Nine years ago when my husband and I had decided to pursue adoption as a way to add to our family, we immediately got in touch with our local agency. We filled out paperwork and began our home study.
I spoke with the agency director and asked her how many babies they usually place in a year. The number she gave me seemed low and made me worried as to how long we would be waiting to be chosen. My mom had adopted my brother from Vietnam and I had been over there on a humanitarian trip, so my husband and I decided to go that route. We began doing all the mounds of paperwork needed for international adoption.
In the meantime, someone at our church told us about a 3-year-old boy in foster care and wanted to know if we would be interested. Of course we were, so we went and met him. We fell in love with him immediately. We did what was needed to become foster parents so he could live with us until he could be adopted.
In the meantime, we continued our paperwork for Vietnam. About a month after our son came to live with us, or first agency called and said they knew we were working on adopting internationally but wanted to know if we would be interested in adopting a little girl who was born the night before. It didn’t take us long to think about it before we said yes.
After we brought our daughter home, the feelings we had about adopting from Vietnam were gone. We felt complete for the time being. When couples interested in adopting ask for my advice, I tell them my number one advice is to stay open to anything. You never know how your children will come to you. You need to stay open-minded and let yourself be guided. I believe that although none of our children came from Vietnam, focusing on Vietnam helped lead us in the right direction, and it helped us stay calm until our children were ready to join our family.
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