We had tried for years to adopt a baby girl through the foster care system in our state. Many children came to stay in our home; unfortunately, we never had a baby girl that stayed in our forever family. When we began our adoption journey, we were barely 30, that was 14 years, nearly 100 children, and seven adoptions ago.

We found ourselves in our 40’s, still wanting to adopt an illusive baby girl. Only we had a few strikes against us, now we were considered older adoptive parents, and we were also a large family now. Two things that not many birth mothers want to consider when choosing the perfect family for their newborn.

We had quite a bit of experience with special needs children and we had adopted several older children, so for a few years we only sought private special needs adoption. We thought there might be less competition for those infants, but we were wrong. For one reason or another, our family wasn’t chosen. Of course, it made it more difficult that we were gender specific; we could have had several more newborn boys, but I felt five was enough.

As I searched on the internet, night and day, for potential adoptive situations it became clear to me that there was a great need for families for African American or mixed race children. Repeatedly, I saw situations of infants either already born, or due any day, without a matched forever family. We began sending our homestudy on every situation we found where gender was known to be a girl.

We ran into another strike against our family that we hadn’t considered. Many of these birth mothers wanted their infants placed in already mixed race homes. For 14 years we had parented any child brought into our home. However, the only children that had become available for us to adopt were Caucasian. Either others had been returned home, or a relative had come forward to adopt them and we weren’t getting any younger.

Our daughter, who is now 18, went on a short-term mission’s trip to Guatemala when she was 16 and spent time with orphans there. She just about had us convinced to adopt internationally from Guatemala. In fact, we had received information from a few agencies and we were looking for an agency to update our homestudy to an International study.

I had also been calling a particular agency every week or two asking them if they had found me a baby girl yet. You know what they say about the squeaky wheel getting greased. Our only specification was for a girl, we didn’t care which race, if she had any special needs, if she had been exposed to any substances, or about family history.

The first birth mother that contacted them asking for the agency to choose the family, guess whom they called. Our Ami couldn’t be more perfect. God’s timing isn’t always our timing.

We never dreamed we would wait 14 years for our perfect baby girl. If we had known, we would have pursued private adoption immediately, when we only had three perfect little boys. That would mean that we wouldn’t have provided care to nearly 100 children, nor would we have adopted six other children through foster care. Sometimes it is best to not know the future.

Read more About Hoping to adopt?
Read more about Transracial/Transcultural Adoption
Higher Risk of Preterm Birth among African Americans

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