It's a girl!

In August, we received another call from that adoption agency with a match.  This time for sure we’re having a girl!  We’re scheduled to pick her up sometime in December or January of 2011! Here is a beautiful picture of our future daughter. Our boys are very excited to bring home their baby sister. They have actually been sharing about it during Sunday school! Of course we are completely thrilled as well, as we have been waiting for this moment for two years already.

We started the adoption paperwork in July 2008 and our application finally got submitted to China in March 2009. By early 2010, we realized that China had drastically slowed down the adoption process, so instead of taking the anticipated two years to receive a match, it would be closer to 10 years! Our desire to adopt was strong, but waiting 10 years is just not feasible. It was then that we explored another option that greatly sped up our process. We hesitantly opted in to consider a child with a minor correctable condition, such as a club foot or cleft lip. We were definitely hesitant in opening ourselves to that, because as parents, we have the most difficult time seeing our children in pain. When Caleb had his oral surgery a couple years back to remove four teeth, we were worried and anxious for a month. We cannot imagine how it would be if our daughter had to undergo serious surgery.

Well, a few months after we had joined this special list, we received “the call.” They had matched us with a baby girl (born in Feb 2010)! She was found abandoned on the streets of Yunnan by a police officer and her condition is called Atrial Septal Defect (ASD), which is a heart defect where there is a hole between the two upper chambers of the heart. After consultation with a physician friend and mentor and also an adoption specialist at Oakland Children’s Hospital, we saw that this medical condition is actual a huge blessing in disguise. Apparently, out of all the medical conditions that we could have picked from, this particular type of heart condition is possibly the “best” conditions we could get! A pediatric cardiologist estimated that there is an 80% chance that the hole would close by up itself without any intervention! If she would need surgery, it would be a simple procedure, and she would most likely not even need to spend a night at the hospital. God knew exactly what we could and could not handle, so this was the perfect child! How awesome is that??