The Story of Ruthie

Where do I start? At the beginning would be just as good as any other spot, I guess. Here is what I wrote almost 4 years ago on our adoption travel blog that I started right after we received our LID.

Our story probably began as young adults when we, separately, dreamed about our lives, future spouses and our children. I knew at a very early age that I wanted to be a mother. I loved children! I started babysitting at age 10 and babysat all the way through college. I couldn’t imagine my life without children in it. I grew up knowing that I was going to have three children. I was one of three siblings and I just knew that I was going to be the mother of three. Milledge says he also saw himself with three children, but his dream went even further, he saw his family with two older brothers doting on a little sister. Never, though, did it enter my mind or his that we would one day adopt. Adoption to me was only if I couldn’t have children. Milledge and I were married in August of 1994. In June of 1996, we were blessed with the most beautiful baby boy we had ever seen. Jon Milledge was a Mama’s boy from day one and still is today. He has always been a very social, energetic, kind, athletic, sweet and strong willed child. Bless his heart, he looks and acts like his mother. In 1999, we were once again blessed with a sweet, precious baby boy. Anderson is the apple of his Daddy’s eye. He is sweet, smart, tenderhearted, gentle, quiet, shy and funny. He looks and acts just like his Daddy. We are very proud of our boys and the young men that they are becoming.

Ok, so our life is complete. We have two healthy children who we adore and who keep us extremely busy. Right? Wrong! There was that dream we had both had as young adults that continued to nag both of us. So, we began thinking that we weren’t getting any younger and that if this dream of three children was to come true, we must start thinking about it. We have really good friends who adopted a little girl in 2002 from China. Even though I love Julie dearly and thought that their adoption experience was amazing, we still never considered it for our family. It was something that other people did. Milledge kept saying, “If we want another baby, we’ll just have one”. Well, we never “just had another one”. We now realize that this was God’s gentle hand leading us to our daughter. Last year our friends once again adopted from China. We followed their voyage while they were in China. We laughed at some of their travel mishaps and cried when on “Gotcha Day” Shea was placed in their arms forever. Finally, after many months of praying and wondering if we were really meant to have three children as we had both dreamed, we came to realize that God was calling us to adopt one of His precious children. So, the decision to adopt was made after we realized that our family could do this both financially and emotionally. In the book of James, God commands us “to look after orphans and widows”, which doesn’t mean the same thing for all of us, but for us it means traveling to the other side of the world and bringing our baby girl home. I think our Jon Milledge said it best when we talked to our boys about the idea of adoption. He said, “Mama and Daddy, I know that you have always wanted another baby and you could have one, but it wouldn’t help an orphan find a family”. Out of the mouths of babes!

Isn’t it funny how God can change our hearts and minds? Thank goodness! Remember when I said that we only thought that we would consider adoption if we couldn’t have children? Now, we can’t imagine our lives without the experience of adoption. I, as a mother, feel truly blessed that God has allowed me the opportunity to have two biological children, to know and to feel all that goes along with that wonderful experience AND now He is allowing me to experience the joy of adoption. I don’t feel I deserve to be that blessed.

Ok, so that's how this whole journey started. We applied to our agency in January of 2006 and were told that after we received our LID, it would be 9-12 months until we were referred a daughter from China. Everyone now knows that wasn't the case. The process in China began to slow down almost immediately after we applied and it is still slowing down every month in my opinion. There were many times that I tried to speed this process up to no avail and Milledge would inevitably tell me that I couldn't rush God. I certainly learned that lesson! There was a time about two years ago where we were sent the file of a special needs child that we were very interested in adopting, only to find out from the people at our local Chinese restaurant that she was a he. About a year ago, we were confronted by a Peruvian missionary couple that had come to our church and heard that we were in the process of adopting and almost begged us to adopt a child from Peru and said they wanted to help. We had lunch with them and learned lots about Peru and thought that maybe God was leading us to another country but my heart still said China. After several months of talking with this couple after they returned to Peru, all correspondence stopped and we haven't heard from them since. We have also been approached by two other sources that asked if we would be interested in a domestic adoption. We were more than willing and told them to please keep us in mind if a child became available. My heart was still in China. Even though I was heartbroken after these opportunities amounted to nothing, I now believe it was God's gentle way of giving me hope when all hope was gone. These situations allowed me to keep focusing on the finish line. Just when I was about to give up, he would give me a little glimmer of hope that would remind me why we started this process to begin with.

Fast forward to December 2009. I was at my mother's house when I received a call from Emily at my small Georgia agency who said that my file was being transferred to another "umbrella" agency because my old "umbrella" agency had not received their Hague accreditation. She also told me that this new agency had a very active and successful special needs program. Milledge and I have been very open to a minor correctable special need forever but we weren't part of an agency that had a SN program. I was very excited when Emily told me this but also very sad....see Milledge had lost his job in October and there was no way we could pursue a SN child while he was unemployed. Again, I can now look back and see God's hand working....giving me hope and telling me in His still small voice to just hold on and let Him work.
Milledge began talking with a company the first week in March and we began updating our immigration paperwork for the third time the same week. We realized that this was the last time we could update the I-600 paperwork, in 18 months we would have to start the I-800 process....we really didn't want to do that if at all possible. So now we felt like we were really on a time frame. Milledge accepted the job on April 1st!! Hallelujah! He is now working for a great company and is very happy with what he is doing. About the second week in April, we filled out our medical checklist for SN and emailed it to Emily. I honestly don't know when she forwarded it on to the bigger agency but it was sometime that week or the next. She told me that once she sent it on that it was moving very quickly, like 1-6 weeks. We were like...."sure, we've heard that before!". We didn't really believe her and didn't give it much thought.....until April 21st.

