Welcome to our journey! We began this site as a way to keep people informed. Not only do we want to keep our friends and family informed of what is going on with our adoption journey, but to inform others of the adoption process.
BEGINNING THE JOURNEY
It took us a while to reach this point. Matt and I were married in 1998. We wanted to enjoy marriage before we had children. We liked to travel and live a spontaneous life. After about two years of marriage, we began thinking about having children. We knew the journey would not be an easy one. Shannon is an insulin-dependent diabetic. For diabetics, pregnancy takes planning, lots of communication with your doctor(s) and preparation. After three years of preparing, planning and trying, Matt and Shannon were introduced to the idea of adoption by a young woman looking to make an adoption plan for her unborn child. After much thought and reasearch, we decided to pursue the adoption and hired an adoption attorney. Unfortunately, the young woman changed her mind. Disheartened, we shelved the idea of adoption and continued our pursuit of conceiving. Adoption never left our minds though. We both knew that adoption would definitely be part of completing our family. In December 2003, Matt brought back up the idea of adoption.
WHY AN INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION AND WHY CHINA?
These two questions seem to be the most asked. We chose an international adoption because after having had a domestic adoption fail, we did not want to go through the heartbreak and wait that domestic adoptions bring. We also had reservations about an "open adoption". We turned to international adoption because they are relatively smooth. We chose to adopt from China because children adopted from China are relatively healthy and the program is established. We feel confident in our choice to adopt from China.
THE RESEARCH
Adoption takes research. We began researching agencies and attending seminars in December 2003. We informed our families around Christmas that we were pursuing adoption. In January, we decided to use Great Wall China Adoption in Austin, Texas as our agency. We decided to use GWCA because they only do adoptions from China and they are in our home state.
THE INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION JOURNEY
We are documenting our adoption journey. There are four main phases in international adoption: the paperchase, the "paper pregnancy", the referral and the travel to China/Gotcha Day. As we progress through each phase, you can click on each to see where we are in our adoption.
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