The Zen of Adoption

That was fast! Our agency just called to let us know that they received our application this morning. We are still waiting on two of our three personal referrals…once they receive those, they will look them over and let us know if we are approved. I’m not sure if it has really registered yet that we’ve begun the process. I think it will be a big dose of reality when we start to work on our dossier!

I think anyone who knows me, wouldn’t accuse me of being very patient.  However, becoming a parent has forced me to grow in this respect. Alex, is definitely a “stop and smell the roses” type kid.  I love the fact that he makes me slow down and stay present in the here and now.

I think I haven’t allowed myself to think about the time frames associated with adopting from China. Currently they seem to be stretching to the 18-22mo. range. Which I believe is at an all time high.  To keep this in perspective, it helps to remember that at the end of this process, we will be bringing our daughter home. That much can not be said for our last four years of secondary infertility… who knew if we were going to get pregnant next month, next year, or ever.

So I think this process will definitely test me, but I am thrilled that we have taken this road.  Now that we’ve mailed our application off to CCAI our wonderful adoption agency, it should take about 5 days for them to look over our application and references, and hopefully approve us. At that point the paperchase begins.

If you’ve never heard the term ‘paperchase’, it is used widely in the adoption community to denote the gathering of all of the certificates, forms, home studies, and goverment approvals necessary to complete the dossier.  The dossier is the packet sent off to China.  Once China receives our dossier, and logs it into their system, it is just a waiting game, until they match you with a referral. This is taking somewhere around 18 months currently. Once you receive and accept your referral, you await your travel date. Finally it is time to fly to China to meet your new little one!

In China both or just one parent can fly to pick their child up. Both David and I are planning to travel, and we are going to take Alex with us. He will likely be around 7 yrs. old by the time we go and he’s a seasoned traveler, so it should be a lot of fun to share this experience with him. I think it is important for all of us to see our daughter’s homeland, and be there as we all adjust to life with the newest member of our family.

We’ve decided to get moving. Our Application is complete! We are sending it tomorrow. Hooray!

I just came across a great musician.  Justin Robert’s is an indie-musician who’s songs, though geared towards kids, are smart and very stylish…he’s kind of mix between James Taylor, Paul Simon and Greenday.

Anyway, we just purchased his latest CD ‘Meltdown’ for our 5 yr. old and sometimes find ourselves listening to it when he’s not in the car with us!

There is one song in particular, ’Cartwheels and Somersaults’, which is about how excited everyone is that a baby sister has arrived (sung from an older sibling’s point of view.)  Perfect if you’ve adopted a little girl from China and you already have an older child. My son calls it the Baby Sister Song!

Check it out on CD Baby: http://cdbaby.com/cd/roberts5

You can also listen to this song on CD Baby: http://cdbaby.com/mp3lofi/roberts5-10.m3u

A sample of the fantastic lyrics:

Who knew a baby sister could come along

and make us realize how much we’d always missed her…

Chorus

So now we’re doing cartwheels and somersaults, and it’s all your fault

Yeah, it’s all your fault.

It’s you-ooh we love (mama can I hold her)

It’s you-ooh we love (yes, put her on your shoulder)

It’s you-ooh we lo-u-ove

I tear up everytime I hear it!

It has been a busy weekend, too busy. We just need two documents notarized and we’re set to send off our application to our agency.  We’re anxious to start, but know that once we get the ball rolling we’ll be faced with a whirlwind of paperwork and waiting - two things that confound and frustrate me to no end.

I’ve asked friends to send in their references, so hopefully they will be arriving at our agency this week as well.  It looks like it takes around 5 business days once they receive our application to let us know if we’re approved.

The things we neeed to do in the short-term:
1. Send in Application
2. Follow up on references
3. Order extra Birth Certificates and Marriage Licenses
4. Schedule Dr. Appts.
5. Start Preparing ourselves, and the house for the homestudy process.

Obviously I want to prepare our Dossier as quickly as possible, so we have our work cut out for us!

Mother Bridge of Love

Once there were two women who never knew each other.

One you do not remember, the other you call Mother.

Two different lives shaped to make you one.

One became your guiding star; the other became your sun.

The first one gave you life, and the second taught you to live it.

The first gave you a need for love. The second was there to give it.

One gave you a nationality. The other gave you a name.

One gave you a talent. The other gave you aim.

One gave you emotions. The other calmed your fears.

One saw your first sweet smile. The other dried your tears.

One sought for you a home that she could not provide.

The other prayed for a child and her hope was not denied.

