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Fredericksburg couple that longed for children now raising unique set of twins Date published: 2/29/2004 By JANET MARSHALL Milai and Mike Ashenfelder knew they wanted kids, and not long after getting married, they found themselves joyously expecting their first child. But after an amniocentesis in Milai's 16th week of pregnancy, she miscarried. The couple tried to get pregnant again. But nature didn't cooperate, and Milai, in her early 40s, worried she might never be able to give birth. Adoption seemed the perfect alternative. Milai and Ashenfelder felt pulled to China, a country thousands of Americans adopt children from each year. Milai, then teaching music in a San Francisco suburb, remembers a student showing her a picture of an adopted Asian cousin. "I looked at that picture and I said, 'That's it, that's my child,'" Milai said. "It was really an intense feeling." In November of 1999, Milai and Ashenfelder started filling out adoption paperwork. What they didn't know then was how richly their desire to be parents would soon be satisfied. A few months after starting the process, Milai found out she was pregnant. She gave birth to Lulu Colleen in November 2000. At about the same time, a 1-month-old girl was found abandoned in a market in China's Hunan province. She was brought to an orphanage, where, several months later, she was matched with an American couple wanting to adopt. Their names: Kim Milai and Mike Ashenfelder. Lulu, then 9 months old, was utterly unaware a virtual twin would soon enter her life. While Lulu and Ashenfelder stayed home, Milai and her sister ventured to China to scoop up Audrey Faye, then 10 months old. "It was an amazing experience, to come all the way across the sea to hold her," Milai said. Back home, Audrey and Lulu--born six weeks and about 6,000 miles apart--couldn't take their eyes off each other. "Lulu would look at Audrey, and she'd just keep looking at her," Milai recalled. A month older, Audrey was behind Lulu a few months developmentally at first. But trying to keep up with her sister, she quickly caught up, Milai and Ashenfelder said. On a recent Saturday afternoon, both girls danced around their Fredericksburg home, stopping occasionally to scramble into the laps of their doting parents.
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