{67/365} Our Story

I get asked all the time ~ what is your story? or better yet how did you come to adopt twins? and I keep promising myself I would write our story one day I would put it all down on the blog to remember forever…every time I start it I end up crying and it never makes it past the first sentence. It has not been a good winter ~ it has not been an easy winter and I need to remember our story ~ I need to cry tears of happiness because of the immense miracle God pulled off to get us where we are today…so here goes (and this may take a while so grab a drink or two, get comfortable and read):

In February 2007 we contacted the only agency that we even considered using for our adoption and were given an immediate appointment with the women who I would later call the super social worker but let’s just say it took some time because well our first meeting was not so good. She asked us what we would like out of the adoption and this is what I said “We want to adopt boy/girl twins with the boy older and almost all special needs are ok, please.” And added it would be nice if they were from Vietnam but that part was negotiable. She said “this is not McDonald’s we cannot place orders” and went on to say that since this was our first child we should adopt a healthy (or seemingly healthy) infant as young as possible and just enjoy. Before the meeting was over this social worker had told us of the million to one odds of our receiving twins and convinced us that most likely we would get a young healthy (or apparently healthy) male from Vietnam. Somewhere in my head I knew that there was a reason I wanted what I wanted and I never gave up BUT we kept up or end of the bargain as we completed so many of the steps in the process and she hers. Our home study was for two children, possible special needs. Because we were hoping to adopt from Vietnam there were so many things that had to be done before we could be dossier to Vietnam…. And as you can tell from the time line we hit more than one road bump…

One day in November (maybe it was late October) I googled twins and adoption – I found a beautiful set of identical boy twins from Asia on a site called Rainbow Kids. One of the boys had a seizure disorder or possibility of one. I fell in love immediately and e-mailed about them. I learned pretty quickly that their social worker was with Children’s Home Society and Family services (CHSFS); they were from Korea; their file was out with another family and that since my husband and I had not been married for 3 years (only 2 and a few months at that point) we would be unable to adopt these boys. None of these facts stopped me…not one. Their poor social worker – by the time the family who had their file said YES I had bugged her so many times I was sure that she had me on some list that marked me as completely crazy and please do not let any children go to that home.

Meanwhile, Vietnam was not accepting dossiers anymore and we had to move on to a different country. We choose Korea though we would not be married for 3 years until that June. We waited and mourned the loss of Vietnam. The super social worker (our social worker) was great. So we waited and made changes that would be necessary come June when we would be married for 3 years.

Now fast forward to April (the April before the June we will be married for 3 years) and I get a VERY surprise e-mail from the CHSFS social worker asking if we have found our child yet and if not to contact her. I remember I called before I even talked to my husband. I had to leave a voice mail and the woman (Peg) called me back to tell me that she had TWO sets of twins that were not on their special needs list yet but that if I was still interested she would be happy to let me review the files. She told me about one set from Korea and one from Ethiopia…because we were already preparing for Korea we accepted that set of twins for review. Over the phone Peg could tell me that the twins had been born at 25 weeks 5 days and that the little girl suffered from a little known disorder called Tuberous Sclerosis Complex or TSC. She knew little else but the next day could get us the medical records when she received the go ahead from the super social worker.

My mom works for our pediatrician who review the file himself as well as 6 other doctors including one who spoke and read Korean (which the medical records were in and then translated into English in some areas). We were told just from the review that it looks that the TSC was a VERY mild case (TSC is a disorder that causes non-cancerous tumors to grow on vital organs and can include seizures and a higher likelyhood of autism) and that if we felt like following our hearts we should.

We saw these pictures first:

After a lot of talking (at least 16 hours worth of talking) we knew what we were going to do. We said our yes May 1^st and May 2^nd learned had we not said yes they would have been separated. We were their last hope to stay together as they considered our daughter unadoptable. I cried and swore on as many bibles as I could find no matter how good or bad she was they were our children and NO ONE would ever separate them until they were ready. The wait really began now…

We had to wait until July for our official acceptance but they held them for us and updated us with pictures and so much more! Once July hit everything seemed to go so quickly.

Until one day in September when it appeared our whole world would come crashing down. They called to tell us our daughter had a seizure…she would have some tests but this may add 6 weeks to our travel time. But they could send us this picture:

TWO days after the tests we received an e-mail that said if we wanted they were ready. I was in tears and one week later, in early October, we (and my mom) were in Korea to pick them up.

The rest has been a whirlwind ~ from the plane ride home to  first family pictures to the terrible twos And in case you don’t know ~ BOTH of them are doing great and currently we have no issues from the TSC! While we do not feel that God would put ANYONE through the pain a birth mother has to go through when she relinquishes her children JUST so that we can have children, we believe that once she made that choice He made sure they were paired up with us as they are the perfect fit in our family!

Feel free to ask any questions if you have any!

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