Sunday, September 04, 2005

How we came to the decision of adopting from China.

Up until November of last year we thought that our son Brandon was going to be an only child. It was at that time that I started getting leg pain that was so sever that I could not stand. Come to find out I had a ruptured disc in my back that needed to be repaired by surgery. Because of
the kind of work that I do that involves a lot of lifting pushing and pulling I was going to be off work for awhile. I don't think that there is ever a good time to have back surgery but I had no choice because if I couldn't stand I couldn't work. My wife Lori was in her second year of fulltime RN school and only worked off and on at the hospital when she could find the time in between school . My loving wife took on more time at work, and thanks to family and friends and a loan from the bank! We knew that we would make it through this difficult time in our lives and come out stronger as a couple on the other side.What we didn't expect was the life changing decision that was to come.
It was late November, I had already had surgery and was recouping at home watching some TV to pass the time when a reporter named Lisa Ling for National Geographic Explorer came on the Oprah Winfrey show to tell about a documentary that she had filmed entilted "The lost daughters of China". She showed a little bit of the film and told how thousands and thousands of baby girls were being abandoned just because they were girls. China has a strict one child policy, and because the boys carry on the family name, stay with the family, and work the farms boys are preferred to the extent that when some of the women give birth to a perfectly healthy girl they abandon her to try again for a boy.
This was one of the saddest things I have ever heard and I knew I needed to get more information about the situation involving the Baby girls in China. So I ordered the DVD from National Geographic, which is a great video buy the way, and started to do research on the internet. It was hard for me to understand that there was a baby girl that was abandoned simply because she was born a girl and all that we had to do was go get her and she could be a part of are family forever. Ok, I have learned that it is not that easy, but at the same time it is that easy. There was just going to be some work on our part in between the decision to adopt and going to bring our daughter home.
Lori and I knew we had plenty of room in our family for another child but had to decided if we wanted to start all over raising another child. What I mean is our son is now 14 and with him at that age Lori's and my life is pretty easy. Brandon is a great kid and we are still very protective of him but on a different level now that he is older. We can hop in the car and come and go as we please. We no longer have to worry about day care, car seats, strollers, diapers, potty traing, having to miss work because he has a little fever and they cant keep him at day care which is understandable. I think you can see what I mean. Well with all that figured into the picture, with the issues that may come up from an international adoption, we realized that there is still a lot of joy that comes along with the huge responsiblity of raising a child. We are going to become a family of four.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

This is the story of the adoption of our daughter Norah.

Welcome to are blog as you can tell we have already picked a name for our daughter. I have created this blog so that are family and friends can keep up with the latest news about are adoption, and to show any one interested in adopting from how the China adoption process works.