Daniel & Brandon's Story
By Kristin and Fred A
Our family has two very different adoption stories. The first was carefully planned and thought-out – the culmination of a lifelong dream to adopt – and brought us our son, Daniel, in May 2005. The second was a series of twists, turns, and surprises that led us directly to our son Brandon in July 2007.
We met with our WHFC social worker, Bridget, for the first time in April 2004, received a referral for a beautiful newborn we named Daniel Alexander that October, and brought Daniel home from Guatemala in May 2005 at the age of seven months. He was, and continues to be, everything a parent could hope for in a child – smart, funny, loving, and adorable – he was literally a dream come true. We knew right away that at some point we would like to adopt again, but we had no idea that two years later we would already be holding another baby in our arms.
We describe our adoption of Brandon as being similar to a surprise pregnancy with about the same amount of time to prepare. In June 2006 we applied to adopt another baby boy, this time from Colombia, which at the time had a 2-3 year waiting list for a referral. We wanted to adopt again from a Latin American country, but we knew we wouldn’t be able to afford another Guatemalan adoption anytime soon. We spent four months preparing our Colombian dossier and submitted it to WHFC in early October – ironically on the exact day Colombia stopped accepting applications for infants. We were then faced with the choice of withdrawing our application or transferring to another country. We took this as a sign that we were being pointed back to Guatemala, and with some help from our family were able to apply to the country where our hearts had been all along. We received Brandon’s referral on Nov. 27, and just to confirm that we made the right decision, his birth name was Daniel Alexander (exactly the same as our other son)!
We picked Brandon up in Guatemala on lucky 07/07/07, and he is an amazing blessing in our lives. Somehow, even though we were looking in the wrong country at the wrong time, our son found us, and our family is complete.