We have a daughter - Introducing Audrey!

Wow – what an amazing day! Yesterday we FINALLY saw our beautiful daughter for the first time. We are overcome with joy and can’t wait to meet her and bring her home. Please join us in praising God for this wonderful blessing and for the faithfulness and providence that He has shown to us throughout this adoption process.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."
~Ephesians 3:20-21

Here’s the complete story of yesterday’s events (a bit long):
At about 8:15am, we heard my (Julie’s) cell phone ring, but it was in another room and by the time I got to it I had just missed the call. I looked to see who had called and saw that it was our adoption agency, America World. I told Aaron and immediately called them back, but it went to voicemail because their official office hours do not begin until 9:00am. So we tried a couple of different extensions and left voicemail messages for them to call us back. We were both immediately very excited and anxious because we knew they were most likely calling about a referral since it was early in the morning, and there was really no other reason for them to be trying to contact us at that time. After leaving messages for them, we took the opportunity to pray that this would be “the call” and to ask God to let us know immediately and without reservations whether or not this was to be our daughter.

Just moments later, America World called us back to let us know that they had a shared referral for a little girl that they would like us to review and consider accepting. They briefly told us that she is almost one year old and has an unrepaired cleft lip and an unrepaired congenital heart defect. We agreed to review her file, and they immediately emailed us her medical information and growth report. They told us that we would need to make a decision within the hour of whether to pursue this referral by contacting doctors, etc. because of the nature of it being a “shared referral”. This means that many adoption agencies have been sent her referral information, and there can be several families reviewing the referral information at one time. Our agency only contacts one family at a time to review the information, but families with other agencies could be reviewing the same file and potentially accept it before we did. Our agency told us that the sooner we can make a decision and “lock” the file the better our odds of “beating the clock” if we want to accept. “Locking” the file means that we are committed to adopting her and from that point no other families can accept the referral.

Before opening the email, we prayed once more that God would make it absolutely clear to us if this were our daughter and to lead us to the right decision of whether to accept this referral. We opened the pictures of her and quickly read over her basic information and the medical report. Aaron then asked me what my initial gut feeling was, and I told him that I felt that this is our daughter and what God has planned for us. He said that he felt exactly the same way. It is not easy to explain, but God truly spoke to us, not in a loud voice, but with an overwhelming feeling of peace and certainty that she is our daughter. We briefly looked up some information about her medical needs on a few websites (WebMD, American Heart Association, etc), much of which we had already researched when we applied for the special needs program with America World because we had to list which special needs we would be willing to consider. We felt that the needs we had listed were ones God had already led us to at that time through prayer, which helped make the decision easier as well. Although we knew her needs are serious and will require surgery, and that there is some uncertainty to the severity and extent of what will be involved, we felt completely ready to accept her referral at this point. We believe without a doubt that this is what God intends for our family and that He will be faithful to see her and us through whatever her medical needs may involve.

We called our adoption agency back and told them, that we looked at her information and prayed and not only do we want to pursue this referral, we wanted to go ahead and lock it in. They asked us to hold for a moment and came back and told us that the referral was locked for us. After congratulating us, they told us they were going to send us some paperwork that needed to be completed and sent back to them to be forwarded to China. Normally they give you 48 hours to complete and submit everything, but since this was Friday, they told us that we only had until 3pm to get everything back to them so that they could review it and send it on to China in order for the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) to have it Monday morning.

Our biggest task to complete was writing our “Letter of Intent” to the CCAA, and the biggest challenge in this was to detail to them the treatment plan for her needs, as given to us by a doctor with experience in international adoption of children with special needs. To make a very long story short, we were able to have Dr. Staat, the director of the International Adoption Clinic at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, review her medical and developmental information by email and then discuss it with us over the phone. She and her staff were very helpful, and God definitely provided for us in this step as well because she was on vacation but took time to review the file and talk with us anyway. We got everything taken care of in time, but it was a crazy day. Not just because we were busy trying to get things done, but also because we had lots of emotions – mostly excitement, but also longing to be with her, and concern for her well-being, especially the more we learned about her conditions.

Dr. Staat told us that her growth and development looked good from what she saw on the report, but that the information about her heart defect was too vague to know the full extent of her condition and what it would involve. The vague part is common with the medical reports that they see from China. She did tell us that many children with this condition have a surgery or two to correct the problems and recover fine, but that some have more complicated issues requiring multiple surgeries. The bottom line is that we won’t know until we have her home and can take her to a pediatric cardiologist who will determine the severity of the problem and what will be needed. We are hopeful and are praying that God will protect her heart and that her condition will be less severe and able to be repaired with as few surgeries as possible. We have already read about several children with this type of heart defect where this turned out to be the case, and they have fully recovered. Since this is turning into a long post, I won’t try to explain more about the type of heart defect she has. Here’s a link to the American Heart Association’s website that talks about Tetrology of Fallot, her specific heart condition, if you want to check it out - http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=1299.

The treatment for her cleft lip will also involve one or more surgeries, but the outlook is good. In addition, most children with clefts are likely to need ear tubes, orthodontic care, and speech therapy. Usually the lip heals well after surgery, with very little evidence of the cleft. Sometimes there is a slight scar, but it is not usually very noticeable. We will coordinate the treatment for her two conditions with our pediatrician and the specialists that will be involved.

After all the necessary paperwork was submitted to our agency, our family coordinator there reviewed it and let us know that everything was good and had been submitted electronically to China. Now we will wait for our referral approval (RA) from China, which gives us the official approval to adopt her. This is taking about 30 days or so from what we have seen lately but can take longer. Once we receive the RA, we will wait a couple weeks or more for travel approval from China, and the specific dates for our travel will be worked out with our agency. Normally, travel occurs 2 – 4 weeks after receiving travel approval. If things go for us as they have been for others lately, we will most likely travel to get her somewhere between mid-October and mid-November.

After all was said and done, we went to Stir Fry Café with two of our best friends, Tony and Rebecca Marr, to celebrate and share all of our good news. Thank you Tony and Becca for celebrating with us and supporting us so much through this process. You are awesome, and we love you!

After two years of waiting, we are so excited and thankful for this amazing gift! We believe that she is perfect for our family and will post more of the details we received about her soon – so check back to find out more (where she lives, personality, growth and development, etc).

So many of you have prayed for us throughout this long process and wait, and we can’t thank you enough. Thank you especially to our families who have supported us from day one of this process and to our camp and church families who have prayed so hard and mean so much to us. Please continue to pray for us as we prepare to bring Audrey home, for her health and transition to our family, and our travel to China and back.

I will close this post with a verse that has always been at the forefront of my mind through all of this:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you,plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11