China Said Yes!

Our “letter of acceptance” from China arrived yesterday at our agency in Texas.  This is our proof that China said yes!  After a very, very long wait (129 days to be exact), the China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) approved our application to adopt.  And with that approval, we are finally allowed to share our children with the world.

We are delighted to introduce to you our daughter, Kiera Susannah Jieyu Chesla, and son, Matteo Chentao Partenheimer Chesla.

Kiera

Kiera was born on March 12, 2012 in Shenzhen, which is in Guangdong province.  She’s five months younger than Soren, and will most likely be in the same grade.  In the adoption community, kids closer than nine months in age to each other are called "virtual twins."  I've always wanted twins, but I never imagined I'd have twins in this sense.  

These are the first pictures we ever saw of Kiera!  She's probably around 19 or 20 months old in these pictures.

The orphanage staff named Kiera Jie Yu, which is pronounced sort of like Jeh Ew.  We had thought about the name Kieran for a boy, so when ended up with a little girl, Kiera was a natural alternative.  And Susannah (or some variation of it) has been passed down for generations in the maternal line of my family.  My middle name is Susannah, my mom's cousin is Susan, my grandmother was Suzanne and it continues up the line.  My mom had made it known that if I ever had a girl, she hoped I would carry on this naming tradition. 

Kiera lived for awhile in an orphanage in Shenzhen, but is now living with a foster family who lives near the orphanage.  She still visits the orphanage most days so that she can play in the playroom with other children.  Although we know nothing about her foster family, kids thrive much better in these (albeit temporary) family environments than in an institution, so we are thankful for the change in living situation. 

Kiera was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, but so far, the doctors who reviewed her file haven't been able to see any evidence of it.  She doesn't appear to have any physical limitations, but it remains to be seen whether she was misdiagnosed or not. Based on her picture, we suspect she has ptosis of her left eye, which our doctor said is mostly a cosmetic issue and surgery should fix.  But again, until we meet her and have her evaluated, there are so many unknowns.

We don't know much about what kind of kid Kiera is except that she likes all toys and games (what kid doesn't?) and that she's quiet and introverted, but has reportedly come out of her shell a bit since living with her foster family. 

Matteo 

Matteo "Matt" Chentao Partenheimer Chesla was born on September 30, 2012 in Fuyang City in Anhui province.  At only six months younger than Kiera, he and Kiera are also considered virtual twins!  (And since Kiera is a "virtual twin" to Soren, I'm not sure if that means that Chris and I technically have "virtual triplets"...)  However, because of his fall birthday, he'll end up in the grade behind her in school.  

And these are the first pictures we ever saw of Matteo!  The Chinese bundle their babies up!  I'm guessing these pictures were taken in the late fall or early winter and it's very cold where Matteo lives.  He's probably around 15 or 16 months old in these pictures.

Matt was named Chen Tao by the orphanage staff.  According to his file, his name "represents the good wishes that he will live freely and happily like a dragon under the sunshine."  It’s a fitting name given that he was born in the year of the dragon.  

Other than when Matt went to a "healing home" to prepare for and recover from surgery, he has lived with a foster family in Fuyang.  We know nothing about his foster family, but he's reportedly close to his foster mother and we were ecstatic to see that he appears very well fed!  

Like his sister, we knew we would keep Matt’s Chinese name as his middle name, but we wanted to choose a new first name for him.  The problem is that Chris and I have a heck of a time agreeing on names!  In a case of Facebook serendipity, I met an adoptive mother (from Minnesota no less!) who volunteers for Love Without Boundaries stateside.  Love Without Boundaries works in Matt's orphanage, sponsored his surgery in China and currently sponsors his foster family. When she found out Matt was at an orphanage supported by Love Without Boundaries, she told me that if I sent her his picture and Chinese name, she'd let the volunteer coordinator in Fuyang know that Matt has a family coming for him.  When I sent her the information, she wrote back, "I know him!  That's Matt!"  Because the Chinese government does not let anyone working with orphans to post their Chinese names and other identifying information, Love Without Boundaries gives the children in their care nicknames and Matt just happens to be what they called him.  My contact on Facebook suggested I search the Love Without Boundaries website to see if I could find any pictures of our little boy because the organization often posts pictures of the kids in their programs.  I immediately typed "Matt" into the search box on their website and a post about "Smiling Matt" was the first to pop up.  (I hope reading that post leaves you smiling as much as Chris and I were.  When we have so little information about our adoptive children's early lives, we were relieved to learn that he's been so loved and well-cared for.)

