Pardon me, we have a son?!

Following our last blog post we had quite a few follow-up calls with our Adoption Agency, Children’s Bridge. We were left feeling very frustrated and confused as to why we weren’t receiving a child referral. Some of our documentation was set to expire in January and we were starting to discuss the changes we could make to potentially broaden the pool of children we could be matched with. Last Wednesday night I had a conversation (or meltdown) with my husband as I felt overwhelmed with frustration. I said that I knew our son was out there waiting for us so why can’t we know who he is?! Following that conversation, we made a list of questions for our agency to ask the next day. On Thursday November 10^th 2016, my husband called and left a message with our Program Manager letting her know that we had a few questions and asked if she could return our call. Later that day, as my husband was about to coach a championship final for his boys volleyball team, he received her call. He was reluctant to answer since he was a bit busy, but he took the call and planned on telling her to call me instead. She said, “We don’t need to worry about answering those questions, as we have matched your family with a little boy”. In complete shock he told her to call me and that he would get the details later. How he went on to coach and win that game with that phone conversation lingering in his head I will never know.

I received a frantic text from my husband that said “Answer your phone when Cathy calls - I guess we don’t need those answers. They have a boy for us, he just turned one”. I of course missed the text and the initial phone call. I got back to my desk and saw that I had a text message and a voicemail. I looked at the text message and panicked. As I started to listen to my voicemail I immediately started to cry. Before I could finish listening to the message our Program Manager was calling me back. I answered the phone and she said “Kathryn, this is a day that you are going to remember for the rest of your life”. The next few minutes on the phone were a blur. I tried to write down absolutely everything she was saying while wiping away tears. She assured me that she would be sending all of this information in an email right after we spoke, but I didn’t want to miss anything. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I hung up the phone and felt like I should pinch myself. Was this really happening. Co-workers gathered at my desk and congratulated me as they could overhear my excitement during the phone call.

I refreshed my email on my phone what feels like 100 times before the email came through, and when I opened it…there he was…our son!

The document we received was 10 pages of background information and medical history on our son and 4 photos. It will likely be the only information we ever receive about his past. Here are some of the details that were included:

Name: Zhen Feng Jiang

DOB: November 6, 2015 (his date of birth was attached to him upon his arrival)

·            He is living at the Baby Care Institute of Jinjiang City in the Fujan Province of China.

·            He has bilateral cleft lip and palate and in April of 2016 had his lip repaired.

·            He has a good appetite (which you can see in the photos as he is a chunky little boy)

·            He is active and has a ready smile

·            He likes to have fun

·            He is a clever child

After we took some time to let the news sink in, we shared the photos with our 3 ½ year old daughter. She thought he looked cute and looked like her Papa (who is my father). When we asked her why she thought that she said it was because he doesn’t have any hair. I don’t think either of us will forget that response. She asked a few other times throughout that night to see his photo and now she has a printed one in a frame beside her bed. She already lovingly refers to him as “my brother”. The next several hours were spent on the phone calling family and friends and filling people in on our amazing news.

The next day we received a package from Children’s Bridge that included the same information we received in the email and some very important documents we needed to fill out with our Adoption Practitioner / Social Worker. These documents needed to be sent back to Children’s Bridge in Ottawa ASAP as they needed to be translated and sent to China within a few days. Our Adoption Practitioner came to see us on Sunday to finalize everything on our end. The most important documentation that we signed that day stated that we were accepting this child as our son. The whole process seemed a bit informal; I feel like there should have been some trumpets and fanfare in the background while we signed but it still felt very special.

In the coming weeks, several different authorities need to sign off on our documentation to make it official. We are hoping that in the New Year we will find out when we will be able to travel to China to bring our son home. The estimate we were given was likely March or April. To most of you that will seem like I long time, but right now we are still enjoying the fact that we finally know who our son is! Something we have been waiting on for a very long time.

For any friends or family members that would like to see a photo of Zhen Feng please email us, we would love to share it with you.