When Bob and Agnes Wells first adopted in 2002, they — like many families adopting from China at the time — came home with a healthy, infant daughter. Several years later, when they returned to Holt for their second adoption, the wait to adopt a healthy, infant girl had dramatically lengthened. After opening their hearts to special needs adoption, they were matched with a 6-year-old girl with delayed speech. As to be anticipated, they encountered some unknowns in China. And once home, they were again surprised -- this time to discover that their second adoption was, in fact, easier than their first! 

In 2002, we adopted our older daughter, Jane, from China at the age of nine months.  She was a healthy infant, and she made us perfectly happy.  When we decided the time was right to increase the size of our family, we chose to adopt again from China. Because our experience had been so positive the first time, we also decided to adopt again through Holt.

When we began the process the second time, we decided to adopt a 2 to 3-year-old so that there would not be such a great age difference between our two children.  As the standard process took longer and longer, we asked for a 3 to 5-year-old girl.  We were not open to a child with many disabilities, but we did look into the special needs option and put our names on that list.

We got information about a couple of different children, but felt no pressure to choose any child who was not right for our family.  Finally, after our dossier had been in China for four and a half years, we received a call about the child who would become our second daughter, Margot. She was 6 and a half at the time (Jane was 9 and a half), and her disability was that she had delayed speech and was sometimes difficult to understand.

Other than that, she was perfectly healthy.

We played “catch-up” with the paperwork, some of which had expired, but everyone was really helpful. We traveled to China in late February of 2011.  This time, instead of being part of a group of several families, we were the only ones adopting through Holt.

The Holt team in China took very good care of us and was always around when we needed them. We had been given information that Margot had been in foster care, which was true, but we discovered when we met her that it had only been for a short time when she was a baby.  The orphanage director said that she left foster care and returned to the orphanage because “it was not a good foster family.”  He did not elaborate.  I was worried that she would have a difficult time adjusting to living with a family, as is common among children who have grown up in institutions.  Margot’s adjustment, however, has been a lot easier than I thought. She is a kind and sweet child. She gives us hugs and kisses. She likes to read and play and snuggle.  She does get mad with her parents and fight with her sister, just like any other child.