At this point, Chris and I were still debating names, but after reading the blog post, we realized that the only name we both liked was Matt. Since there are already two Matthew Cheslas in the family, we went for the Italian, Matteo. 

As you can see from his pictures, Matt was born with cleft lip and palate.  He had a very successful surgery on his lip at five months of age, but will need to have surgery on his palate shortly after he comes home.  Like most children with corrected cleft lip and palate, he will most likely need speech therapy.  

Every time I look at Matt's referral pictures, I laugh.  I think this kid is going to keep us on our toes!  His file described him as "cheerful and cute", active, energetic and extroverted. 

What's next?

Everyone wants to know when we get to go to China, but the answer is that it'll still be awhile.  I would have gotten on a plane last May when I first saw their faces if I could have.  Instead, we'll have to wait until possibly February 1 before we can fly over there.  We still have a lot of paperwork to complete, mostly for the U.S. side of things, and then of course, there are a lot of travel arrangements to make.  Over the course of a two-to-three-week trip, we'll travel from northern China to the south and spend time in three different provinces.  So it'll take about another 10 weeks to get all this squared away. 

Keep Digging

It's a gorgeous fall day and I spent the morning at the park with the kids.  Oliver found a shovel left behind by another kid and started digging a hole in the sand.

"Where are you digging?" I asked.

"China!" Oliver yelled for everyone to hear.

I remember digging many holes "to China" when I was a kid.  The Jersey shore with its miles of sand was a particularly favorite spot to dig the deepest hole possible.  I actually thought if I could dig deep enough, I'd end up in China.

Wondering if Oliver was simply referencing a popular saying, I asked him why he was digging a hole to China.  He informed me the hole was so he could get his siblings.  He chided Soren for pushing back into the hole because if we want to get them faster, they had to keep digging.

At this point, it feels like digging a hole to China will get me to my kids faster than waiting for a bunch of paperwork to be shuffled around.  We first saw our children's faces in mid-May.  We would have submitted our request to adopt them right away, except we had to wait for our dossier to transfer to our new agency.  It took six weeks for a simple process that involved our old agency and our new agency each sending a single letter to the CCCWA and for the CCCWA to go into their system and assign our file to the new agency.  That finally happened on June 24.  I was relieved that we were finally starting the wait towards approval by China, since that take anywhere from 60-90 days (or more).  Of course three weeks later we learned that we had to do a "mini dossier" since were are adopting two children and that took two months to complete.  We were back in a holding pattern with no chance of being approved by China until they received the additional duplicate dossier documents.    

The mini dossier finally went to China on September 5.  Clinging to hope that maybe we'd get a miraculously quick approval, (it has happened, especially for families like ours who've been waiting a long time) I called our agency for an update.  Our case worker confirmed that our mini dossier had arrived and had been logged in on September 19.  But otherwise, there was nothing to report.  She had no way to know when we'd get approval, or even how close we were to being reviewed.  That was depressing to hear.  The clock on that average 60-90-day wait didn't start ticking until September 19.  In our agency's eyes, we've only been waiting for approval since September 19, so nine days as of today.  By my calculation, we've been waiting for approval since June 24, or 96 days.  In my heart, we've been waiting a heck of a lot longer.

