And then there were three

She won't be home for Christmas,
but she's already part of the family.

I am the mother of three children – two who live in my home and have been with me since even before their birth, and one who lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo and whom I have never met.  Her name is Zola, and she is estimated to be around three months old.  Today, officially, I am her mother.

A little more than one year ago, Wes and I began talking about having more children.  It began earlier than that, of course, but that’s when the path that led us to Zola began.  And it started, as any good story in the modern age would, with a forwarded email.  Wes, who never ever forwards emails, sent one along sharing the news that a resident in his department had recently adopted a child from China.  It was the second beginning of a conversation that had started when Emme was only six months old.  We had talked then about the possibility of adopting, had looked into foster care and domestic adoption, and had ultimately, for a variety of reasons, dismissed the idea of doing an adoption of any kind, but especially international.  But then Wes forwarded this email, and the conversations started all over again and more in earnest.  Emme was a year old, and if we were going to keep the children relatively close in age, we would want to start the process sooner than later.  In the course of our conversations, Wes and I did what we usually do – I spent hours online reading blogs of adoptive families, researching adoption agencies, and learning about international and transracial adoption from the adoptive parents’ and adopted child’s perspectives; Wes thought.  For months, we would lie down at night, and I would tell him everything I’d read about, hoping he’d decide to move forward.  Instead, he would fall asleep, and I would lie awake with my head churning.  We talked about where to adopt from, how many, what special needs we were comfortable handling.  After lots and lots and lots of bedtime conversation, we chose a placement agency to work with and found a local home study worker to begin the process.  We collected paperwork, met with our home study agent and had her to the house, and got criminal background checks at the local, state, and federal levels.  Within a few months, we had completed our home study and also left the agency we had started with to work with a Congolese attorney through a U.S. coordinator.  By early October, after one final round of fingerprinting at the local USCIS office, we were “paper ready” – we had a complete dossier and approval from the U.S. government to bring an adopted child (or two) to the United States as our dependents to become citizens.

On October 4, I got a phone call from our coordinator in the U.S. letting me know there was a six-week-old baby girl waiting for placement.  She had no name, and the pictures showed a teeny baby with full head of hair.  (No photos in the blogosphere until she’s here in the U.S.)  It took a week or more to get her medicals and go over them with some pediatric friends who had experience in that part of Africa, but ten days later, we officially accepted the referral.  Her medical form showed that she had been given the name Zola.  We wired money to begin the legal proceedings and help pay for her to be cared for by a foster mother rather than in an orphanage, sent over our dossier, and waited to hear that things were moving forward.  Not quite four weeks later, we got another phone call, this time letting us know that we had already passed court and were in the 30-day appeals period.  A few days later I got the judgment papers that “pronounce the adoption of the child Zola to these claimants Mr. Wesley Hamilton Self and Mm. Elizabeth Anne Self “ and “that the child Zola will be renamed Zola Self.”  Seeing her name with ours on the court documents made us certain that we would keep her given name.  It means “peaceful” in Swahili. 

I don’t know that there is a really good explanation for why we decided to adopt.  When we got pregnant with Ollie and Emme, I was beyond excited.  I’ve always wanted to be a mom, and I’ve always thought I’d have a big family (if four children counts as big).  After I had Oliver, I had no doubt that I wanted to have another child and also to be pregnant again.  But after I had Oliver, I started to wonder if we should have more.  I also knew that I didn’t care if I was ever pregnant again.  Our kids have both been born with some anomalies – nothing life-threatening, per se, but things that are clearly related to our mix of genetic material and that could be associated with much more significant problems.  More importantly, I felt strange about getting pregnant again and having more children when I had become, with age, increasingly aware of the number of children that need families.  I don’t think adoption is “the right thing to do,” but for families like ours who see it as something they want to do and are prepared for the specific challenges it comes with, I do see it as a good thing to do.  Mind you, it doesn’t make us good people for doing it.

There is a much easier reason to explain why we chose the DRC.  Some are personal reasons.  Several years ago, Wes and I spent a few weeks in Tanzania, a neighboring country of the DRC, where Wes worked in a pediatrics ward.  We enjoyed our time there – the people, the culture, even the landscape.  We’ve talked about going back, especially with our children when they are older.  We feel, in some small way, connected to that part of the world more than anywhere else.  When we decided to adopt, I wanted it to be from a place that we would want to someday return to.  Zola will never know her birth parents, but I can make sure she knows the country where she was born.  I also wanted it to be a place where there were more children that needed families than the country could currently care for.  We currently sponsor two children (and their families – goats and chickens for Christmas!) in the DRC for this very reason.  The realities for children living in the DRC are harsh, especially for those estimated 5 million who are orphans.  According to a recent CNN article, the U.N. has labeled the DRC "the rape capital of the world" because rape is used as a weapon of war; an estimated 1,100 girls and women are raped every day.  Young boys in eastern Congo are often forced to become child soldiers.  And that is for those who live long enough.  According to the most recent World Factbook, the DRC is number 13 among nations for its infant mortality rate (77 deaths per 1,000 births).  Adopting one child, or even two, from a country in which children face such odds is hardly likely to change the realities there -- but it does have the potential to change the life of that one child, who may choose later in life to make her career in something that allows her to make an even bigger difference.  Her life story may make others aware of the needs in this place.  But make no mistake – in the few months it will take us to complete the process and bring Zola home, many more children will become orphans through disease, famine, and war.  The money we are spending to adopt her could have been spent on many other things, including formula for young children who might be able to stay with their birth families.  We feel like our choice to adopt from the DRC is a good one, but in this sense, it is also a selfish one.

Yesterday marked the end of our 30-day appeals period, and now, I am legally Zola’s mother.  The next few weeks and months will be full of excitement in our house – preparing the house, planning our travels to bring her to the U.S., and getting everything in order to meet our new daughter.  Her arrival in our home will hardly be the end of the story as we get to know her, she comes to know us as her parents, and all the siblings adjust to each other.  For any number of reasons, this is not like having another baby.   There is great joy in adoption, but there is loss, too.  Zola has lost her birth parents and will eventually be separated from the foster mother who has been caring for her.  In coming to the U.S. she will lose her nationality and the customs of her homeland.  We will do what we can to preserve a sense of all of these things in her life over the coming years, but there is loss nonetheless.  The challenges that result from this loss will come repeatedly over time, popping up in different ways, often unexpectedly.  We will have to help her cope with being an adopted child in a family with biological ones.  We will have to help her make sense of her identity as a Black child in an otherwise White family in a nation where race continues to be salient.  We will do our best, and have prepared in the ways we know how, but at times we will certainly fail and hope this resilient little girl is able to bounce back from our inevitable missteps as we learn with her.

We are not sure if our family is now done.  Unless something changes, we expect to add another child, a brother, in a few years.  Hopefully, we will have the chance to adopt again from the DRC and give Zola a sibling that can connect to her life story in ways that Ollie and Emme will not.  That door may close, however, and in that case, we would consider other routes for adoption (including domestic) or perhaps decide that our family is complete.  For now, we are finally letting ourselves imagine a home with three (3!) kiddos in it, one of whom is going to need me to be able to do her hair soon after joining us!

Zola Elizabeth Self, welcome to our family.  And thank you for having us.