Love At First Sight

We first saw a picture of our little boy on March 7, 2007. I was immediately in love! Dave, however, being a more practical, thoughtful person needed to research his medical condition further. In all truthfulness, Dave's way of dealing with things is much smarter than mine. I tend to see a puppy and buy it. Decide I need a new couch and purchase the first one I see. Now, please don't think I am comparing a child to a dog or a sofa. It just shows that I don't always think things through.

We decided a year before we saw our baby's picture that we were going to adopt from China. That part was set in stone. We completed our dossier and it was logged in at the CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) on November 14, 2006. We, like so many adoptive parents, imagined ourselves bringing home a baby girl. But as I began to delve into the world of international adoption, I found myself being pulled towards little boys. Many blogs, not unlike this very one, told stories of baby boys being abandoned because of various medical needs.

Our little boy has a heart defect called VSD (Ventricular Septal Defect). In layman's terms, a VSD is a hole between the chambers of the heart. Many children with VSD never need surgery. The hole closes naturally and the children live completely normal lives. Our little boy did need surgery. At 21 months old, he was flown from Lanzhou, China to Beijing under the Tomorrow Plan to have open heart surgery. The Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs started the Tomorrow Plan in 2005 to provide 30,000 handicapped orphans with operations over a three year period. The money came from both public and private funds. We are so blessed that our little boy was able to have a life-saving operation in a state-of-the-art hospital thanks to the Tomorrow Plan.

Maybe now is good time to explain why I keep calling our baby "our little boy" instead of his real name. Since we have not officially been approved to adopt him by the Chinese government, we are not supposed to give out his personal information (although I have probably read over 100 blogs where families do this.) I don't think it's an unpardonable sin, but why ask for bad karma? So until we get our official approval (which our agency says is just a formality) we will call him Kai. It's not his Chinese name but it's much easier to write than "our little boy" and we really like the name anyway.