[CareBears82]

My friend felt that way when they found out Little Man's favorite foods! Now that's he's home sometimes we question of her DH made a quick trip to Guat 3 years ago. Like Little Man will just do odd things that her DH would deffently do.

[heathcliff]

I am a single mom so.....I had four referrals (boys) that fell through before my DD referral. When I received her referral on Nov. 30, I found out she was born Nov. 29---the exact day that the man that I had considered the "all time love of my life" was born on, so I felt God was showing me that I would expereince a love even greater than what I considered my all time best, and then my paperwork was out of PGN on April 19, the same "date" that this guy and me had claimed as our start date for our relationship. He is long gone, but my DD is now my evne more than all time greatest love.....

Cindy

[KJones5]

Our son was born on our wedding anniversary. We went to dinner on our anniversary and I was having a pitty party because it had been 3 months and we still didn't have our I171H yet. Then we turned the discussion and said maybe our baby was born today and we ran with it from there. Then 2 weeks later we got our referral and sure enough, he was born on our anniversary, which is also his birth mother's b-day.

The other weird thing, is EVERYONE says he looks just like my husband. Even the FM expressed that. He's starting to act like us too!

[dac_cincy]

K.D.

I totally feel my refferal was meant to be. When I started planning a family (back when I was 10 years old), I named my first sone Joshua. That name has never changed in the 30 years since, even though the other children's names have changed.
When I was getting all my dossier documents together, I really wanted a little boy with a "J" name. When I received Aidan's referral, I was told that his birth name was JOSUE which is the spanish version of Joshua and I was told it is pronounced "Ho-Sway". I really agonized over changing his first name, but I felt that no one would pronounce his name correctly. Then 6 weeks later I found out that his name is pronounced "Joshua" and that it when I remebered that I was always going to name my first born son Joshua.
I have decided to change his first name to Aidan as I don't think that anyone will pronounce his name as Joshua. But he is always going to be my bebe Josue.

God is in every detail of this adoption and I belive that he has been preparing me for Aidan and is now preparing Aidan for me and hopefully soon we will be a family.

Take care,

[LisaDR]

I have 2:
The day I was dropping off my dossier with the agency they had just recieved all of Chase's referrral paperwork and hour before to send to me...... they didn't expect me to show up at the agency

and perhaps the most telling.... I was at the Consulate in NY City dropping off my dossier for authentication the day Chase was born

[hesabanana]

My dh and I started our adoption journey as foster parents. We adopted our first foster child, our son. His sister was placed with us for 11 months, and we believed we would be able to adopt her too, completing our family. However, the county changed direction and sent her back to her bmom. We learned on April 24 that they had changed the plan and would begin transitioning our foster daughter to her bmom. We began discussing adopting from Guatemala because we want the kids to be close in age. Of course, we would be overjoyed if our foster daughter comes back to us...we'll just have three then!
We began researching adoption on line, and found the photolisting site. Out of 134 pictures, we zeroed in on our little guy...he looked so much like our son we could not believe it! We contacted the agency and got the ball rolling.
His birthday? April 24.

[carrie2adopt]

I love these stories! I also have a few things that are a little more than coincidental. My grandmother's first name is the same as the birthmom's middle name. The first words the IA doc, my mom and my grandmother all said were...she has a rosebud mouth. When I was a baby, I had a rosebud mouth.

The biggie for me was in trying to decide if I'd switch from Russia to Guatemala, if it was right for me. I had seen her picture on a photolisting and was waiting for an IA doc eval at this point. I knew her birthday was the fourth of July. I prayed a lot one morning and that evening, on the drive home, (ok...this is in August) I saw huge fireworks over my neighborhood, in a place where I've never seen any before. I took that as a huge sign!

[SchnauzerMom]

We had a rough road getting to parenthood. We tried for over 4 years in our late 20s/early 30s to have children. Our doctors couldn't explain why a young, healthy couple with no obvious problems could not conceive. They just kept pushing us to try IVFs with new tests and possibly try a surrogate. Since we had done this for several years and would have to do 2-3 more IVFs to even know if our embryos were viable for a surrogate, or we would need an egg donor--we decided to get off the infertility merry-go-round and try adoption.

In January 2006, we chose China because we both had felt a tug towards a little girl for our first child and had a family member with a Chinese girl. We had the dossier ready to ship to China in May, when we learned the process had stretched from 12 months to 15 and could go as high as 24 months for our referral! The thought of waiting another 2 years to meet our first child broke our hearts, and we switched to Guatemala which was usually a 6 month process.

Since we had already decorated a girl's room we asked for a girl from Guatemala. Our dossier was done in late June and we started the 4 week wait for a girl. Then it stetched to 6 weeks, then 8 weeks. We contacted our agency and learned it could be another month or more until we were matched with a girl. Again, we were so sad because it seemed we would never have a child--first we couldn't pregnant, now everytime we try to adopt it seems our child is always moving out of reach!

We made the bold decision to switch to a boy AND do a dossier to get a girl referral in a few months. Five days later we met our son! When we opened the pictures, we immediately fell in love with him--his quirky smiling face even looked a little like my brother as a baby. Even though he had a medical test that was concerning and we had to wait on results for a 2nd test, our hearts told us all would be right and this was our child--the one that we had suffered so much for to finally welcome into our hearts and lives.

Ever since we switched to adopting a boy and a girl and were matched with our son, everything has just fallen into place! We had no idea how we would finance 2 adoptions and afford baby things for 2 babies, but it has all worked out and the dossier for baby #2 has been a breeze compared to baby #1. We have no doubt that our son and adopting 2 children was what was meant to be for us! It just took us years and many heartaches to find the path we were destined to travel.

Also, some odd coincidences with McKinley:
1. He was born in August (most of my family are August babies) and exactly a week before we switched to a boy referral.
2. My cousin who suffered with infertility as well had her son on my father's birthday. McKinley was born on her birthday.
3. We had McKinley chosen for our 1st son for a long time, but wanted to keep all or part of his name if the bmom had given his name. We learned his bmom did not name him, so we felt we could name him what we had chosen without dishonoring his bmom.
4. We received the referral for McKinley on Labor Day--LOL! The easiest labor any mom ever had--quite a joke after all the infertility!

[Sandy Harboe]

We felt that Tristan was meant to be, as soon as we seen that pretty face.

[au06]

my husband's grandmother was our only living grandparent when we married. She always talked about having black haired grandbabies because up to that point they were all very fair and she was a black haired baby. After years of infertility we started talking of adoption in the fall of 99. she passed away that sept. and in Dec. we made the decision to do a domestic adoption. in Jan we changed to Guatemala. after finishing all the paperwork we waited for over a month for a referral - wouldn't you know our black haired little girl was born on Great Grandma's birthday! We were able to bring her home just 2 and 1/2 months after referral on the 1 year aniversary of when Great Grandma passed. Of course she shares Great Grandma's middle name. It was meant to be!

[redru2004]

I believe with every fiber of my being that Lucas was meant to be our son. There are a couple of coincidennces that make me believe that. Here's the strange one, Lucas was born on July 6, we received his referral on July 25. On July 6 I was rearended by an SUV at about 6:30 in the evening and it took forever for the police to show up. Right around 8 pm I was waiting for the officer to finish his report and the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck just stood up...it was strange and didn't make sense at the time since it was a hot July evening, but sure enough that was the time Lucas was born...it's just plain weird. The second thing I am very, very close to my neice who is 11 and just the greatest kid in the world. We received Lucas' referral on Kaleigh's birthday.