A Couple's Experience Adopting a Baby From China

by Catherine Anaya

"UPS delivered our baby today."

The Assistant Fire Chief of the Phoenix Fire Department wasn't joking. The details of his daughter Patricia really did come in a package and for Bob Khan and his wife Peggy it was the emotional equivalent of the birth of a baby: their baby.

The delivery was a picture they had waited more than a year to see; their first look at the Chinese baby they would soon adopt. "After having done it once, you understand the importance of what's inside... because it's a real person. She's our daughter," Bob says.

One month later, the Khans traveled to China to meet and officially adopt their second daughter. The then seven-month-old Patrica joined Gracie, the Khan's two-year-old daughter, whom they also adopted from China. Peggy says, "They almost immediately bonded. They get along better than most siblings I know." Coincidentally, both girls came from the same Chinese city and ended up in a Chinese orphanage in the same way. Patricia and Gracie were each only a few days old when they were abandoned in very public places.

The story of abandoned Chinese babies in a magazine 10 years ago first planted the seed of adoption in Bob Khan's mind. "It ripped your heart out. They had a little picture of a baby... people were abandoning them out in the countryside or throwing them in rivers or putting them in boxes and putting them in a visible place so they would become basically a ward of the state, which is the country of China," Khan remembers.

At that time the Khans were trying to conceive, with no success. Bob didn't have a hard time convincing Peggy to consider adoption. The Khans looked at domestic adoption but after attending a lecture about Chinese adoption, the Khans were convinced that was the road they should take.

It's a road well traveled. In the last ten years, figures show close to 200,000 U.S. families have adopted children from countries overseas, including China. Of the adoptions in Southern California, Peter Castiglione, director of the California Family Support office of Children's Hope International, believes 75 to 80 percent are Chinese. "It's definitely our most popular program across the whole agency," he says.

The Khans ended up adopting their daughters through Children's Hope International, one of the first international agencies to begin adoptions in China. Castiglione thinks families are drawn to Chinese adoption because, "It is a nice, stable program so they (families) know there's not going to be any real problems along the way. It's a reasonably priced program, compared to some of the others." He says the cost is about $15,000 to $20,000. The process takes about 14 months from start to finish. It's a process Castiglione has personal experience with.

He adopted his first of four children from China in 1996. "You continue to grow in ways you never thought you could," Catiglione says about being an adoptive parent. "It's been such a rewarding experience. The children bring so much to your life," he adds.

Bob Khan says, "If you have the ability to be a parent, adoption is a great resolve to that. It's a great thing to do. It's enormously rewarding. This gives us the ability to have that light in our lives that we wouldn't otherwise have."

Patricia and Gracie are now two and four-years old, respectively. The Khans tell me they can't imagine the girls in an orphanage. They get teary-eyed just thinking about what could have been - and what is. "Every day we laugh. Every day is fun. Every day is new," Peggy adds, "just cherishing every moment with them. It's totally refocused our whole world."

For information on Chinese adoption go to www.childrenshopeint.org Or email Peter Castiglione at pete@childrenshopeint.org