Our
family (my husband Win, our son Ian, and myself) adopted our daughter, Shamian,
from Guangzhou Social Welfare Institute in China on Jan. 7, 2003. Here’s a
little about our story:After lengthy discussion, we made the decision to adopt a child in mid-2001. Both my husband and I have worked and lived overseas and felt comfortable with adopting a child internationally. After making the decision, we wrestled with the selection of country for the adoption since we knew there were many choices to consider. We finally settled on China because we heard that it had a good and stable program, we wanted a girl (the one-child/two-child policy making it likely that we would get a girl), and there was an expedited program for adoption of older children. We chose to adopt an older child of four because we were older (in our mid-forties) and wanted to have a child closer in age to our son.
We completed our adoption dossier by the end of 2001 and Cradle of Hope sent it to China. Although the preparation of the dossier was tedious, we received good support from Cradle of Hope and no major mishaps occurred. The only problem that occurred was that the referral took longer than we had been told (10 months rather than 6 or 7 months), since referrals were taking longer for older children during that period.
We received our referral for Shamian in October 2002. The referral indicated that Shamian was 3 years and 9 months and had been in the Guangzhou Social Welfare Institute since she was 3 months old. It said that she was bright, outgoing and gets along with other children. We were thrilled with the news!
We left for China a few days before New Year’s Day so that we could do some touring before going on to Guangzhou. Fortunately the three of us were able to travel using frequent flyer miles on United Airlines to get to China. We had a wonderful week touring Beijing. The only problem was that it was cold and most of the places we went to were outdoors. I have many pictures of our son (then 10 years old) shivering at various sites around the city.
On Jan. 4, we flew to Guangzhou. The next day, we went to the Guangzhou Adoption Center and met Shamian. She was just as cute as in the referral picture and full of energy, even though she didn’t speak any English. She attached very quickly to me but took longer to warm up to Ian and Win. We spent ten days in Guangzhou getting adjusted to being with Shamian and completing the paperwork.
After we got home, it took some time for all of us to adjust to our new roles. Shamian found home life to be very puzzling at first, especially given the less structured environment compared to the orphanage. She also was used to focusing on her caregivers from the orphanage, all of whom were female. It took her some time to warm up to the idea of having a father and a brother. On our side, Win and I had forgotten about the time demands of having a younger child and it took us some time to ensure that everyone was receiving adequate attention. Our son, Ian, found Shamian to be different than he expected; he had expected a docile, adoring little sister but instead encountered an opinionated, moody sister competing for time with his parents. With some time and effort, though, we eventually began adjusting to our new roles.
We had another big adjustment after we put Shamian into a preschool and both went back to work. Although Shamian learned English quickly, she also became frustrated with her lack of English to fully express herself; she also felt it difficult to be away from home for so many hours during the day. For a period of time, she cried a lot and needed extra attention. I tried to compensate with taking more days off from work and eventually changed my work schedule so that I could work from home.
Finally, after a year had passed, we found that we had adjusted to the new roles in our family. While our life keeps changing and we still have ups and downs, these are now part of normal life and we can’t imagine life without Shamian.