Our Adoption Story
Hunt and
Sarah Blair
Thinking back
on the twists in the path that led us to adopt our son, Adam, from Calcutta, much
of it seems like ancient history. The first stages of our journey were difficult
because we couldn't decide which of the many paths to adoption to follow. At first,
I wasn't interested in international adoption because I wanted the baby to be
a newborn. So, we looked into other options, but we felt uncertain and unsettled.
In the summer of 2000, we had decided to take a breather from the decision-making
process. We went with my parents and our son George to a farm to pick blueberries
and have a picnic. There was an Indian family near us with a beautiful little
boy who kept toddling over to us, waving and giving us little smiles. I said quietly
to my husband "You know we could have one of those." We watched this
boy very closely, both fantasizing, trying on the idea of adopting from India.
When we called our Social Worker and said we'd decided on India, she was very excited for us. She said that International Mission of Hope in Calcutta is a wonderful place, and that the children she has helped to place from there have done very well.
Anyone who has adopted internationally
will tell you about the paperwork. It is daunting, often confusing, and feels
endless when you are in the middle of it. Our social worker had good advice, which
is to work away at it a little at a time. At a low point, I told a friend that
I didn't believe anymore that the pile of papers were going to somehow turn into
a baby, and that doing paperwork seemed to have become an eccentric hobby of ours.
Nonetheless, we just kept plugging away, little by little.
Meanwhile,
the finances were posing a bit of a problem. We had recently bought our first
home, and our savings had been demolished. We had some retirement and earned time
off that could be cashed in, and my parents loaned us some money, but it still
wasn't adding up. I found A Child Waits
online, but was skeptical. At first I feared it was actually some kind of cruel
scam to defraud the desperate-to-adopt. Then, when I came around and believed
A Child Waits
was real, I was afraid that they wouldn't have any money for us. Maybe it was
just for people adopting from Russia. Or they ran out of money. Or the timing
wouldn't work out. At that point, I felt that there had been so many obstacles
to our desire for another child that it was hard to believe that something so
unexpected and wonderful would actually go right.
We
got the referral of our son and the approval call from A
Child Waits in the same week, in March 2001.
Things were really coming together! I dimly recall that those were confusing days;
lots of phone calls and more paperwork (surprise) as we accepted the referral.
I'll never forget receiving the check from A
Child Waits. I looked at it in disbelief: "Why
do these people want to help us? "
One of the amazing things we learned was that Adam was born, very premature, just a few days before that picnic at the berry farm. I believe that the little boy we saw was Adam's messenger, coming to tell us that he was born and that we better get started on that paperwork.
After the flurry of activity surrounding the referral, there were more than three months of very difficult waiting. An Indian court date was needed, and Adam needed an Indian passport (India does not require adopting parents to travel to India; they allow the children to be escorted to the United States).
Things got very complicated in July. We had planned a week with my parents at
the beach (long ago we had been sure that "Baby X" would have arrived
long before summer!), and my husband's step mother was diagnosed with very advanced
cancer. We got the news that Adam was coming soon when we were at the beach. My
husband needed to go to California to see his very sick stepmother, and in the
end, my husband and Adam both flew into Logan Airport the same afternoon!
Meeting Adam was incredible, exciting, disorienting, exhausting, and a bit surreal. We had focused on the meeting for so long, that it seemed like an end point or culmination of some kind. And I guess it is, in a way. He was very calm and alert (and beautiful), and bestowed the first smile on his big brother George, much to George's delight. I felt as though I might faint. I did feel happy, but the strongest feeling I had was a desire to be alone with this child (did I mention that he was beautiful?), drink him in, in quiet solitude and begin to get to know him. He felt very mysterious to me, and I did feel self-conscious about people watching us together.
The
first few weeks were hard. He was delightful, and made a truly remarkable adjustment,
when you consider what had happened to his little world. I, on the other hand,
was having a hard time adjusting my expectations of myself. I had done this before,
right? We had "been pregnant" for nearly two years, right? We ought
to be ready, right? Sort of! I had forgotten how engrossing a new baby is, how
much your mind and heart are preoccupied with the transformative experience of
becoming someone's mother. In addition, with an older child, you can't just lose
yourself in the new baby. You have to continue to meet the needs of the older
one. I got pretty exhausted, and had moments of feeling totally inadequate. If
I knew then what I know now, I'd have told myself to take it easier, eat more
frozen pizza, and let the answering machine do its job.
| What can I say about Adam? He is sunny, energetic, very healthy, and beautiful. He's been here 16 months, and it's impossible to imagine our family without him. He's ours, and we're his. |  |  |
A thousand thanks to A Child Waits for giving us the help we needed at just the right time. You still seem almost too good to be true.
