HANCOCK, N.H.

THE GREAT NEWS traveled like the wind. We just found out we were having a girl. But it wasn’t the usual ultra-sound information. We were adopting a 2½-year-old named Laramie, from Ethiopia.

“How did you decide to adopt from Ethiopia?” Answering that question often depended upon who was asking, how well I knew them and how much time I had. The short answer was we wanted a healthy little girl. The long answer included that there are nearly 5 million orphans in Ethiopia today because of the AIDS pandemic. In Ethiopia, there is no free and public education for children as there is here in the United States. With lack of education, opportunity is hard to come by. My husband has always wanted to donate his time and skills as a physician to developing countries. Adopting in Ethiopia would provide contacts for him to practice medicine and for us to return someday. We also decided to adopt from Ethiopia because it wouldn’t take very long, was relatively inexpensive and the children seemed to be very healthy coming from some of the harshest living conditions imaginable.

All of these certainly played a role, but ultimately, as I followed my intuition and listened to my heart, I chose to adopt from Ethiopia because all the signs pointed there. It’s like trying to choose the most beautiful red leaf on a sunset red maple tree in autumn. They are all gorgeous and when the tree is radiating the red from her leaves at the height of foliage season, the true beauty is in the entire tree, not just one leaf.

Choosing a place from which to adopt our daughter was very much like this for me. Everyone has different reasons for adopting children and these reasons inevitably lead them through the adoption journey. Large questions monopolize the beginning of the process, such as the age, sex and birthplace of your future child. The answers to these questions create smaller, but just as significant, questions for parents to ponder.

Answering those first two questions were what engulfed our thoughts in the beginning of our adoption experience. We knew we did not want a baby. (In the adoption world, a baby is 0-12 months old.) We wanted a toddler 2-4 years old. We already had three boys. A girl would be marvelous. Now the birthplace. Where will she come from?

We had some friends who adopted older children through the U.S. foster-care system. They had wonderful experiences. Despite this we were still worried about the biological parent wanting the child back. Furthermore, we found the process of becoming a foster parent cumbersome. Hence, international adoption was the perfect option for us. We were a little closer to answering that third big question.

As I researched adoption agencies and the countries that they represented, the decision became apparent. We knew we wanted to adopt from a Third World country because of the lack of opportunity for children there, especially orphans. That narrowed the list. Haiti’s government, we were told by several agencies, was not conducive to foreign adoption. It would take years. The same was potentially similar for Peru and India. Guatemala, we were told, might be closing their borders soon.

In the midst of all of this, I contacted a social worker at Wide Horizons for Children to ask a few questions. With utmost enthusiasm he started talking about Ethiopia. Not only does this country revere its children, but children are not placed in orphanages for lengthy stays. Often, their extended families care for children while adoption paperwork is being processed. While the children face the danger of starvation they are usually loved. On the whole they have few issues with bonding. The government of Ethiopia is supportive of international adoption and has made the process very efficient. The wait would be a matter of days once we concluded our U.S. paperwork, which only took 11 weeks.

Today we have a beautiful 3-year-old daughter named Laramie (Translated from her native language to mean “when the cows come home.” She was born when the cattle were brought into their 20-foot wide mud hut to spend the night on the same floor where Laramie was being delivered, safe from the hyenas. ) She came home May 5, 2007, at age 2½. She weighed only 17 pounds. She had lived with the reality of starvation and appreciated any food as my boys appreciate chocolate-chip cookies. Laramie now weighs 30 pounds and has grown over 3 inches. She is a happy, loving and intelligent little girl who loves her new brothers and parents. With the exception of the color of her skin, you would never know she did not come from my womb.

Choosing a country to adopt from is never an easy endeavor. But much like looking at the entire sunset red maple tree in full foliage, all children and all adoptions are beautiful.

Hollis Wilson is a former teacher and school administrator. She now writes and is a full-time parent in her home, in Hancock, N.H.