An Online Journal of Our Adoption Journey

Preamble

Lise and I have known each other for over half our lives.  We met in Flagstaff, Arizona on New Year's Eve as 1981 rolled over to '82.  I was 19, she 17.  Over the years we spent more and more time together, including an entire summer in Hawaii, and on May 31, 1987 we were married in the rotunda at Lowell Observatory (my father was an astronomer there).  We moved into married housing on the NAU campus in Flagstaff while I finished my degree.  Over the next ten years we moved ten more times, mostly for employment sake.  Since 1990 we've lived in or around San Diego, and currently have been living in the same place for four years. 

A good seven or eight years ago we stopped using birth control and generally let nature take its course.  After three years of no pregnancy, we started the fertility process.  I checked out a bit low, but in the acceptable range, and the attention shifted to Lise.  We spent much of '97 and '98 jumping through all the hormonal drug hoops, and tried artificial insemination three times, all to no avail.  Throughout all of this our thoughts began to turn towards adoption.  As we looked into IVF (in vitro-fertilization), its costs, its probability of success, and the health risks, we came to a decision.  We would adopt.

We spent the next year or so mulling over the idea, talking about the problems with adoption, domestic and international, and how we felt about the issues.  Where would we draw the line?  Yes to a healthy one year-old, no to a two year-old?  Boy? Girl?  Special Needs?  We grappled with the difficult concepts, but in one area there was no problem, and that was race.  Neither of us saw any reason not to accept a child of a different color than us (we are white). 

In March of 2000 we sat down and decided once and for all that we would adopt.  With me at a steady job as a web-database developer and her in law school, in a few years we could support and bring a child into our life.  The biggest barrier was funds.  Adoption, whether domestic or international, was not cheap.  (Special Needs children are not as difficult to get, but we realized that we weren't up to the requirements of raising such a child). 

So we drew up a plan.  In thirty months Lise would be finished with law school and taking the state bar exam.  We didn't want to try to bring the child into our home until the stress of school was behind us.  But that 30 months was good, for we'd need it in order to raise the funds.

We chose to set our hopes on a baby girl from China, for several reasons.  Domestic adoption is a mess, in my opinion, with lawyers heavily involved, and even then, no guarantee that the child wouldn't end up back with the birth mother.  Internationally, it came down to this question: Where would be the best place to go to adopt a healthy baby girl that is as young as possible?  The answer: China.

I purchased a couple of gold coins to commemorate the decision.  A Chinese 1/4 gold coin showing a mother unicorn with child and a 1/4 gold US eagle showing a mother eagle returning to her nest.  Then began the saving.

During the summer of '00 we researched and talked and received recommendations on adoption agencies.  I went through the Internet, reading all I could on the adoption process, the agencies, and the horror stories that only the web can provide.  Finally, on a recommendation from a fellow coworker who had used the agency to adopt a boy from the Philippines, we tentatively chose Holt International.   But we wanted to meet who exactly we would be working with before making the final decision. 

In the following October we went to an informational meeting held by Holt's local representative and the decision was easily made.  We met with her, and with two couples with adopted children, and looked over the material Holt provides the adopters.  We were sold.  We were told, however, that the adoption process with China takes about 18 months.  It was therefore too early for us to begin.  We set out sights on the spring of '01 and continued to save our money.