I became a mom via adoption, and even though I didn't go thru labor, we definately had the rollercoaster of emotions. As you can see we have a lovely daughter... we chose to adopt for medical issues, and when we signed up with our adoption agency the emotions went crazy. In July of 2002, we began our paperchase to get everything we needed to put together our Dossier. We completed our dossier & turned it in to our adoption agency on Jan 10, 2003, and it was logged into China on Jan 28, 2003. Our agency told us the referral time was running 14 months. You want to talk about a long pregnancy, I went just about nuts waiting to see my daughter. To our good fortune we recieved "the call" that referrals had just arrived on Oct 1, 2003, our daughter was beautiful, but our paperwork will be in translation & we cannot give you any further info until it's translated, translation took 10 days!It is really hard when the adoption agency it 10 minutes away, they have your daughters referral & pictures and wont let you see them. Anyway, Oct 10 we finally have our paperwork in hand & she was more beautiful than we could have imagined, all I wanted to do was hold her. She was thousands of miles away and we had to wait 6 more weeks until we got on that plane to get her. That 6 weeks was the hardest of all, we were starting to bond with that picture, we sent her a care package, finished some more paperwork, and Thanksgiving day 2003 we were on the plane for the trip of a lifetime. Before we got her we did some sightseeing in Beijing for 3 days, then off to Nanchang, China to the Lakeview Hotel, we arrived at 3:00pm on Dec 2, 2003 & they told us to be on 4th floor at 4:00pm & our babies would be there. Our group got together on the 4th floor, we could hardly wait, then the nanny's started coming in with our babies, each family was called by their babies Chinese name, and one by one we recieved our precious baby girls. Mandi was just 10 1/2 months old when she was placed in my arms, all of 15lbs, and just beautiful. She bonded very quickly to me, not so much to my husband. When I think of that afternoon at the Lakeview, a little over 2 years ago, I still get misty... our lives changes so much for the better that day. And I know in my heart that God had chosen her to be our daughter. Like I always say, "I could not have had a better baby than her!"
Desiree
