This post is the first in a series of real-life adoption stories with guest authors. The goal is to show that you don’t have to be a superhero to adopt, just an ordinary person who says “yes.” These stories highlight a variety of perspectives and issues related to adoption from the people who live them every day. Alicia, who shared this story, is a dear friend of whose daughter was in the crib next to my sweet L’s in their China orphanage. Read on to see how she and her husband work to stay on the same page through all the stages of adoption. 

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The air hung heavy and thick, the humidity so dense you could cut a knife through it. Sweat, earth, and the sweet scent of tropical flowers scented the air while the ground left a perpetual covering of deep red dust.  Laughter and shouts filled the air as groups of kids ran and played, begging to be picked up, thrown in the air, spun around.

A dark, chubby little hand rested on my thigh, a bright smile with big dimples smiled back at me. His name was Moses and he was an orphan, living in one of the Watoto villages, a small grouping of buildings that held eight orphans and one housemother.  Almost all of the occupants were affected by the AIDS crisis in Africa. Widowed, orphaned, left alone all due to the severe outbreak of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Moses’ bright eyes lit up when you talked to him, his smile wide and inviting. Next to him sat his house brother, another orphan. He did not smile back. His eyes lacked sparkle, as if staring into a deep abyss. He had missing fingers on one of his hand and he kept close to his house brother. Two boys, both orphaned through no fault of their own. Both had seen things that no child deserves to see.

It was then, in 2002, in Kampala, Uganda that my eyes were opened. I could not pretend I did not know. I had seen with my own eyes, felt with my own hands, hugged with my own arms. The plight of the orphans was not just a moving commercial for partnership. It was bright happy eyes and very, very sad eyes. It had touched my heart, grabbed my soul and never really lost its grip.

Alicia’s desire to adopt was cemented after working with an Uganda orphanage.

Orphan Care Gets Personal

Fast-forward 13 years. It was August of 2015 and I was at the playground. It was a hot and sweaty evening and my children were tearing around. Somehow, my husband Ryan and I started talking about our kids and what our future was going to look like.

We both took a deep breath and shared our hearts.

After four pregnancies, three beautiful, healthy children and almost 9 years of marriage, we both separately had been praying for our next step.

On our own, individually, we both came to the exact same conclusion.

Adoption. We were ready.

My heart had felt the call years ago, the tug and the pull always intensified with every adoption story that I heard. Ryan has his own journey towards adoption that led us to this point.

That late summer day confirmed that we agreed. We wanted to add to our little family. We wanted to bring a child in.

Are you fundraising for an adoption? Use my referral link to earn $1 extra on each Bonfire t-shirt you sell!

The older Fedell children were ready to adopt a new sibling.

Our Daughter Was in China

Two years later, in the summer of 2017, we boarded a plane heading to Beijing. After hours and hours of filling out paperwork, interviews, and fingerprints we were on our way to bring home our newest child, a 15-month-old little girl.

We met our daughter in a government building that was similar to a DMV. Nothing fancy, just a generic building with people filling out forms, waiting for their number to be called, sitting on the same plastic seats.

But, unlike the normal day to day forms being filed, we were sitting on those hard, plastic seats anxiously awaiting to meet, for the very first time, our daughter.

In a span of 30 minutes, filled with tears and joy and heartbreak and laughter, we became parents for the fourth time, walking about in that small room with a bewildered and scared little girl. We didn’t know her. She didn’t know us. But we were family, from that moment on. (Read about what happens on gotcha day in China adoptions here.)

Alicia and Ryan became parents again through adoption in a government building in China.

Choosing How to Adopt

When my husband and I had the first conversations about adoption, we had to work through the many questions that follow. What type of adoption? Where? Who? How? Adoption is like a giant funnel. It starts wide and vague, but each step closer, the more the funnel narrows until you pinpoint where you will adopt.

For us, our funnel was wide open with either foster to adopt to international. As we asked more questions, consulted more experts and talked with each other, our funnel began to shrink. Domestic adoption and foster to adopt were taken off the table for various reasons which lead to international adoption.

When you decide to adopt internationally, you have to pick a country.  Upon more conversations, more consulting, and more closed doors, we chose the China program which landed us in Beijing.

To Adopt Requires Being on the Same Page as Your Spouse

As you can imagine, this funnel of choices led to many, many conversations. We could not move onto the next step unless we were on the same page, at the same step. I could only do so much paperwork on my own, but my husband also had to sign his name to those papers. It wasn’t something that I could do alone.

But even more conversations will come up when you are given a list of special needs that you will or will not be able to take on.

This is when things get real. What can you, as a family, as a couple, handle? What are you willing to tackle, what is non-negotiable?

Communication is key during this time, but it is just a foreshadowing of when it really matters. Because a sheet of paper can only tell you so much. But when it is a living, breathing, screaming child? That is when your communication is tested.

What if Ryan wasn’t ready or what if I wasn’t ready? We would have waited and prayed until we were both on the same page.

The Chaos and the Clutter has a great article on how adoption impacts a marriage.

I (Jessica) met my daughter at the same time Alicia met hers. Notice me photobombing their special moment…

Communication is Key in Parenting Biological and Adopted Children

Adding a child into a family is a serious thing. It is life changing for everyone involved. I needed my husband to help when our daughter was crying and screaming, and I needed a break. He needed me to help when she refused to let him hold her. We need each other to know we were not alone in this. We were both learning this new person. She was learning about us.

Now that we have been home two years with our daughter, many of the unknowns have faded away and she is fully and completely integrated into our family. Communication is still key, whether it is about our boys’ soccer schedule or daughter’s speech appointments or life in general.

Adding a child into your family is always going to come with changes and adjustments, whether biological or adopted. Every child is their own person, with their own thoughts and ideas, so that will always make the dynamics different. While our daughter has a few more layers to her story, she is being raised the same as our older children. Each child brought on their own unique changes that require us to parent each one differently, as they are completely their own person.

Do we do this perfectly? Far from it. We make mistakes daily. But we talk through everything. We talk through the choices that probably weren’t the best, or the surprising win. Almost always we talk about something funny that one of the kids did. Because at least one kid did something funny that day.

And those are the best conversations.

This beautiful family has been such a blessing to me. Sharing the China adoption experience with Ryan and Alicia was an absolute gift.

For a great way to foster better communication between you and your spouse, check out my post on How to Keep Your Marriage Strong. I also recommend The Five Love Languages and Men are Like Waffles, Women are Like Spaghetti.  

You may also like:

8 Ways We Raised $35,123.51 for our Adoption Without Debt

Our China Adoption Journey

How to Celebrate the Beauty and Embrace the Trauma of Adoption

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