Renee Vaughn and Nick Schmidt

00:05 I'm Nick Schmidt. I'm 52 years old today, February 18th 2017 in Mobile, Alabama. I'm here with my wife. My name is Renee and I'm 52 years old as well. And today's date is February 18th 2017 in Mobile, Alabama, and I'm here with my husband Nick.

00:28 That would start today by talking about our family and the story about how families come together from China and there is a

00:40 The concept they referred to as a red thread where people who are going to impact each other's lives are connected by a red thread and how that's been significant in in our relationship.

00:52 It definitely has I think a big part of what we do as a as a family kind of started with the birth of our twin granddaughters years ago where we had been married for almost a decade and you suddenly tell me that you wanted me to have baby laughing at you because this is well into a relationship in 4 years. You had denied even wanting children. So it was quite a shock to find you saying let's go well consider having a building our family out a little bit.

01:21 But the few know that our Grande twins have been born in the other children were older and now getting along towards being empty nesters.

01:30 Really, I brought something out of me that I think that I wanted and obviously, you know, we move for work that from there into the process about looking at expanding our family.

01:42 Yeah, the babies were definitely adorable and I can see why that would change your mind to very quickly when we started looking at adoption to increase our family. It's natural. When you consider the countries that are available for adoption at different types of the domestic or International that you come you eventually settle on a place that you'd like your child to come from because of the various factors and we settled on side of China is renowned for having baby girls readily available for adoption at that time. And so we were thinking that we would get one possibly two little girls and we were in love with that idea to the point where we had decorated a very freely yellow Nursery to bring are our plans baby home while we're waiting for the adoption to be final but they changed what we did whatever we wanted was a little boy instead. It was kind of eye-opening to bring my little son home to a freely yellow Nursery, but he was happy there.

02:42 Unfortunately, our first son that we brought home from China was in great health. He had been nominated as a special needs child from for something as simple as a a minor cosmetic defect and been placed for adoption by being a bandit in a police station.

03:01 When he came home with us the whole experience of being in an orphanage from the time, he was roughly eight months old till about 17 months left him with a lot of psychological scars and a lot of things that children go through from from lack of stimulation sensory issues and emotional bonding issues that now that he's 10. He still works to try to overcome. So that was a very enlightening. Of Our Lives to learn a lot about adoption and how to help children that come from an adopted background.

03:34 Right and why we were in China?

03:41 They're not being our first son or adoption agency director asked you to look it up another file. It's a medical questions and you being in the medical profession.

03:51 You looked at it and remember what you said coming out of there. I do this little boy. They were looking for something very simple on him. He had a cardiac case and his pulse oximetry. There is oxygenation levels were in question by the prospective adoptive parents and looking at his file.

04:12 It would have taken his orphanage about an hour and a half travel each way to get him to a very simple 3 minute test. He looked great in his pictures. He looks well oxygenated will Houston I said, you know, I would adopt him if he was my kid. I think he's healthy, you know, fortunately for us the other family opted not to adopt him and 10 months after a first adoption, which is record time for China. We were back in time adopting another very healthy little buddha baby who became our second son from China. This child is so calm and relaxed in his foster family. He had actually had a pain in the grandmother program in China where they allow them to actually go home and live with parents and these he was so well-adjusted in just such a calm child, which was perfect pairing for our particular family given that our first time we still having a lot of emotional issues.

05:10 And then we were done or so. We thought we did think we were done, you know two kids we were doing great weren't too busy. We went back and started are mbas considering that, you know little kids go to bed early. We had a lot of time in the evenings. So we both signed up and dinner NBA's while the kids were napping and things in addition to our regular work and I was busy blocking our story. Does this two trips that happened rather quickly together and I hadn't wrapped up all the details and in blogging I ran up on someone else who was telling me about yet another child and this little boy with cute as a button these folks have seen his video and he had a pacemaker. So we saw it. Well, we can handle one more and since we took it as kind of a sign from above that this was intended to be her child. We started the paperwork again to our surprise and frankly. We were a little concerned about money that point International Adoption is fairly.

