In my last two posts, I have written about how we found the right adoption program for our family for our first transracial adoption, and then how we decided on where to adopt from for our second transracial adoption.

At that point, we had three biological sons, our daughter from Vietnam and our daughter from Korea. This time, the feeling that our family was complete did not come, and I felt pretty sure that we had more kids out there after Amanda had been home only a short while (she came home in April of 2003).

Even though she was a toddler, Amanda settled into our home and family quickly, and we felt ready to pursue another adoption about six months later.

This time, finding the right program was a little bit trickier. With five children in the home, we no longer qualified to adopt from Korea. Vietnam was closed to international adoptions with the U.S. We now had one more thing that made us ineligible to adopt from China, and we were unaware of any other programs that we qualified for to adopt an Asian child.

Money was also (still) a huge factor for us. Since we had such a wonderful experience adopting Amanda (a special needs child), our hearts were turned towards waiting, special needs kids. We had also seen a significant lowering of fees for Amanda’s adoption, and so we were hoping to find another similar situation.

After a lot of researching, we found an excellent agency that advocated strongly for their waiting children. They had very low fees for some of their special needs children, and even offered no-interest loans to families adopting through them.

We found a little girl in India with some physical special needs, and fell in love with her quickly.

We put a good deal of thought into adding yet another culture to our family, and after thought, prayer and research, decided that since we were already a multiracial and multicultural family, that we were able, willing and even desirous to add a child that was not Asian or white to our family.

The agency felt that our family size would be o.k. since we were adopting a special needs child (and they were very experienced in India). We got photos and videos of D., and we chose a name for her. We did all of our dossier paperwork and started to arrange her medical care in the U.S.

We loved her and thought of her as our daughter.

A few months into it, our process stalled. We were waiting for an approval that did not come. Each day I felt sicker and sicker inside about it. Then we got the phone call from the agency that the officials in India had decided that we had too many children, and we would not be allowed to adopt our sweet D.

It was awful. Our hearts were broken. I remember taking her pictures down and just bawling. Our boys who were old enough to understand were also very sad. Still to this day, they include her in their prayers every once and a while.

We had to grieve the loss of D. Even though we never held her in our arms, we did love her like a daughter and a sister. We had made plans for her, and in our hearts she was a part of our family. Her loss was a real one to us.

At that point we had to decide how to proceed.

Losing a referral of a child is a very difficult thing. I know families that have had their children die while they were waiting to complete the adoption process. I know families who have been matched with children and then had it fall through, like our adoption of D. I know families who have lost children through dishonest and unethical agencies.

There is no one right way to move on after the loss of a referral.

While many people in the world may not recognize your loss as a real one, it is important that you treat it as one, and allow yourself to grieve. Even though we know that D. was adopted by a good family and we know that our family turned out the way it was meant to, my eyes still fill with tears when I look at her picture.

Here are some questions that families should ask themselves when deciding how to proceed after a lost referral, while keeping in mind that timing will vary greatly from family to family.

- Was the pain of losing a referral too much to risk again?

- Do you still have a strong desire for another child?

- Do you still have a strong desire to adopt?

- Can you be happy with your family as it is, without another child?

Some families will jump right in to another adoption (and some agencies offer another child right away). Some families will need some time, but will eventually be ready to pursue another adoption. And some families may decide that they are ok with their family the way it is, and are not willing or able to consider adopting again.

What did we do? How did we handle it?

We went back to our original desire to add a sixth child to our family and knew that we had to move on by adopting again. As much as we were heartbroken by the loss of D., we felt that we would be compounding that loss if we let it prevent us from adopting another child.

We were at a loss as to where our next child would come from or what adoption program would be right for us, but a phone call from our agency explaining their need for adoptive families in a new program, gave us the direction we needed.