Why China...

Mark and I have been getting many questions about why we are going to China to adopt compared to another country or domestically. We thought we would try and share our thought process with you.

First off, people in China generally abandon children because they are girls and not for any other reason - though there are more and more males being abandoned. I simply cannot imagine being in that position and feeling like you are forced to abandon a child.

Unfortunately many babies born domestically and placed for public adoption are born with health problems. Of course you never know what health problems your child may or may not have, but knowingly taking on a health problem is something that Mark and I have discussed and decided that being a parent is going to be hard enough as it is and we decided that we didn’t want to have the potential of health problem as well. The babies born in China are generally very healthy as women take care of themselves as this might be the only child that they are going to have.

Also with domestic adoptions, many times the children are school aged as Children’s Aid really tries to keep the child/ren with their parent(s) and Mark and I had our hearts set on a baby – still with China, our daughter(s) will be about 12 – 14 months when we bring her/them home.

China also has the most predictable timelines – they are long lines, but they are generally predictable. Recently, Korea shut down international adoption!!! Just like that with no warning – DONE!!! The thought of that terrifies me – so do the 2008 Bejing Olympics…but we have enough to worry about right now without adding to it…

Once we return from China after picking up our daughter or daughters, she/they are ours - FOREVER. We won’t have another family popping up to say that they changed their mind and they want their baby back. All attempts will have been made in China before the child is placed for adoption to find the birth family and the child will be considered abandoned. Although we won’t have anything in the way of medical records or family histories, we will have our family.

When you think about medical/family histories, even if you are with your biological family, that doesn’t mean that you are going to have medical/family histories. Many families do not stay in contact with each other and are not aware of what is happening in each others lives. Also, if a family member dies prematurely due to an accident, there is not an opportunity to have developed a medical history in which to draw from.

There are MANY support groups, activities and cultural experiences to share with our daughter(s) here that are available though the vast international adoption network – we are learning more and more about this and the wonderful people that are part of this network as time goes on. We and our daughter(s) will be lucky to be a part of this wonderful community.

So…those are some of the reasons that we made the decisions that we did that were right for us.