Rick, Deborah, and Julianna's Place

Adoption -- 
The Wait and the Process

In January, 2000 we made the momentous decision to adopt a child, since the usual manner of having children had eluded us.  After finding the right agency for us, Adoption Resources of Florida (an affiliate of MAPS, Maine Adoption Placement Service), we were given numerous options for where to find our child.

After ruling out a domestic adoption, for fear of becoming one of Florida's occasional and notorious adoption failures, we decided to pursue a foreign adoption.  Of all the countries available, and we considered many, we settled on China.  We came to this realization while eating a delicious southwestern meal at the Desert Fire restaurant in Seattle, the city where Deborah was attending a spring veterinary conference.  It was there that both of us discovered our mutual awareness that we knew our daughter was to be found in China.

A slew of paperwork awaited us, for which Deborah took the lead.  Finally, with all the approvals and certifications, authentications and notarizations in hand, we mailed our adoption dossier, to be translated and sent to China.   Henceforth we were known as an official "DTC (Dossier to China) October 25th" family.

Thus began The Great Wait.  With all completed that is within our purview, what remained was for us to let the universe, and the government of China, identify our daughter to us.  When we first dispatched our dossier, we expected that China would give us a referral (that anxiously awaited moment when China would send us a photo of the girl they had matched with us) roughly in May of 2001 and we would travel to China pick her up in July.  Because of the increasingly heart-breaking delays, we had to wait still longer.  Our referral came with a phone call from our agency, MAPS, on Nov. 30, 2001, and a Fed-Ex packet on Dec. 1.

To help us be patient, we occupied ourselves with various tasks.  Deborah tended to her two full-time jobs at the clinic, that is, both doctor and owner/manager.  She also did quilting, back-porch gardening, knitting, and experienced other wonderfully domestic joys.  Rick has retired from his counseling profession to prepare to become a full-time parent to our daughter.  While waiting, he did some writing, reading, learning Italian, and paying the clinic bills.  He is also building a set of custom bookshelves, cabinets, and an entertainment center for our family room.  In addition, Rick and Deborah together installed a brand new computer system, both hardware and software, at the clinic.  This project, having occupied almost two months of their lives, went live in late August of 2001.  

While we waited, we sometimes perused the internet news of adoptions from China and treated ourselves to a peek at photos of children recently adopted.  If you'd like to explore the web site we most often visited, just click here:  Families with Children from China.

Thus we waited.  And hoped.  And prayed.  At every opportunity we made the toast, "To our daughter in China . . . may she come home soon." 

Then came the good news of the referral. We received a Fed-Ex packet on Saturday, Dec. 1, 2001, after a "heads-up" phone call the previous evening. It contained our daughter's name, Pan Xiao Qian, her health and developmental history, her location, and the approval of the government of the People's Republic of China for us to visit China to adopt her. Naturally, Deborah and Rick celebrated as soon as we received the good news, with roses, a toast, and a family dinner at–where else!–a good Chinese restaurant.

Here is a brief recap of the referral information we received about Julianna: She was born on Jan 20 of 2001. With absolutely no information about her birth parents, she was given to the local hospital on the day after her birth, was diagnosed as normal and healthy, and then after a brief stay in the orphanage was placed in a foster family, where she  remained until shortly before her adoption.

Deborah and our pediatrician both thoroughly evaluated her medical records, and found that Julianna has a sterling health history and is developmentally in excellent condition. We are informed that, as of Nov. 29, she weighed 19 pounds and was 27 inches long. She can already say some one-syllable words. She eats well, favoring rice cereal and apple sauce, as well as a little meat and vegetables. She was already standing while holding on to things at 7 months, and at 10 months she was walking around with assistance. Julianna likes to play with her peers. She is said to smile a lot and has a cheerful and active nature. She stretches out her hands and asks to be held.

Julianna Qian comes from the city of Gao Zhou, which is about 60 miles east of Hong Kong. (Click here to see a map of the area.)  This is the location of the Nong Ken No. 3 Hospital, where she was found on Jan. 21. We understand that the penalties for leaving a child can be quite severe. Thus, leaving her in this kind of public place entailed considerable risk on the part of her birth parents. Their willingness to take such a risk tells us that they placed her well-being over their own. In other words, we believe that her parents loved her.  

Gao Zhou is also the location of the Gao Zhou Children’s Welfare Institute, which is the orphanage which first received Julianna, which is responsible for her care, and which worked with the foster family with whom Julianna lived. Her foster mother's name is Qian Fong, whom we met in China.  It was obvious to us that she loved Julianna very much, and took care of her well.  We are eternally grateful to her, from the bottom of our hearts for taking such good care of Pan Xiao Qian, our Julianna.

We spent much of December preparing for travel. We gathered clothes–including some very tiny ones!–diapers, toys, blanky (one of three which Deborah has knitted for Julianna), medical supplies, gifts, cameras, documents, and much more, fitting them all into a space small enough to allow us to carry the luggage and Julianna, too.

We flew to China on January 12, 2002 to formally adopt her and bring her home. We stayed for two weeks in the provincial capital, Guang Zhou (formerly known as Canton), which is just a short distance north of Hong Kong. It is in the part of China that has weather like Miami. There we had the adoption hearings before the Chinese officials, visited the U.S. consulate to obtain her travel visa, and, most importantly, we had some long-awaited time to get to know Julianna Qian. 

Our adoption agency, Maine Adoption Placement Services,   shepherded us to China, guided us through the diplomatic, linguistic, culinary, and cultural mazes, and brought us all home safely. We traveled with 8 other families, all of whom brought home a daughter from the same area. We stayed in a first rate hotel called the White Swan, which has become well known to families adopting children from China, since most of us end up staying there. It is convenient to the U.S. Consulate and is particularly accommodating to adopting parents and their special needs.

We say, with a wink, that we required only three things of our new daughter. With these she would be happy in our home. First, she must have a passion for reading. Second, she must be adventurous in eating. Finally, she may not be a morning person.  So far, the last two look like sure things.  We'll have to wait a bit to get a take on the reading.