06:10 It's a process and we're done two and two years. So finding the money for the third child seemed insurmountable. We made that decision, but we had a lot of faith that if we were being told that this was our child that we needed to just take that leap of faith and go make sure that this is the path. We were supposed to head down and did it come together and then the doors open from angles. We had so many different things that kind of came together for instance.

06:42 Lost bank account money showed up and it was such an odd saying we had friends to repay loans that were never expected to be repaid. We had people are willing to contribute to the cause. So anytime we thought about adoption it. We've noticed it just kind of rains money in it kind of gives us that answer to should we be doing this or not all of these adoptions or privately funded and there's significant cost involved with the travel and so forth. So having the money compounding so to speak when we made this decision. We took as a further sign that we were on the right path.

07:19 And most of the way through the process to adopt her third son. Something else happened. We were told of yet another child and when you adopt children, you are shown a series of files within an age group typically and in adopting our third son Weber has it been presented with 8 to 10 files of children that were all the same age.

07:44 So in looking at those files, we had passed all of them. Obviously except for the sun. We selected and after. Months are gone by the agency put on an email notice that said that all of these files are being returned and that some of these children it would be their last opportunity to be adopted because they had had a couple of bites of the apple and China would decide that they were unadoptable and that means they would be kept in an orphanage.

08:11 So when we were get these files there was one that stood out to me being a nurse this child had.

08:19 Multiple heart issues. He had what's called?

08:24 Dextrocardia situs inversus and all of the plumbing for his heart was rerouted is called d o r v a double Outlet right ventricle syndrome and what eventually happens with these kids. They have a big enough hole in her heart and oxygenated and deoxygenated blood comes together and keeps them alive until they outgrow their hearts capacity in his case. He was already pushing for years old and he wasn't looking so greatness pictures and we just felt it if we didn't go adopt this kid, we weren't sure anybody else ever would or that he would have a chance to be adopted and we also felt the handle in the United States for corrective surgery might be a little bit greater because orphanages in China tend to make

09:09 Decisions based on the best benefit for the majority of their population and an expensive heart surgery might be forgone and favor of having enough food to feed her everybody for instance. I'm so it's really some heart-rending and very heart difficult choices that they make on how they they use the resources to preserve the the children in their care.

09:33 So again, we had no idea where the money was going to come from. We already had an adoption in progress and we literally called.

09:43 Everyone about our paperwork and put everything on hold and we caught this child at to the child. We were already adopting we had to go back 3 migration and fill an additional paperwork and get in our home study modified to include two children for that trip and to include the special needs. Honestly. We didn't know this child was going to live or die but we felt compelled to go try and be willing to buy that point would walk of faith enough that we felt that we've we didn't pursue this that we were ignoring something we were being told and we had enough Faith to step up and do it regardless of the circumstances and the delay in our existing to option the funding and his health we felt this was critical and so we did

10:30 And that came together rather quickly We unexpectedly received approval from all the parties involved the state both National adoption governing agencies. And then we got to China and we had another surprise we get to China the child that had the pacemaker.

10:52 With given to us and we were very thrilled to see him but there was something not quite right we could see in his eyes that he had some sort of nerve damage cranial nerve damage. It was causing him to act erratically. He couldn't sit on a stool friends and said he couldn't get his food was Mount despite being almost 4 years old and it became very obvious to us almost immediately that this child has stroke.

11:23 So we were calling back to United States to our agency And discussing what the concerns of this child were and he did have a confirm stroke. So now we had a little boy that has a policy we have another little boy who is very very sick and we hadn't expected this compounding issue. And it really again our faith was put to question on what we needed to do here because we weren't equipped or ready to take on two very height special needs cases at the same time.

