Why the Philippines?

Welcome to my brand new blog! I had to have a 16 year old set it up for me, but I love it. :) I hope to have a variety of posts about our adoption, the ups and downs of parenting, and my other passion...running. (Hence the title, "Laugh, Love, Run, Repeat.")

The number one question I get asked, is why are we adopting THIS particular little boy from THIS particular country. I recently joked that we will be the Jolie-Pitts of Chesterfield now that we'll have two internationally adopted children from two different countries. We are not just trying to adopt children from different countries because it is the cool or "in" thing to do. Any parent who wants to help one of the 147 million orphans in the world should not be questioned in my opinion. But each child in our family has been wanted and desired for many years. Here's the story of how it has happened....and is happening.

To answer the question why we chose the Philippines, the concise answer is we found the right aged little boy for our family at the right time, and he just happens to be more than half way around the world. I feel God has led us to adopt, and He will see us through it all. To give you the longer version, I have to take you back to 1998.......

Scott and I had been married for three years, and decided the time was right to have a child. I visited my doctor, started taking prenatal vitamins, and began watching closely what I ate and drank. But two years went by filled with tests, fertility treatments, a miscarriage, and months and months of disappointments. Scott and I went to Vegas on a whim one weekend in early 2000, out of sheer frustration to get away from the pain of dealing with infertility. We had a great weekend and found out 7 weeks later that we hit the "jackpot" while there. I was pregnant again, but with no medical help! I had a wonderful pregnancy and delivered a healthy baby boy we named Jared Avery Cochran. (Initials JAC -- short for "jackpot".) I loved being pregnant, nursing, and nurturing an infant. I am so thankful that I was able to have all of those experiences, as many women do not. Jared is our sweet, half-serious, half-goofy 10 year old bundle of energy.

Because it happened once, we really thought I would be able to get pregnant again. We tried for two more years, saw another specialist, did fertility drugs again, and did in vitro fertilization in 2002. A side effect of the drugs was that I "hyperstimulated" which meant that I gained 17 pounds of fluid around my abdomen in 4 days. (I looked about 7 months pregnant, which was an added insult.) I had to spend a week in the hospital while on oxygen so I could breathe. They gave me Lasix, so I would pee out all of the fluid, (Yes, just like they do racehorses.) but it also gave me diarrhea, so I spent a week getting up and down out of a hospital bed making trips to the toilet. I did not get pregnant. After that, I told Scott I couldn't take any more treatments. We didn't want to raise Jared as an only child, so we decided to adopt. We lived in Tennessee, and the law stated that a birth mother had 10 days to change her mind after the birth of a baby given up for adoption. I couldn't take the chance of going through that heartbreak after all of our previous disappointment. So we began researching international adoption. We decided on Russia, and brought home our 11 month old baby girl we named Grace in late 2003. (That story of course could be a looooooong post in itself.) Gracie has brought so much love joy, and laughter into our lives. I got pregnant again several months after we adopted her, and miscarried once again. I felt I physically and mentally couldn't take any more pain, so Scott had a vasectomy so that I would not wonder every month if I was pregnant or not. Our journey of trying to give birth to children officially ended after six years.

We got the "fever" to adopt again a few years after bringing Gracie home, and instead of going all of the way to Russia, decided to try to adopt a toddler or preschooler locally. So we got our Missouri foster care license, (by attending 9 weeks of classes, getting background checks, physicals, finger printed, etc.) Three years went by, and we were never matched with a child, even though we didn't specify race, gender, etc. Our only parameter was that the child be aged 2-8 years old and legally free for adoption. We let our license lapse last year, as it was obvious that was not going to work out. Another dream not achieved.

I then began researching international adoption once again. Every country has it's positives and negatives in regards to travel, expense, health of the available children, etc. We were dragging our feet because nothing seemed ideal for us at the time. Then in March, we found out about the hosting program Madison Adoptions was sponsoring, and we were intrigued. They bring children aged 8-13 to the area for three weeks, and you host a child you are interested in adopting. If it all works out, you go through the necessary paperwork, and then travel to the Philippines 9-12 months later for one week and then bring them home. The initial paperwork we got on Khomer shows that he is a healthy child who is doing well in school. By the time we adopt him, he will be 10 years old. We know that adopting an older child will have a different set of challenges than giving birth to a child, or adopting an infant like Grace. But we feel we have the time, love, energy, and support to give a child a home, so here we are. Plus, we just love being parents. If you had told me 20 years ago when Scott and I first began dating that we would live in 4 different states and have one biological child, one child from Russia, and one from the Philippines someday, I would have thought you were completely crazy. But you never know what twists and turns life will have, so you just gotta hold on and enjoy the ride! Thanks for reading. Gotta run...