Lia Kate's Finding Ad

Years ago, when I first became interested in adopting from China, I learned that 1 to 2 million baby girls were abandoned in China each year. Most Americans probably believe baby girls are abandoned because Chinese families want a boy to carry on the family name. While that may be true in many cases, there are more complex issues that lead families to abandon their daughters (and sons, too). It is actually against the law there for parents to give their children up for adoption, which means they can't simply bring their child to an orphanage if they can't or don't want to keep them. Instead, many birth parents leave their babies in a well-traveled area where he or she is sure to be safely found. When a baby is found, it is protocol for the police to attempt to find the birth parents and, beginning 10 years ago, it became law that the orphanage place an ad in the local newspaper, with the hopes that birth parents would claim their children. This is called a finding ad. There is a company here in the States that can locate a child's finding ad, and they found Lia Kate's ad for us! Here is our little girl in, perhaps, the earliest picture of her that we'll ever see ...

The ad reads "(Her name), female, was found near the Lian Jiang Nursing School on August 11, 2008. She was 12 days old at the time she was found." This is the first we have learned of her finding place and it helps us piece a little bit more of her early story together. We plan to go to her town when we are in China and visit her finding spot. There is not much we'll be able to tell her one day about her life in China, but we hope to put as many pieces together as we can.

Here is the newspaper page her ad was on. She is the 6th baby from the right on the bottom row.

Lia Kate's finding ad appeared in the newspaper on February 20, 2009; and, per the number at the top of her ad, she was the 176th finding ad since the beginning of the year (so in the time span of a month and half). She was 6 months old when the ad ran, but her picture was probably taken when she was 3-4 months old. In comparison, by the time Britton turned 4 months old, we had already taken 1,881 pictures of him (I know, that's a lot). For our little girl, this is the only one we have ...

... and that is why this fuzzy, tiny, grainy picture is so very, very precious to us.