11:55 We did consider not going through with the adoption at that point, but we all definitely I think made the right choice and brought both of the boys home and then and bring them home.

12:10 The D through the entire process. I think that you know, it was really brought brought out in me to put my own expectations away.

12:24 People with

12:27 Their own children by their own biological children

12:34 Come across unexpected developments as well when they have children.

12:39 It's true and we started turning to various people that we found in and that circumstances will too kind of understand what to do with our son who has cerebral palsy now on multiple communication concerns that type of thing so we were we found ourselves sitting on an airplane coming home with for 4 year olds. And that was an adventurous trip fortunately for us. The kids were fairly responsive and I think we manage the trip. Well enough considering that are seatmates were all compliment us this week off these very long flight. So it's about 30 hours from door-to-door and are for little four-year-olds for just plain exhausted.

13:20 And then we had to come home and go through heart surgery immediately upon getting home within a day. We were at the doctor's with the add-on baby that we call him and we did name him chance because we felt that he deserve that opportunity to to me for with life and he was put on oxygen we went up in UAB for massive heart surgery.

13:50 And he held up and came home after about six weeks in the hospital. So we were crossing our fingers that things were going to be. Okay.

14:00 But they weren't and then two months later. The doctors were noticing.

14:07 Right at Christmastime chances stomach started to swell and I couldn't figure out what was wrong and I started looking on the internet and figured out that there's something called protein losing enteropathy and that causes protein to weave into the abdomen from a blood pressure change and most kids with the type of surgery that chance had which was finished rated Fontan surgery.

14:35 Don't develop the syndrome until they're in their teens and they they it's also considered life-threatening and it's not something that you can do a surgical intervention fix. So we wound up back at UAB and the doctors tried to put coils and chances heart to to change the pressures. These are required to have in the hospital and we're not successful.

15:01 So we're back on the track of thinking our son is going to die and it was a heck of an emotional rollercoaster during that time.

15:08 You know, but again we were still resigned to that. You know, we know it going in and we thought we'd gotten off scot-free there for a while and now we're being told again that nobody really hadn't so chance went through transfusions every week at the Children's Cancer Center here in Mobile where they have a a lovely facility call the USS hope and it's done up like a submarine for the kids. And so we spent a lot of time at USS. Hope each and fusion takes about 8 to 10 hours. So we take off from work and take him down there or Wrangler 4 days off, but that's where we went. Thought. We were going to live for a while to hear a subsequent visit to the doctor to to our local cardiologist.

15:57 They noticed that a clip.

16:02 That was part of the original heart operation had slipped removed.

16:07 That facilitate a trip back up to UAB again and UAB.

16:14 Had to go back in and do another open-heart surgery on chance to fix that and the doctor really wasn't sure why he had chosen to clip it rather than cauterize it but it is what it is. And so our son was back at square one having another open heart surgery within a few months of the first one.

16:34 How did chance get through what was his demeanor throughout this whole thing? He must be a really strong kid. You want to describe him emotionally throughout the process is a very happy little boy at the very first surgery. Keep in mind. He'd only been in the United States for less than two weeks. He spoke no English and I had no no real feel for who he was yet as a person.

17:03 He fortunately for us one of the doctors or nurses was also Chinese and was able to talk to him in Mandarin. So once or twice a day, they would speak to him and let him know what was going on. So he could kind of digest it they would also, you know, we had another friend who who is contrast late for us and would pick up the phone and it just kind of try to help prepare him for what to expect but honestly he was and he was very shocked. We had a nurse who happened to be black. I don't think he'd ever seen a black person before his reaction to her was pretty profound. He didn't know what to think, you know, so there were many eye-opening experiences some of my other children also thought that was odd that I had blue eyes for instance and would stare into my eyes for a very long time is just something they hadn't seen before.

17:55 So he's very resilient is an outstanding sense of humor. And I think that carried him very far. I also know.

