quickly I became comfortable with the idea of adoption, considering how fervently I had wanted to get pregnant. Pursue increasingly expensive and intrusive fertility treatments with diminishing chances of success, or put our efforts into adoption and be practically assured that we would eventually bring home a baby? When decision time came, the most important thing to me, and to A, was to have child to love, regardless of whether we had a biological connection to that child.
I knew I didn't want to pursue a domestic infant adoption. Every one of my infertile friends who had done so had at least one adoption fall through, and I couldn't face more heartache and uncertainty. And I wasn't ready for older child or foster care adoption; I had wanted a baby for too long to give up on that dream.
Adoption from Eastern Europe was getting a lot of bad press at that time and seemed too risky. We considered adopting a black or biracial child, but then I learned about the National Association of Black Social Workers' position and the controversy in the black community over transracial adoptions. I didn't feel strong enough to take on the challenges of raising a child of color without the support of his or her ethnic community.
While we were still in the midst of infertility treatment, I had seen an article in the newspaper about the new adoption program in China. I clipped the article and put it in a file folder. As the months went by, my file on adoption from China got thicker. The more we learned, the more perfect it seemed for us: It was a well-organized, reliable program that gave preference to older parents. The babies were young, relatively healthy, and predominantly girls. Plus we already lived in an area with a large, vibrant Asian community and ample cultural resources.
And that's how we came to bring home a baby from China. Despite our careful planning, we went through heartache anyway, but that's the way it is with parenthood. It's fraught with risk no matter how you approach it. And then we brought home another baby from China, because our first daughter was so wonderful, and we didn't want her to look around her family and see no other faces like hers. And our second daughter was wonderful too.
Adopting from China simply seemed like the best way for us to build our family. We never thought we were doing a great thing; we didn't give much thought to the idea that we were giving a home to an orphan. We just wanted a child to love. When people said, "Lucky baby," we responded, with complete sincerity, that we were the lucky ones.
Later, saddened by the war in Iraq and frustrated by the direction our country was headed, we felt the need to do some good in the world and let our little light shine instead of just complaining. So we adopted an older child from China, thinking that we would be giving something back by providing a home to a child who truly needed one. But the joke was on us, because she proved to be such a prize that once again we were the lucky ones.
Although infertility was the one of worst trials I've ever endured, I can't regret it, because in the end it brought me my dream children -- three little girls with dark eyes and hair like A and me, and lively personalities all their own.
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Next I'd like to re-tag fabulous Figlet. Hers was the first cool adoptive-mom blog I ever ran across, back while she was still waiting for Little Sweet Pea, and it's still one of the best.
To read more in the "Why China?" series, visit these blogs:
So, it's come down to this -> OmegaMom -> Letters From the Zoo -> The Singing Bird -> Elsie Elsewhere -> Chicago Mama -> Sopapilla -> Are We There Yet? -> Hope Springs -> Jiaozi -> Figlet
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