International adoption is a journey of patience, endurance, ups and downs, and hope, and as I journey to the child who will join our family I have come to realize that everyone has their own story on why they are adopting, but in the end our journeys all merge to the same destination – becoming a family.

Growing up I always thought I would have 2 or 3 kids and adopt one. I am not for sure why I thought this and it was something I never really shared with my husband. I think because it was something that seemed like the right thing to do, but I was not convicted that this is how I should grow my family.

Before getting married, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and for a time I did not know if I would ever be able to have biological children. This was nothing my husband and I ever really discussed. I think for me I just figured if we could not have children, then we would adopt from India since my husband was of Indian ethnicity.

After a few years of taking medications, in April of 2002 I was finally off of all medications and in August of that year we were able to start trying. That month we got pregnant with our first child (a boy, now 5). When he was 12 months old we started trying for our second child and were able to get pregnant that month. We lost our child a few weeks in to the pregnancy but 3 weeks after the miscarriage we were pregnant with our daughter (now 3).

When our daughter was 9 months old we started trying for our child #3. I truly believed that we would conceive the first month, after all we had 3 times before, but the first month passed and we were not pregnant. Then the second and third months passed and again we were not pregnant. We had never gone this long and it was something that we had not faced before - the disappointment of not getting a positive pregnancy test. At 6 months in to trying I was at my OB and he reassured me that I just needed to give it some time, but I think then I knew that there was something wrong.

Eleven months in to trying we went to the OB to try and figure out what was going on. After having to switch doctors for insurance reasons, we found ourselves on clomid (for no other reason then I had been able to conceive before and it was a good first shot). In July of 2007 I finally went in for laparoscopic surgery. It the post-op the doctor informed us that there was no medical reason we should not be able to conceive as both my husband and myself were fine. We had unexplained secondary infertility.

So, where did we go next? During this time of trying to conceive I had started to look in to adoption. In fact, in December of 2006 I was ready to start the adoption process while trying to conceive. I had the papers signed and ready to send in to adopt from Haiti but my husband was not ready. This was heart breaking for me as I was so ready, but my husband wanted to continue trying to conceive.

When July came and we found out that there was no reason we could not conceive we started discussing adoption again. The agency we had once looked at using to adopt from Haiti was opening up a new program in Zambia. We attended a teleconference on this and were super excited and felt that maybe this was where we were meant to adopt from.

We decided to continue to try for a little while longer. In August of 2007 my period was 11 days late. I could not believe it, maybe the surgery had fixed something, but for some reason I was just late that month and it was at this point we decided to grow our family through adoption. Finding out that you were not pregnant had taken its toll on us and we were exhausted, both physically and emotionally.

My husband had read the book “Quiet Strength” by Tony Dungy and he has adopted 3 children domestically. My husband asked about looking in to that. So I started to look at programs both domestically and internationally. I ended up finding a program that I liked domestically and they also had a program in Ethiopia.

So, where did we adopt from? We considered domestically but I had too much fear of not being selected and we decided we could not handle the possible ups and downs of why a birth mother would not select us. So, we decided on international but were unsure of where – Zambia or Ethiopia. After much prayer, we felt at peace with Ethiopia. Ethiopia had a shorter travel time than Zambia and you could still adopt an infant.

So, we thus started the journey of international adoption. When I married my husband I never imagined we would build our family biologically and through adoption or the long road it would take to be a family of 5.

We are currently awaiting the referral of an infant boy or girl from Ethiopia. The waiting for this child is hard and we are so ready to have him or her home with us. The journey to a third child has taken much longer then we ever imagined and there have been bumps and dips along this journey, but in the end we will be a family of five.

Read my blog Ethiopia Vaz Coming to Carolina.