Thread by @APLMom

Adoption thread.
15 years ago I was sitting at a baby shower and got the call we had been matched to our daughter. China chooses the child for you. You have no input. I had to race home and wait for the computer to pull up her image to see her. Jaing
Xiao Liao was her name.

It took us until Sept 26 to finally meet her. She was in an orphanage in Guangxi which is in a tropical area of China. By Vietnam.
The orphanages are combined with the nursing homes there.

The day we got her she was very sick. We had to have the Dr come to hotel that night. She had pneumonia. We had brought antibiotics with us from our pediatrician in Colorado and thank goodness. They wanted us to give her tea “she not western baby. She can’t have western medicine”

We didn’t keep the name Xiao Liao since it meant roughly Small Chair according to our Chinese guide. Her passport picture ❤️

She quickly bonded with us. She would stare at my husbands blonde hair and blue eyes like he was out of this world ;)

We visited the village she was going in. I say village but it was about 800,000 people so it’s huge by American city terms. So much poverty. She likely wasn’t born there. You can see us by a busy road where they found her. Bus stop on the very outskirts of town where she was left

In China, babies are abandoned.
This video is much like our daughters. She was left by side of bus stop road and no clothes in a box. Umbilical cord still attached

Her finding ad in the local paper (all abandoned babies are listed asking if anyone knows anything to come forward) shows a full head of hair as a new born ❤️

We were in love 😍
I was so worried it would be harder to love an adopted child since I had not carried her for 9 months. My boys were instant. It was with her too. She was mine the second they handed her to us. It was incredible ❤️

First Image is after her awful dr visit to clear her for travel to the states. Daddy had had enough of the bureaucracy and just wanted to take her. The second picture is her last day there and officially a US citizen ❤️🇺🇸

Home and finally got to meet her brothers. They look so young here but oldest was actually in 8th grade

We had baptized her ourselves in China, since we were so worried about her pneumonia, but after 48 hours on medicine she was so much better.
This was her baptism here in the US

So while you may be upset with Chinese government, remember the people are still amazing. China is sadly in the grasp of horrific leadership and we can only pray this ends and it can once again be free.
#FreeHongKong
Our daughter now is almost 16 ❤️❤️❤️

*jiang