Ten years ago, in November, 1999, my husband and I traveled to China to pick up our daughter, Xiaoxiao.* Since then, many friends and acquaintances have asked me why I adopted at such a late stage in life. I was 44 when we brought her home, and now at 54, with a 10-year-old, the question comes up even more frequently. Why did I choose to spend this time in my life as a mother instead of a happy-go-lucky empty nester?
The short answer is, "I was under the influence of hormones," but there's a lot more to the story.
Way back in 1982, when I gave birth to my biological daughter, I had so many complications that it was pretty much a given that I would never get pregnant again. First I developed toxemia with high blood pressure, then came the emergency C-section, then I got an infection from the surgery, and there were many subsequent breast infections. Suffice to say that between those experiences and my having a hard time being a Mom and working full-time, on top of ongoing struggles with clinical depression, another child was not something I wantedever! (Never say never, for you have no idea what the universe, or God, will throw at you down the road a bit.)
Fast forward to 1998. I had been married to my second husband for about two-and-a-half years, when at the ripe old age of 43 I found myself-gasp-pregnant! I am all for pro-choice, but for me the idea of having an abortion turned my stomachthat and the morning sickness, of course. Well, after we both got over the shock and horror of the situation and settled down a bit, we started to get kind of excited. Rich had not been married before, and he had every confidence that he could be a great Dad and that we would do just fine. It would not be a repeat of my previous childbirth experience. I wasn't totally convinced, but I got caught up in the possibilities. (Here's where I believe the hormones first started influencing me.)
At the time, Rich and I were travelling quite a bit for his job as a sound engineer in the theatre. We went to Norfolk, VA, to work on the show Miss Saigon, when I was in my first trimester. At about twelve weeks, I left to return for Colorado one day before his last show and the load out for the next city. I started spotting on the way, but hoped that it was nothing serious. By the time the plane touched down, I was beginning to panic. I went directly to my doctor's office, and the ultrasound said it all: the fetus was gone, I was no longer pregnant. I was devastated, and when Rich found out later that evening, he was too. The stage manager sent him home on the next available flight, and we cried together.
Believe it or not, we actually tried to get pregnant again, for awhile. Looking back, that's when I should have known I was acting under the influence of hormones, and I believe that if I had waited longer I may never have adopted. But we didn't wait. After six months of trying, and tests ruling out Rich as "the problem," the doctor told us that perhaps we should investigate alternative methods. I may have been not thinking totally clearly, but I was sure of one thing: if we were going to spend gobs of money on something in order to have a child, I wanted it to be a sure thing. I had seen too many friends go through the heartbreak, expense, and emotional rollercoaster of attempts at in vitro fertilization, and I knew that it was not for me. No, if we were going to spend thousands of dollars, it would be on an adoption. Rich wasn't sold.
However, after a night at a friends' house, with their two, newly adopted toddler-boys from Russia and the Ukraine, Rich was thinking differently. They behaved like little angels, and he softened.
Long story short, we started out on our road to adoption. We didn't want to adopt domestically because we were not enthused about the possibility of a birth mother appearing one day wanting her child back. We were not obsessed with having a blonde, blue-eyed child, and we'd also found that children from orphanages in Eastern Europe and Romania had very high incidences HIV, fetal alcohol syndrome, attachment disorders, etc. The orphanages were poorly run, and whatever money was paid in adoption fees usually ended up in the hands of corrupt government officials as opposed to going back into the orphanage system.
I had always had an interest in various Asian cultures, and Rich wanted a daughter, so China seemed the best bet. (Korea only wants young parents, and China, at the time, was open to parents whose combined ages were 100 or less!) Chinese orphanages, or social welfare institutes, had consistently improved since the country first began international adoption in 1992, according to our social worker, mainly because the adoption fees did go back into the adoption system. Add to that the fact that the children were much healthier, for the most part, and the decision was made: we would adopt from China.
After all the paperwork was completed and sent to China, we waited. And I worried. Would I be OK as a mother? Were we doing the right thing? The hormones had worn off, but there was no turning back. Fourteen months later, we were sent a picture of Mao Xiaoxiao, her birth date, and a few other details, along with a letter from the Chinese government asking if we wanted to adopt her. We had 24 hours to decide. The answer we sent was, "Yes."
And here's where, hormones or not, the story becomes more than just another adoption story. Sometime over the next six weeks, while we were waiting for our visas, I was sitting around and decided to count backwards from her birth date to her date of conception. It turned out to be the exact same day that I had miscarried! What are the odds of that? I still wonder. But that was the sign that told me that whatever happened in the future, this little girl was absolutely meant to be with me.
So, I guess that even if I sometimes feel very selfish and frustrated, and wish I had this time in my life to travel and be a bit irresponsible, instead of mothering all over again, I know that she is in my life for a reason. Sometimes I think it's just to keep me aliveso that I have to get out of bed each morning. Whatever. The bottom line is that I do love her, very much. And as it happens, she's much more like me than my biological daughter. But even that doesn't matter, for ultimately it comes down to that incredible coincidence or synchronicity that reminds me, each time I think about it, that for whatever great plan there is, her destiny is tied with mine.
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*Xiaoxiao in Chinese is two different characters, , which mean "little" and "dawn." Although we had named her Brenna Xiaoxiao Strong, at preschool she was asked which name she preferred to be called, and she said without hesitation, "Xiaoxiao," and that was that. It is pronounced "show show," as in "shower.
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