And that leads me back to the hole my kids were digging at Mattocks Park.  There's a hole by the artificial tree.  And the shovel my kids abandoned when we headed home for lunch might still be there.  If so, would you mind removing a couple shovel fulls of sand for me?

Our Family is Complete

We are so happy to share our news that we have finally been matched!  And not with one child, but two!  Yes, we are about to be the parents of four children!  And we couldn't be happier about that. 

It was quite an emotional path that lead us to these precious children.  We were quickly growing frustrated with the wait and were losing faith that our agency was going to be able to match us due their limited number of orphanage partnerships and the shrinking shared list.  I sought the advice of the adoption community on Facebook, who counseled us what was involved with switching agencies to find our child.  One woman pointed us towards her agency who I ended up really clicking with during a call with them to discuss our options.  Although I had a really good feeling about them, we couldn't switch agencies unless we were switching to match with a specific child.  We reviewed the files of a couple of boys on their Waiting Child list, but the children were either older than Oliver or had more needs than we thought we could handle.  A week later the new agency called asking if I wanted to review the file of a little girl from southern China. I remember thinking, a girl?  A girl was never on my radar.  I would have bet a lot of money I was going to be a mom of all boys! But as soon as I read her file, I knew she was our daughter.  So Chris and I made the decision to switch agencies. (And that was quite a drama-filled experience, but that is a story for another day!) 

Growing our family didn't end with being matched with our daughter.  The new agency allows families to adopt two children, something that Chris and I had wanted to pursue, but hadn't been able to because our old agency didn't allow it.  We talked to the new agency about adopting a second, but given that we had a short window to work with and our second child needed to be at least a year younger than Soren, the new agency couldn't guarantee they would be able to match us. 

Only days after we said yes to our daughter, our agency called with another referral, this time for a little boy.  The social worker was very surprised when a lone file arrived that morning from a partnership orphanage (files usually come in batches), and when she read the child's file, she immediately thought of our family.  She quickly went through the file before e-mailing it to me, but I just knew before reading the file myself that this child was going to be our son.  When I finally received the file, my heart just melted when I saw his picture and I could have cried from happiness because I knew that our family was complete.  Throughout our relationship, Chris and I have talked about our dreams for our family and although we could never have predicted that our desire to have a family with four kids was going to look like this or be formed in this way, well, obviously life is full of surprises.  Beautiful surprises.

We don't know exactly when we'll travel to China, but we're shooting for January.  The adoption process is unpredictable and we have yet many more hurdles to clear, including official approval from China.  We're basically sitting on pins and needles waiting for this final approval.  The best we can do at this point is keep moving forward and hope for the best in our desire to adopt these two beautiful children.  We ask you to keep our children in your thoughts and prayers.  We're honored we'll eventually get to be their parents, but our hearts are also in a precarious place when we are in love with children we consider ours, but can't be with them and take care of them.

He Won't Be Our Son

We thought we were going to China. The baby with the fuzzy hair and chubby cheeks, whose nannies had nicknamed "Pumpkin" was going to be ours if we said yes.  We had found our son, we thought. The wait was finally over.  Then an e-mail appeared in my inbox from the International Adoption Clinic with unexpected news.  

Our agency had called me in mid-March with the referral of a ten-month-old boy with a repaired cleft lip, unrepaired cleft palate and a possible heart condition.  His file was a partnership file, meaning that he lives at an orphanage our agency has a special relationship with.  This orphanage periodically sends our agency files they think can be matched among our agency's waiting families.  I received the call at work, where the China team liaison went through the basic information of the file and asked if we wanted to consider the referral. "Of course!" I said. 

All we received was nine pages, four pre-operative pictures taken months prior and one, just one, post-operative picture taken the day before.  There was nothing in his file that really caused me much concern, even the heart condition, but with my lack of medical knowledge, I wasn't sure what to look for.  When looking at his picture, though, all I could think was that something didn't seem right.  But one picture, especially one where he's not looking directly at the camera, wasn't enough to go on.  And besides, he seemed healthy. And Chris was so giddy over him.  

