How did we get to the decision in the first place

Late summer of 2005, we decided to see why Bill was sterile and what could be done about it. I'm not really sure we ever found out a true 'why' only that for the price of an operation with no guarantee of success, we could adopt an already living one.
We had a lot to consider, not only if we wanted to adopt or to go to a sperm bank, but also even if we wanted a child. I mean our life is relatively comfortable and we could be happy just being Auntie Heather and Uncle Bill, so were we sure we even wanted a child. So we decided we did want a child and that we wanted to adopt.
Then we had to decide, did we want domestic or international adoption. Our thought process was that even tho' there are many many children in the Foster care system, they still have it better than the kids not in this country. Now I know that people disagree with that, and they feel called to adopt kids from our country, but Bill and I didn't feel called that way at all.
Once we'd decided on international adoption we had to decide on what country to adopt from. We did a lot of both internet and soul searching. We decided to adopt from China for several reasons, frankly one reason was price. There can be a more than $25k difference between China's costs versus other countries' costs. That's a lot of money to us. Then we learned more about the political situation over there and the way they dump girls or boys with obvious defects. The National Geographic special 'China's lost girls" still makes us sniffle and we've seen it many times now. So we ended up deciding on China, where so many girls are abandoned because they aren't boys and boys are abandoned because they aren't perfect. I've watched a lot of CCTV (China central television) and we've taken a basic Chinese language and culture class.
While I had leaning a little more towards adopting a boy, because I feel my parenting skills would lead me to be a better mom to a boy than a girl, we started planning on a girl simply because there are more available. (Calliandra may still be in our future, who knows).