Celebrating The Gift of Family

By Tracy H

I always knew I wanted to adopt a child. From the time of my own adolescence - when I thought of my future and the family that would someday be mine - the picture in my mind included both biological and adopted children. I always knew that I wanted to provide a home and a family to a child who needed these things.

Much later in life, my husband and I decided we were ready to start a family. I still cradled in my head my ideal picture of a blended family, and somehow I wasn't surprised when we had difficulty conceiving. Motivated by proliferation instinct, as well as our vision of our family, we wasted no time and both saw an infertility specialist and began to research adoption options. When I finally became pregnant with our son, we temporarily shelved our adoption plans, but always intended to return to them.

Our son's birth and infant year weren't the reasons we opted to adopt our second child, but they certainly sealed the deal! Aaron's difficult delivery left me in physical pain for months, and much of the charm of a newborn was concealed from us by his constant colicky screaming and his tendency to throw up as often as 24 times a day. So when it was time for another child, we instantly picked up the adoption research we left off two years earlier. Ultimately, we decided to adopt a baby girl from South Korea.

I believe my mother's intuition somehow alerted me that our referral was coming. On May 30, I wrote a long letter in my journal to our pre-school-age son, letting him know that his world was soon to change and preserving for him the knowledge of how much I loved him as my only child. On May 31, our WHFC social worker called with the news. We had ourselves a daughter!

The next phone call from our social worker took me by surprise. Wait times from referral to travel had stretched to as much as seven months, so I was completely unprepared when she called me only three months later. "Tell your husband to get packing; he's going to Korea!"

Suddenly, our self-confidence seemed as far away as Korea. My husband traveled to Korea with his sister so that I could stay home with our son. He began the dizzying dance of booking flights with frequent flyer miles to travel halfway across the world in a week-and-a-half. I, on the other hand, obsessed over getting the carpets cleaned before the baby arrived.

Finally on one cool August night in a nearly deserted Logan Airport, an exhausted father and a bewildered, wide-eyed baby came down the jet way to an anxious mother and uncertain little boy. In that instant, we became a family of four. With tears in my eyes, I knelt by the baby carrier, scooped the featherweight up in my arms and introduced myself to baby Rachel.

The four of us have been together for six months now. There was a time before Rachel; but we weren't complete then. I can't count the kisses I've planted on those silky, soft cheeks. I won't try to count the hours of sleep I've lost. I have to admit the guilty happiness I feel when Rachel's stranger anxiety shows itself and she turns to me for reassurance and buries her head in my chest. And there is nothing on Earth that can keep me going like a tickling giggle fest after dinner or the love that my two kids show to each other and that I know will survive long after my husband and I are gone.

There are people who say that to adopt a child is to give her the gift of a life she never could have had. But I know the truth. The real gift is given by my daughter, and by her birthmother who loved her daughter enough to let her go. We are complete now, and I've been given the gift of my family.

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