The doctor who reviewed his file at the International Adoption Clinic immediately had the same concerns I had when looking at his picture, and also said his medical report indicated possible developmental delays beyond what one would expect from an institutionalized child.  She asked us to request more information from the orphanage, a process our agency facilitated.

I didn't realize how agonizing the wait for this information would be.  One week went by, and then another.  Chris and I had agreed that we would not move on without answers to our questions.  It was frustrating to be in such limbo.  We wanted to talk about him as our son, but felt we couldn't.  

When we finally heard back from the orphanage, I was elated, but then frustrated that not all our questions were adequately answered and despite asking for a headshot like the doctor had requested, we were sent a picture, again just one, of him looking down!  Yet, what we saw in the new information was still promising.  In the videos they sent us, he looked happy and well-taken care of.  While we understood none of the Chinese spoken by the nannies, we could still make out his nickname, which his nannies cheerfully called to him.  After an emotional conversation, Chris and I decided we were going to officially say yes. 

The next day I was working on the acceptance paperwork and an e-mail from the doctor in response to the updated information I had sent her the day before appeared in my inbox.  I was expecting her to say that everything looked great, but instead she expressed serious concern about his lack of growth and the risks associated with that.  I immediately called the number at the bottom of the e-mail and was surprised to get a hold of the doctor directly on the first ring.  She explained how hard of a case this is because she couldn't confidently say that he was going to be fine.  In her gut she hoped that with love, good nutrition and enrichment provided by an adoptive family, he would quickly catch up to his peers and thrive.  But she kept going back to the growth charts where his measurements put him on the border of what she referred to as the "danger zone."  If his height, weight and head circumference measurements had been in that zone, she would have definitely concluded he will experience permanent cognitive delays.

Chris and I were shocked by this news.  We feel fully prepared cleft lip and palate and the surgeries and therapies our child will require, but not for delays that mean our child will never live fully independently.  It broke my heart to say no to a child who might have more serious issues, but I don't think I was ever going to be comfortable with 50/50 chances.  Given time, we might have been able to better assess his needs, but in the adoption process, we don't have the gift of time.  We have to make a final decision shortly after a referral. 

I go back and forth between feeling guilty and sadness and feeling at peace with our decision.  Our agency promised me they would be able to find a family for this child, but I don't know if they just said that to make me feel better.  I definitely didn't feel better that night when I stopped in Soren's room to kiss him goodnight before I went to bed.  I bent over to kiss him and he nuzzled me and I stroked his hair.  And I cried at the thought that I have no idea if the child I'm leaving behind has someone too who will check on him tonight, find his fallen pacifier or missing polar bear stuffed animal, and kiss and love him.

No Match Tonight

I am disappointed.  I can't hide that.  As long as there was the possibility we would be matched tonight, however slim, I had my hopes. Referral night is like waiting to take a pregnancy test and wishing for that second line to appear.  Instead, I constantly refreshed my e-mail.  No news was good news, as our agency calls us first if we are matched.  When an e-mail from Bethany appeared, the news was unmistakeable though.  The subject line read, "no match tonight."

With no referral, all we can do is look ahead to next month.  As difficult as I find it to trust our child is out there and we will be matched with each other when the timing is right, all I have left is hope. 

Final Conference Call Before a Referral

The wait is officially on.  Bethany requires a conference call with its "China team" before a family is eligible to be matched off the shared list, and ours was held today.  Since our home study had covered every possible aspect related to this adoption - what medical needs we are open to, age range of children we are open to, why we want to adopt, how much money we make, where we live, how much leave we plan to take, whether we can accommodate the medical appointments our future child may have and so on - I was actually quite nervous about what there was possibly left to ask and whether we would have to prove we're worthy of adopting. 

