We are hoping to travel in February to get her. We will spend about 2 1/2 weeks in China traveling to her province to meet her, and then wrapping up all of the paperwork at the US Consulate in Guangzhou. We so look forward to spending time with our girl in her native land. We will probably fly into Hong Kong (instead of Beijing) since her orphanage is in that area.
Does she have a name?
We have not decided on her name yet! We've only had 2 1/2 years to think about it ... you would think we would know by now. For now, we are calling her Baby Lia. Lia is part of her Chinese name, and we are thinking it will be a part of her forever name, too. So for now, she is Lia to us.
So, the waiting finally paid off?
Well, kind of. We have officially been waiting for a Chinese daughter since our dossier got logged-in on January 11, 2008. However, the wait to be matched with a child has gotten steadily longer since then. It was looking like we would never get matched with a healthy child (right now our estimated wait time is something in the range of 10 more years), so we decided to start looking for our girl on the special needs list. We are with a great agency that is very proficient at matching families with special needs children. My heart has always been open to adopting a special needs child, and we finally decided it was time. We were hoping to find a child with a minor, fixable medical need -- one that we could handle while also parenting two toddlers.
What is her special need?
Baby Lia has a small VSD (ventricular septal defect). In other words, she has a hole in her heart. But don't worry, it sounds scarier than it is. This is actually a very common heart defect. So many people have them and live with them every day. Her VSD will either heal on its own or she will have surgery to repair the hole. It should be one surgery at most. We will have her evaluated by a pediatric cardiologist as soon as we get home to determine how she should be treated.
Will she need other medical care?
Thankfully, we have a wonderful International Adoption Clinic here in town. The pediatrician who runs it has two adopted daughters from China, and she is the one we have been on the phone with (many times) as we have looked at files and made hard decisions. We will see her as soon as we get home to have Lia evaluated and she can help arrange for other care needed. Lia may qualify for Early Intervention therapy, like we've had with Britton, since she will certainly be delayed due to spending her first 18 months or so in an orphanage.
How did you know it was her?
We had been on quite the rollercoaster of emotions before we found Lia. We spent nearly two weeks deciding on another file and were so up and down and up and down during that time. We felt emotionally attached to this other child, but for whatever reason had so much doubt that we could handle the worst case scenario of her special need. We finally turned her file down on Tuesday. It was such a hard decision but we were at peace. On Wednesday morning, I woke up to find that China had released their newest list of special needs children. A few hours later, Lia's file appeared in my inbox. I opened it up, saw her face and then her birthday, and knew it was her. We talked to doctors, of course, but we just pretty much knew from the start that she was our girl.
Two toddlers, really?
Yes, we'll have two toddlers living in our house next year! Britton and Lia will be 7 months apart in age. They share the same birth year -- 2008. I'm sure that will confuse our doctor's office. We will probably get Lia when she is about 18 months old, but she will probably be more like a 12-month-old in size and maturity. So, for awhile, there will be a noticeable difference, but give her some time and they will probably be on par with each other before long.
Are those recent pictures of her?
No, they are not. Lia's file stops at about 9 months of age. It appears that her orphanage got her file together back in May and sent it to Beijing so that it would eventually make its way to people like us. Apparently, her file and the others in her batch didn't make it onto the official Special Needs list until a few days ago. We are hoping to get an update on her before long, and are really hoping for new pictures. Also, want to know what she is doing developmentally these days. At last report, she was trying to crawl.
There is a lot more to share about Baby Lia, but I'll do that in the next post. Hope this post answers a few of those burning questions!
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