So since we just recently publicly announced that we were adopting again many of you have asked how this came about. So I thought it would be a great story for a blog post. However I'm not the best writer so bare with me.
So the story begins early January. I (Jennifer ) had heard of others recently reusing their dossier.
What this means is that they use the same dossier (paperwork) that they used for their most recent adoption. China allows this but it needs to take place within a year from the placement of your other child. I started by checking in with our agency. Asked a few questions and was given a link to review about reusing. There were two things that I thought could be a problem. #1 Was that Holt didn't allow you to adopt out of Birth order, so the new child would have to be younger than Hope.
#2 The New child had to be labeled SF (Special Focus). SF children tend to be older children or children with more severe Special needs or have multiple Special needs.
So about a week after contacting Holt about reusing I decided to glance at their photolisting on their website. Just to see if there were any children that were under 2 and SF. I seen her right away.
What amazed me about her is that she looked familiar. The same familiarity I felt with Zoe and with Hope. She reminded me of my brother when he was little, in fact I thought she was a boy until I clicked on her picture to read more about her. She was just over 1 1/2, she was happy and healthy and she had dwarfism. While Dwarfism was not something we checked off on our initial medical checklist it was something we had always been open to. I sent Steve a screen shot of her picture and a " what do you think". I got the typical response from him that day " Are you crazy"! So I left it at that and waited until later that night to talk to him. We talked about the pros and cons of starting an adoption so soon. He agreed I could inquire about her file. I called one of the China program staff and talked to her for quite some time. I learned something amazing, She was from the same place as Hope. I told her that we were interested in seeing her file and she said she would check with our social worker and get back to me. I thought we would get it that day. I was wrong. I received an email from our social worker basically in shock, said she didn't know that we were considering adopting again so soon. I told her neither did we until then. She gave me a long list of things to check into before she would release the file to us. Meanwhile I was told that other families were reviewing her file.
So I worked through her list. I found out what everyday life is like from families that had adopted children with Dwarfism. I learned of all the possible medical conditions we could face, I also talked with a friend who has a form of skeletal dysplasia. It took a few days but we got all the information.
The next week we received her file. At this time we still thought there were other families also reviewing her file. We fell in love immediately. She was perfect in every way. However we had some big obstacles that we needed to figure out before we could make this happen. I called that day to let them know we were interested if no other families were going to pursue her. We were told then that we were the only family and that we had the long three day weekend to decide.
That Friday night we went out to dinner with my parents. We told them what we were contemplating. They were shocked and I think my mom ended up having a couple drinks during dinner. We still had not made a decision though and we would continue to go back and fourth all weekend. On Sunday we weren't any closer and the main hesitations were coming from my husband and without him fully on board this was not going to happen. So I put it all in his hands. He was going to make the final decision and as hard as it was going to be I was going to be fine either way. He knew how I felt and so the decision needed to be his. Monday the kids didn't have school and so I was home with them while Steve went to work. He sent me a text that said : MLK quote for the day is Faith is taking the first step even if you don't see the whole staircase. He was in and he said her name was going to be FAITH!
This was a miracle in it self that he came to the decision to adopt again and that he wanted to name her Faith. This is truly one of those moments where all the credit goes to God. I knew when I handed over the decision to him that this was bigger than us that God would need to be a part of this.
So here we are Stepping out in FAITH, to bring home our youngest daughter from China and complete our family! I can't wait to see what God has in store for us during this process, I've already made some new friends and have loved the LPA community. Thank you all for being so supportive of our family we couldn't have asked for better family, friends and community~!
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