And now you ask me, through your tears,

The age-old question unanswered through the years.

Heredity or environment, which are you a product of?

Neither, my darling. Neither. Just two different kinds of Love.

-Anonymous

This poem is featured on Xinran’s wonderful website The Mother’s Bridge of Love. http://www.motherbridge.org Her organization was founded to foster understanding between the East and the West and to help internationally adopted children understand their Chinese heritage. She also works in China to improve the lives of children still in the orphanage system.  Xinran has written several intriguing books that capture the experiences of women in China, in beautiful and heartbreaking detail, part memoir, part social history The Good Women of China is a must read for anyone who has adopted from China, or is curious about the lives of women, since China’s cultural revolution. Her newest book Sky Burial is also outstanding.

Begins with a single step. We’ve taken lots of single steps recently, but this is a path we’ve been heading down for several years.  It all came together for us at the beginning of this year, after four years of infertility. We realized that we weren’t willing to move forward with the more invasive methods of assisted reproduction, nor were we ready to give up on the idea of having more children.

Why China? I’m sure we’ll be asked this question a million times. I knew very little about adoption in general when this idea first popped into my head. My initial thought was that we’d go domestic, but I love to research, and we were pretty open to whatever this process might bring.  So I started joining groups, requesting information from agencies, and talking to people I know who’ve adopted (and lots of people I didn’t know, but do now!) The more I learned, the more drawn I was to China’s international adoption program.

Here are a couple of reasons:

• China’s program is stable, and doesn’t contain the level of unpredictability that other international programs, and surprisingly US domestic programs share.
• We have a son, and thought it would be nice to have a little girl. 98% of all children adopted from China are girls.
• We don’t have any issues with whether our child shares our heriatage and looks like us, or not.
• Chinese women tend to receive good pre-natal care and there are low instances of drug abuse.
• Chinese orphanages have improved dramatically over the years.
• We were inexplicably drawn to China, while all of the above are good reasons, ultimately we based this decision on the fact that it just felt right.

International adoption has its own unique set of challenges both in terms of the actual adoption process, and in terms of raising a child of another ethnicity in our society.  We are learning everything we can about the issues, finding resources, and talking to others who have experience with international adoption.  We both agree that adding a member to any family, whether by birth or adoption, always brings with it unknowns. Sometimes joyful surprises, sometimes worries, but we are confident that we can face anything that comes our way!

In the midst of all of this, we are trying to prepare Alex (5) for this process and for eventually meeting his new baby sister. He asks a lot of questions, and seems cautiously excited. We are going to bring him with us to China to pick her up. In the meantime we’re talking a lot about chinese culture, and about being a big brother. The only downside to this, is that it is a long process and he has no real frame of reference when we start talking about 2 yrs. into the future. Hopefully it won’t take quite that long, as he will likely be seven by the time we receive our referral. I’d guess they will be about six years apart… which is more than I’d like, but as I’ve discovered, what I want, isn’t always what’s supposed to happen

…Go!

After months of talking about it and researching our options, we’ve decided to start the process of adopting a daughter from China.  We’ve just chosen CCAI as our agency, and will be sending in our application by early next week. I’m all at once overwhelmed and elated.  All said and done the process will likely take nearly 2 years.  I don’t know how we’ll get through it, but I know we will. Just realizing that the end result will be a new addition to our family, makes all of the waiting, work, and  worry worth it!

from Zen Shorts
by: Jon J. Muth

Maybe it’s a little cute, but naming this blog ‘The Zen of Adoption’ seemed like a good reminder that I need to let this process unfold in it’s own way, in spite of myself.  Anyone seeking to add a child to their family through international adoption can easily get caught up in the rumors and frustrations. I relish a little Eastern inspiration to keep me calm amid the storm.

I am aware that ‘Zen’ is, in fact, the Japanese word for this incarnation of Buddhism, and that it would have been a bit more clever if I had used the Chinese equivilent: ’Ch’an’. However, Zen Buddhism actually originated in China and spread to Japan. Plus, more people recognize the word Zen. As it has taken on a number of meanings in our modern culture. For clarity’s sake, the term literally means “meditation.”

Zen emphasises the execution of menial tasks (i.e. daily life) are an opportunity to encounter true reality. The great Zen Master Hakuin said: “I fetch wood and carry water. How wonderful, how marvellous”. Zen monks undertake daily life practice to enable wisdom to arise, through the encounter with all things in life.

Hopefully we will encounter ‘true reality’ as we undertake the many menial tasks involved in the paperchase process of our of international adoption experience.