18:06 That he was aware that he was Ill. I'm not sure he knew how seriously he was little he did in China. They kept him resting a lot even the day that we picked him up. He was in the lobby of them an office building where the the welfare Institute offices were and they had him laying on the couch in the lobby.

18:29 So chances taking all of this in stride.

18:34 The people around him were necessarily. I can remember pulling up at his private school and picking him up. He went as often as he felt able to and you know, the teacher know it's going to be fine or things to be right more like don't tell him that because that's not what we're being told. You know, we can't guarantee that he's going to be okay and we don't want to tell him he is if he's not so it was it was tough to manage the people around us as well begin. Lots of prayers. Lots of well wishes and we went back to his heart surgery that second surgery took I think four or five weeks in the hospital and he got released we went home and we will get back on the albumin transfusion because we didn't anticipate a cure that wasn't the point of the surgery fix the slipped clip and provide him some comfort, but we were told by multiple medical professionals that

19:33 The second operation was not going to hear the protein losing enteropathy.

19:39 But after about two to three months, which oddly enough is about how long it takes those cells to reproduce.

19:46 Chance stop needing the transfusions.

19:49 And he stopped eating anything and he's healthy and today he plays Karate with the other 10 year olds that we have. We have 14 year old son's so that was a very moving point in our lives where we if you didn't have faith before you certainly gained it along the way because it was just demonstrated to us. So profoundly so many times over how you could watch her faith grow given the circumstances around, but we weren't done yet. Where were you

20:27 A few years later our kids were I'm guessing about 6 at the time we got to call that another child was potentially facing a disrupted adoption and she was from Russia. So we didn't know if we would be getting a child or not. But again on faith we put a bed up we might have room for her and got girl things and put the room together and started, you know, if she came in her her existing adoptive parents decided to keep her that was great. But if they weren't willing to keep her we would and ultimately that the adoption was dissolved and we were

21:06 Inheriting another child who had some emotional issues and some hearing issues. She needed a few surgeries and

21:14 So we wound up with our little girl after all that it was not the girl. We thought we were going to get she's a blonde headed little sprite of a child that has been through a lot also and his doing amazing.

21:28 So that brings us to today where we have we are parenting a dozen children three of which were grown. We have our five adopted kids were raising three grandkids and helping to raise one of my nieces. Our house is absolutely hopping about off 5 hours of the day and we went from empty nesters to this and six years. So it is truly amazing when you find the calling that your life is supposed to have and consider all of the things that went into getting you to where you're at. Just what I've told you about the children's adoptions, but also our historical things that we've experienced that have mirroring on that. For instance. I used to be a pastry chef I cook big big big things big meals for many people, right? So that experience helps me today because I prepare big meals for every meal and

22:25 We still have big Sunday evening Gatherings for the entire family is invited and you know those Gatherings maybe 20 to 25 people at a time. We have a household of 15 and that's just wanted since my nursing background also helps with these kids and what they needed to become whole and healthy. So I think that God does prepare you as you walk through your life to what his ultimate goal in Inns are the whole empty nester 212 kids just blows my mind that way it's still something that I can't believe that we're doing the public perception or reception has been generally very positive and with our son's name from China. There's mixed reactions. When you go out in public for instance in China when you walk out with for little boys, you're pretty much rock stars, and the people would conglomerate around the Sun.

23:25 Walks to the point they were be 5 to 10 people deep and we literally couldn't progress where we were headed until they had all seen and touched our babies because they felt these children were lucky to America where we literally had a post office door pull shut in front of us by someone who thought that you know, you your multiracial family that you're somehow some Park so it really does open your eyes two different cultural perspectives perspectives on how you raise your family and in the sensitivities as well, you know, sometimes our kids are bullied or called names because of their race and at other times, you know, they understand the superiority of their race because of the things that have been produced by the Chinese over the course of millions of years of History, right? So,

24:11 Pretty interesting, but they tend to gravitate towards the people that they get the most positive responses out of which fortunately have been the vast majority of the community. I think if there's anything that

24:23 Really?

