Almost as soon as I knew that I had fallen in love with my then boyfriend, Walter, I started my initial research into adoption. In the beginning neither of us had any criteria in mind other than that we wanted an infant. We ruled out domestic adoption pretty quickly because of our fear of the birth mother changing her mind. It's different for every couple but for us at the time, we didn't feel comfortable putting ourselves in such a vulnerable position, it was all emotional enough without that added burden of fear.
In my research of international adoption I came across one agency that had posted a terrific matrix of all the international countries that one could adopt from. In this matrix they listed the country followed by criteria for adopting couples (such as age, length of marriage, etc), country fees, times required in-country, ages of available children, etc... That matrix was a godsend! I started by crossing out the countries that we simply weren't qualified to adopt from because we weren't married long enough, etc. After that I knew we had to rule out countries that required too many, or too long of (or both) stays in-country; we couldn't afford it. We ruled out Guatemala because of the cost of the country fees alone (close to 5 times that of China). And so it went ...
There are so many milestones in the adoption journey; the decision to do it, the end of the dossier preparation, getting a log-in-date, getting a referral, and of course ... bringing home your child! But for me, seeing China standing alone on that list was one of the first overwhelmingly emotional moments in the early stages of our journey. Suddenly the months of online searches and research that had filled my head with millions of lines of grey text, url's and processes faded away and I could see the face of our baby. Looking back as I write this, I believe that it was that moment that she was born in my heart.
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