Wednesday April 21, 2010 started out just like any other Wednesday but certainly didn't end like one! Emily had told me that a new waiting child list was coming out from China on that day and that there was only one other couple in my agency at the same place we were. We still didn't believe that it could really happen to us this soon. Emily had told me to keep my phone with me at all times...just in case. Ok, so I go to work at 7am and well......work. It gets to be lunch time and I hadn't heard anything so I was assuming that meant we had not been matched. At 12:45pm, I sent Emily a text message that just said, "Have you heard anything?". She responded that she had not heard anything as of 11am but that she hadn't been home since 11 and she was headed home at that moment and would check her email then. At about 1:14pm, I head to the restroom at work....and take my phone with me. :) Emily told me to! For those of you who know me, this is the "sooo Angie" part of the story. I am in the restroom with my phone....and at about 1:15 it rings...of course. I looked down and it said Emily on the caller ID. I thought to myself...."this is it the moment I have waited four years for and I'm in the bathroom!!!". Things like this only happen to me. I answered the phone and Emily very sweetly said, "Angie, it's Emily, are you ready?". I not so very sweetly said, "YES..ummm...no...I'm in the bathroom at work! Can I call you right back?". I told her later that I'm sure I'm the only person who had ever asked to call her back when she was calling with a referral! I immediately started crying and called her back in less than 30 seconds. She said, "I'm looking at her and she is beautiful!". I don't really remember much else except that she said that she had emailed the referral packet over to me. I went to a computer at work and sent it to Milledge and then called him. We opened it up at the same time and cried. We knew instantly that this precious child staring back at us was our daughter. There were things that we had talked about, dreamed about and prayed for that were jumping out at us at that moment. Every time I have either dreamed about Ruthie or just envisioned her, she had lots of jet black hair. One of the first things that I noticed was her head full of hair. The second thing we noticed was how much she looked like my Anderson. I know that sounds weird being that she is Chinese and all, but it is her round face and sweet chubby cheeks. Honestly, I can't tell you how many people have seen her picture and said, she looks just like your family. God works in amazing ways...doesn't He? One of the other things we talked about was that must Asian girls are tiny and petite. Milledge, being the big man that he is, said that a little tiny girl would look sort of funny in our family. I think Ruthie will probably be small but from looking at her referral photos, she is healthy!! Also, when I was a little girl, my favorite toy was my baby dolls. I had tons of them and I think I played with them until I was in the eighth grade. In Ruthie's paperwork, it says that her favorite toys are dolls....I cried, again.
My one prayer when considering the SN process was that I never wanted to question our decision. Since you have the option to give the file back and not accept the child, which is different than the traditional non-special needs process, I was scared that I would always question if we made the right decision. I prayed over and over, please God make this very clear, please don't let there be any doubts in our minds one way or the other. I can say without a doubt that He has answered that prayer. We knew from the moment we opened up that email that we were staring at the face of our daughter and we now knew why we had waited so long. If any of those opportunities had worked out we would've missed the blessing of Ruthie. I know that if Milledge had still been with his old company in December and we had started with the SN process then, our Ruthie wouldn't have been on the list in January. There are so many things that I can now look back and say..."Oh ok God, you were working the whole time and I just didn't see it!". Why do we ever question Him?

Ruthie's SN is very minor. She was diagnosed with VSD at birth which means she had a hole in her heart. The measurements that were given of the hole put it in the small VSD category. She had an echocardiogram done in December and we were given the report with her referral. From what my pediatrician was able to gather from it was that the hole has already closed on its own! Praise God! In several places on her referral it lists it as a murmur....both of my boys have murmurs and I've told countless numbers of people in the last few months that we could certainly handle a baby with a heart murmur. Thank you God for hearing our prayers.

We now know why the wait was so long. It wasn't until April 21st when our lives and little Ruthie's life were meant to intersect. Do I understand or can I comprehend why it took so long for us to be ready and for her to be ready? No....but I can have faith and trust that God's timing is always perfect, that he is always on time and never late.

What we know about Ruthie so far:

~She is in an orphanage not in a foster home.

~Her date of birth, September 15, 2008, is just a guess. She was taken in at her orphanage on October 17, 2008 and from her development and by looking at the condition of her umbilical cord, she was given that as a birthday. This makes me sad and happy. I am so sad for her mother and can't imagine what she must've gone through in that month. I wonder if she tried to leave her some where before October 17th and just couldn't or if this was a planned day. I am happy to know that my daughter was taken care of, loved and most likely nursed for her first month of life.

~At 1 month she weighed 6lbs 6oz and was 19.7 inches long

~At 15 months she weighed 17lbs. 6oz and was 27.2 inches long with 6 teeth!

~The day she was admitted to the orphanage it is reported that they found her to be of conscious mind, sucking with power and loud crying! (the translation is so funny to me)

~At 15 months she was eating formula, noodle with meat soup, fruit, vegetables, congee, egg cake, etc. It says that she has "a good appetite and is not choosy to food"!

~They state that her personality is: active and out going, restless and has a ready smile

~Her favorite activity: going outside to "bask" in the sun everyday and play with the other children.

~Favorite toy: baby dolls :)

We thank God everyday for our sweet blessing and for everything that has happened to us that has ultimately made The Story of Ruthie. We wouldn't change a thing and can't wait for the next chapter to unfold.