24:25 Catches our attention these days it's more curiosity now and it's like a clown car. When you open the doors people at church and everywhere else that we go to get a little shocked when we started but it's just because we're different, you know,

24:48 Stop off at the store on the way to karate in you have five kids in karate outfits walking through the store back onto a main aisle, and I walked past and then there's literally, you know, eight to ten little ducklings behind me and I can't get out of the real because we're still crossing. It's their face just gets bigger and bigger and the comments are always amazing. You know, how many more do you have? There's people that have walked by me and muttered things under their breath or unsavory and you know one guy I think pass Manor Hardware stores that have any more children do you need and my answer to that is as many as God wants to give me you know,

25:33 This isn't something I feel like it's of our design or any plan that we've been able to devise. It's literally come to us over time.

25:44 Assume that, you know, they must have supported each other when they were learning English or I can waiting to a new culture but beyond that, how do they how do they relate to each other? It depends, you know something about special needs child is that nobody talks about the family Dynamics and that, you know, even if you're an adoptive parent or the parent of a special-needs child, you still have bad parenting days, even though these were your choices to bring these children and your life there still off days and they're still days when his my special needs child and his communication challenges really annoys his brothers because he screeches or take something that's theirs has low impulse control. So that's that's a big factor in our household on you know, how to work with him best and then there's other kids that are just absolutely mellow and cool with things and they take more Big Brother approach where they try actively try to work with our other son and each other, you know, there's a couple of the kids that can go into the same classroom and

26:44 Okay, which is a great help to me because I have less teachers and homework to deal with that way. But there there's one kid who's. Disruptive and can't go in with the same age kids held Hill rag his brothers mostly. So it is a great question. And there's a lot of Dynamics in play in as a parent you find that you're constantly Taylor on your communication style and you're you're disciplining and so forth to the needs of that specific child, which please consider that we've got nine children the house there's a lot of that going on literally from moment to moment and a lot of talking sometimes for one-off attention that kind of thing that we try to be very cognizant and how we approach the kids and we also talked late at night about how to parent them. You know that we each have different parenting strategies and we come together to make sure we're a unified forces batter. They would steamroll as I think

27:39 It's surprising how the personalities though tend to complement each other in a lot of cases. They do give an example. Yes. Our son chances like Nick said has a lot of humor and he's he's a jokester. He'll make his brothers and sisters laugh at times when they're feeling a little more stressed or Corey. He sees himself as the oldest even though he's not because he's the biggest and that's kind of their pecking order. So Corey is more likely to help Charlie deal with different things go prepare something in the kitchen for him, perhaps

28:19 Where Charlie relation do that independently so that they are helpful to each other. But with all of these kids being relatively close in age there is not you know, like you would think a lot of big families were the children are kind of stair steps in the older children help with the younger children. That's not what happens here. They're all kind of on the same plane because the age range is only from 8 to 13 now for all nine of the children. So there's not any little mother hens in the group or anything like that, but there are helpers. There are you definitely can get some of the children to to help in different ways and they are all really good about, you know, taking on different chores and things that are within their capacity to to manage. So that's helpful to

29:04 Course of the downside of all that to those sometimes they help it sometimes the cattle, you know, there's there's always one kid that will definitely tattle on the others and create havoc in the house because that's his his thing. He's the little policeman but that's typical of most families.

29:26 So I guess the big question now Nick is are we done we're done as far as we're aware that we're done. I can't see adding any more children to The Menagerie that we have we both work full-time and our our lives are overflowing Lee full at times. The kids are very active in community events and sports and I think they're very proud of their Heritage. We do do a lot of work to make sure that they're acclimated to what Russian Heritage and Tails for instance or the Chinese Heritage and every year. We have a big Chinese New Year party and the Chinese New Year event is supposed to be our adoption agency and we prayed through the streets of our little Hometown and the kids through Mardi Gras beads and candy and things is this day on lockers and make a lot of noise and

30:21 Going to go back to a local church and have a nice meal and everybody gets to see all the different adoptive families from from not just tired of it folks come out there were adopted from India and another places swell Guatemala. And so you really do get to see a lot of other family surprisingly. So for our little area that have been touched by adoption.

