Rescuing a China doll

Katie Dolac / Culpeper Star Exponent
Published: April 25, 2007

JEFFERSONTON -Tiffany Navin's hopes were shattered nine years ago when doctors told her she was unable to bear children.

Tiffany and her new husband, John, had dreamed of one day hearing the pitter-patter of little feet. After two long years of waiting and paperwork they were finally blessed with a bouncing baby girl with jet-black hair and a sunshiny grin that could light the darkest room.

"They worked long and hard to bring her home," said Barbara Slaton of Forever Families, a Warrenton-based adoption service agency, which assisted the Navins in adopting a Chinese baby. "They deserve every inch of that little girl."

The extensive process to adopt Qian Li Su began before she was even born.

The Navins had considered the adoption option, but didn't get the ball rolling until 2005, when they saw a Forever Families advertisement in the newspaper.

The private non-profit helps Virginia families navigate their way through the complicated adoption process, providing home study and post-placement services for international and domestic adoptions. However, 95 percent of its adoptions are international, Slaton said.

Why China-
After a six-to eight-week home study process the Navins chose to adopt from China, where a 1978 one-child policy imposed to combat overpopulation led to the frequent abandonment of female babies.

Prior to the policy, the Chinese government had encouraged its people to have large families, because it expected involvement in a third world war, said Joshua Zhong, the Chinese-born founder of Chinese Children Adoption International, the largest such agency in the United States.

China's population reached 800 million, Zhong said from his office in Denver.

"It was on verge of disaster," he said. "People were dying of hunger."

The one-child policy is just beginning to relax in certain areas, he said, but some cultural prejudices against women still exist.

Chinese adoptions have gotten so popular in the past few years that the supply of children can't meet demand. An adoption process that once took a year, stretched into two. The waiting was the hardest part.

"People just wanted to know when, when, when-" John said.
The Navins adopted Audrey just before tighter restrictions were put in place for adoption applicants.

Audrey's story
In December 2006, after more than a year of waiting, the Navins were told that the Chinese police found an abandoned baby on a street in a city three times the size of New York. It was a girl, with her umbilical cord still attached. She was taken directly to the orphanage, where she stayed for six months to ensure her biological parents would not come for her.

The moment they laid eyes on the infant's picture, the Navins felt connected. Qian Li Su was now their daughter.

They decorated the nursery with bright colors: sunshine yellow walls accented with hand-painted red ladybugs.

In January they packed their bags for China. It was finally time to pick up their daughter, who they named Audrey Li Su Navin.

John, Tiffany and 14 other adopting families met in Hong Kong in mid-January and eased into the native culture of their soon-to-be children.

"One guy from Texas took two jars of peanut butter and that's all he ate," John said. "I had one bout with Kung Po chicken and that was it."

Their whirlwind Asian vacation lasted two weeks. They were put up in a five-star hotel and toured all the sights.

"They took care of every detail. It was almost like we were on a tour, but we got a baby," Tiffany laughed.

On Jan. 26 - the day Audrey's parents picked her up - she was almost a year old.

"They put all new clothes on the babies," Tiffany said. "She was the only one with a yellow coat… We got back to the rooms and she never cried once."

Audrey's first three months in the United States have been busy. She's celebrated her first birthday and Easter, adjusted to the grueling time change and gotten a haircut.

The Navin's post-placement paperwork is of trivial concern now that Audrey is home. For now they are consumed with the same joys of many new parents, snapping too many pictures and treasuring every smile and tear.

"He doesn't know it yet, but we're going back to China," Tiffany said.

Katie Dolac can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 138 or .