Why Korea? Why International Adoption?

As a Christian I really believe that God puts certain desires in certain people's hearts. I think that we were also created with certain passions, likes and dislikes, etc... No one is created exactly alike.

Some families who are interested in adoption may have a bent towards adoption in America; others are drawn overseas to international adoption. For us, we really felt pulled towards international adoption. If I'm being honest, part of the pull for us was the perceived safety of the process. I say perceived because it is very unusual for a birthmother to change her mind when adopting internationally; however, there are still so many uncertainties with timeframes and other changing parts. I know that there are successful domestic adoptions every single day, but I also know that the potential for heartbreak is big with a birth family changing their mind and deciding to parent rather than making an adoption plan. After our loss and infertility struggles, we wanted an option that was as close to a sure thing as possible.

We also really felt a pull towards adopting from an Asian country. We first thought we would adopt from China because that was the most familiar to us and we have several friends/acquaintances with children from China. Once we started gathering info about the process we found out that we were too young because we both had to be at least 30 years old and neither of us were at the time. Vietnam was another option but international adoption from Vietnam had been closed for a while and was just beginning again; again this seemed too risky for my heart at the time. (Adoptions from Vietnam have since been stopped again.) Then we learned about Korea.

We loved everything we found out about Korea. Korea has the world's oldest international adoption program. Most of the children are in foster families as opposed to orphanages; this means that there is a lot of one-on-one interaction between the children and their foster moms/parents. Being in a foster family also gives a baby a greater chance of bonding which then eventually helps them bond with the adoptive family. Korea has excellent medical care, too. At the time when we began the process for Riley the process also was fairly quick which was very appealing to us after desiring to be parents for so long.

With Korea it is very, very rare (I can only think of one instance I have heard of) for a sibling set to be available for adoption. Usually if it were a sibling set it would be a set of twins, but very rarely siblings of different ages. In our homestudy (which is sent to Korea) we have only requested one child at this time. This doesn't mean that we would never be open to adopting more than one child at a time, but at this point our plan for this second adoption is just one child. I would still love a big family, but Michael and I are taking things one child at a time and we will see what God has planned for our family.

Right now our hearts are still for children in Korea, but we are definitely open to wherever God leads our family in the future.