Instead we spent most of the nearly two-hour call rehashing what we had checked as a "yes" or as a "willing to discuss" on our openness form.  The conversation went deeper than just talking about the range of severity for each diagnosis.  The social worker cut to the chase and asked us questions like, Would you accept a heart condition that one surgery?  Multiple surgeries?  Limitations on your child's participation in everyday activities? With limb differences, will you accept a child with a missing arm, two missing arms, a missing leg, missing arms and one missing leg, both legs missing, but ability to be fit with a prosthetic?  Are you open to accepting a child with a heart condition, limb difference and cleft lip/palate?  How about just cleft lip/palate and a limb difference?  I wanted to say yes to everything, but then hemmed and hawed and felt guilty about our quickly-shrinking list of what we are truly open to. 

All that made the conversation bearable was that the social worker had  prefaced her questions with acknowledgment that families generally find these questions awkward and uncomfortable and that she and everyone else at the agency respects a family's honesty and its limits.  I felt she was very sincere and I recognized that she's asking tough questions now so she can make the best possible matches.  When the files are released each month, she and social workers from the 180 adoption agencies around the world have seconds to scan basic information - birth date, sex, orphanage name and medical diagnoses - and lock files for families.  She has 16 families eligible to match this coming month. 

The bright spot of our conversation is that the China team estimates that given our openness to a boy and certain conditions like cleft lip/palate, our wait for a referral could be three to four months.  It's hard to believe that by the summer, we could know who our child is.  The downside of hearing an estimate is that I hear "three to four months" and my heart thinks, "That means it could be this month, right?"

Having to Say No

It breaks my heart to have to say no.  So far there are two little boys in China who desperately need families and Chris and I had to be honest about what medical needs we can handle and how much of a leap of faith with uncertainty we're comfortable taking.  While we've been waiting for our dossier to go to China, we've had the opportunity to review referrals for children from the Waiting Child List.  These are children who either have significant needs and/or were not matched during the monthly referral process.  For two particular boys, I've stared at their pictures, googled nearly every piece of medical information in their referrals and hated the unfairness of their diagnoses.  Mostly, I've been hating myself for not being strong enough.

Chris reminds me that we can't go through with adoption trying to save the world.  We are not heroes.  We are two parents with two young children who need so much of our attention.  Daily life is already chaotic and busy and stressful.

Some might criticize us for choosing which needs we will and won't take for an adopted child when we didn't get that choice for our biological children.  In my opinion, there is choice when it comes to biological children.  If you're not HIV-positive and neither is your partner, your baby will not be born HIV-positive.  If you and your partner are not carriers of a genetic disease, your child will not be born with that disease.  Chris and I did choose a child without HIV or certain genetic diseases.  There was plenty that my children could have been born with, but there was a lot more I knew would be either impossible to occur with my children, or would have been unlikely. 

When Chris and I first filled out the "openness" form for China adoption where we selected the medical conditions we would and would not consider, the list terrified and overwhelmed me.  Six months later, fewer of those diagnoses scare me, even some really serious ones. Yet it's not always the diagnosis itself that causes the biggest worry.  I question whether he's gotten the right treatment and whether it was done early enough.  I wonder whether he's gotten the follow-up care he's needed.  I wonder if the original diagnosis is made worse by untreated side effects or just the effects of institutionalization.  I wonder what hasn't been diagnosed.  I wonder if the original diagnosis, the one causes one prospective adoptive family after another to pause is even correct.  The answers to most of these questions we'll never learn or 100% trust. 

I watch the short videos on repeat that the social worker sent me and reread the referral information.  He looks so healthy I think.  What I'm seeing in the video doesn't match what I think of a child with this diagnosis.  I tell myself that the referral information must be wrong.  

Or the scant information in front of me could be correct.  I do believe life can give you more than you can handle.  And I do believe it's possible survive whatever life throws at you, but at what cost?  I feel torn between the little one who deserves a family and the three who are already part of my family. 

So those are all the questions Chris and I ask ourselves over and over, yet there is no right answer.  The rationale side of me knows all this.  My heart can still ache.