Quinn, AKA Ryan | Reece's Rainbow

So, we are adopting from Vietnam... now what?

In 2014 Vietnam joined the Hague Adoption Convention, which ensures that adoptions that take place are safe and ethical. Because they just recently joined the Hague, they are only adopting on a limited basis through a pilot program. That means that only three adoption agencies in the U.S. are licensed to adopt from Vietnam, and children who meet a certain criteria are eligible to be adopted in the U.S. These children are either older than 5 years old, have special needs, or are in sibling groups.

First things first, we chose which agency we wanted to work with. We chose HOLT which is an agency located in Oregon. We filled out some paperwork, paid some fees, and then got to look at a photo listing. It was pretty overwhelming. There were about 20 children waiting to be adopted that we saw at that time. Most of them older and with minor to major special needs.

Mark and I each looked at the photo listing separately. We each found the same boy that we liked. We were trying to keep an open mind but knew he would be on the short list. We requested more information on a couple of the kids and looked each of them over and prayed and prayed. Our U.S. agency has assigned all of the kids English names so we can all pronounce and say specifically who we are talking about. One night while we were playing some board game Mark said, "OK, write down the name of the kid you feel the best about. We each wrote down the name on a paper and on the count of three flipped it over. We both wrote the same name: Ryan.

We wrote to our agency to let them know we found our son! We were so excited. We started thinking of what we wanted to name him and imagining our life with him. Our agency wrote back 4 days later. That was a long 4 days. Apparently everyone was out of the office, in Vietnam, seeing how things were working on that end. They told us that they were excited that we chose to adopt Ryan, but that another family was interested in him too. I've never felt so much anxiety in my life! From there we had to wait 2 weeks for a phone interview with a social worker and then a committee would decide which family would adopt him. We had to pull the reins in on names and our imagined future and wait. What if they choose the other family? We felt so good about our decision! What if it doesn't work out? We just had to put our faith in God and know that He obviously was in charge and whatever happened was for our good and learning.

We had the interview on a Tuesday and we both felt like it went well. The social worker told us that she still needed to interview the other family and then they would let us know when they would hold the committee to decide and let us know the night after the meeting. Then on Thursday shortly after I got home from work someone called me and from the caller ID I knew it was our agency. My heart about leaped out of my chest. It was the social worker. She said "I hope someone told you that the committee was held today." I awkwardly and with much surprise told her that "no, I had no idea!" She said that they had just finished and decided to place Ryan with us! I immediately started crying uncontrollably and hung up with her and called Mark. Poor guy. It must be distressing to get a phone call from your hysterical wife. All I could say was that they had called me. He of course thought the worst because I was crying uncontrollably. I told him that they chose us, and he said "Oh... well that is good!"

I don't think I've ever reacted to news so hysterically :) That was the straw that broke the camels back to be sure. I had carried so much anxiety, hopes, fears, doubts, everything about the adoption, having kids, the future and life in general that to get that news was more than I could even contain. Needless to say it was a great day.

Our match with Ryan is currently contingent on us completing a successful home study (more to come on this later). Because nothing is set in stone, and because we don't want to jeopardize anything with the adoption, we won't be talking much about our son-to-be (that shouldn't be hard as we don't know a whole lot) but we have been advised not to post pictures, or really anything about him. We also want to respect his privacy, as we currently have no rights to his well being at this point.

However, we will tell you that we have chosen to name him Quinn Aaron! We can't wait to meet him!