30:45 Particularly memorable conversations with your children about adoption

30:50 I think that some of the hardest conversations you have with an adopted child are those about why didn't their birth parents want them the son that I mentioned that had the issues with being with bonding and it's sensory integration, you know, he was incredibly young at 8 months old, but can tell you you know about the yellow blanket. He was left him and he remembers the police officer. It's astounding I think it was just such a traumatic event that it imprinted on him somehow that he's got a free kashmiri anyway, but at the the how do you answer that? You know, you had a very minor

31:27 Cosmetic birth defect and your parents in that culture. That's that's not a good thing. You know, if you're a boy with a defect you don't get accepted. So there's there's blame placed on the date the mom somehow for that and not producing a perfect child. It is very hard to tell your child these things but they have to be able at some point to understand why this happened to them and what their future really looks like in the case of our Russian daughter her biological mother actually passed away and she has to to outline relatives that just aren't able to take care of her and Russia. So, how do you explain?

32:10 You know that it isn't necessarily that they made this birth plan or anything. But sometimes there's tragedy involved and and grief and loss these children suffer and you just have to figure out to what degree does the child feel that pain and Taylor your responses accordingly again, I've got two of those children that are perfectly calm. I'm fine with the idea of adoption and one son who is still traumatized by it. So it does makes for some very heartbreaking conversations at times, you know, in any feed the child as much as they can ask at their age and see where they stand on it. And with what we can do to help them on their Journey.

32:52 It's really important to.

32:55 Answer their questions as fully as you can but keeping in mind their cake their capability to understand it at their age and developmental stage. It's really interesting Charlie with even with his disabilities wants to talk about his adoption and considering he's got communication caps. You would think you wouldn't have this questions, but he does and we heard a song not too long ago that Steve Martin and Edie Brickell put together called Iron Mountain baby. And for some reason Charlie latched onto that song that says that Eric is it is and he likes it The Ballad about a child being thrown from a train an adopted by an old lady and her husband bringing the baby home to the woman to raise and Charlie took that up is his Flagship song and he understands that so now whenever he wants that affirmation that were his parents you don't have to do is tell him that he's my baby now, which is an echoing refrain of that song.

33:55 And if he gets so it's kind of interesting to see that even when there's a communication issue that emotional need is still very much intact and and you know, you change again your parenting Style with a child needs.

34:13 Any last things you want to say to each other anymore?

34:17 No, it's just been a really wild ride. I think a very unexpected very pleasant and indefinitely life-enriching ride that I I could have envisioned even as much as a decade ago wouldn't even care to change at all. It's very frustrating at times and emotionally taxing at times, but I think that

34:40 Again, you're giving all the support you need to deliver. So I think we're well-equipped to go on and see this through. It's also more rewarding than

34:53 What was needed to pull it through but the rewards are also huge having a level of insight into your life calling or your faith and the ability to help and nurture someone else to to make their lives whole and fruitful. It's totally changed my definition of success my 10 15 years ago. My definition was typical American big house big car highly-successful lots of degrees, but that's not really what success is and it's definitely I think changed my perception there where I

35:31 Don't feel like I need as much in the things that I do have I use money is a tool now to achieve my guest with my children as opposed to hoarding money and expecting a big elaborate retirement. But I think I am very happy to have a whole lot less and I found a lot more personal satisfaction in my family life than I probably ever expected to

35:56 And I think you would say the same thing that I'm definitely.

36:00 Went change any of it.

36:02 It's been interesting. But thank you so much for having us today.