Maya Williams was being very patient.

It was a scorcher on Wednesday. The energetic 6-year-old bounced from outside, where she played on her backyard swing, to inside, watching TV in her air-conditioned Millcreek Township home.

She waited for her parents to get ready so they could all drive to her aunt's house for an afternoon in the pool.

Maya loves swimming. Pool, beach, wherever. She also digs her piano lessons and karate classes.

Nine thousand miles away, when Maya was 3 days old, she was abandoned outside a hospital in China, left in a blue travel bag.

The infant was sent to a government-run orphanage and stayed there for seven months. Then she met Barbara Welton and Jason Williams.

The couple had just flown 18 hours nonstop from Newark, N.J., to Hong Kong, a husband and wife eager to adopt the baby girl.

"We are blessed to have such a wonderful daughter who has done nothing but enrich our lives since we met her," said Welton, 39, a local lawyer. "Nobody wants these girls over there. Look at what a full life they could have."

More adopted children were living in Erie and Crawford counties in 2010 than ever before, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The report is in stark contrast to Erie County's steadily declining birthrate, which sank to a 20-year low in 2009.

Adoption spikes can be attributed to several factors, including more couples challenged by fertility issues, a rise in teenage pregnancy, and a dissipating stigma toward adoptions involving other countries or foster care, said local adoption groups and social-service agencies.

The increase comes despite most adoptions costing tens of thousands of dollars after what is typically, in the case of domestic adoptions, a lengthy and highly competitive process.

Welton and Williams, 40, a lecturer in engineering at Penn State Behrend, adopted Maya in September 2005 during the peak of the Chinese adoption boom in the United States.

China has since tightened its policies, attaching a waiting list of five years or longer to adoptive parents.

The couple said that before adopting Maya, they had no intentions of becoming parents. Welton said she and Williams decided to adopt when they learned about the growing plight of thousands of orphans in China.

The cost of their adoption: $28,000.

"She's not genetically ours," Williams said, "but I love Maya more than if I made my own."

The 2010 census found 2,208 adopted children living in Erie County, up 5.7 percent from 2000.

The spike was higher in Crawford County, up 11 percent in 2010 to 638 children.

Millcreek and Harborcreek townships saw the largest increases in Erie County in terms of children adopted (54) between 2000 and 2010.

Millcreek now has 445 adopted children; Harborcreek's shift to 157 adopted children marks a 52 percent increase compared to a decade ago.

The city of Erie had the highest number of adopted children in Erie County recorded in the 2010 census; 654, down 19 from 2000.

The 2000 census was the first time the national count included "adopted son/daughter" as a category for the householder. Adoption data for the entire country is expected to be released later this year.

The number of adopted children living in Pennsylvania was down 1.5 percent, or 1,221 children, in 2010 compared with 2000.

The number of adopted children counted statewide in 2010 was 80,930, according to census data.

Reports of increases in adoptions come on the heels of a 2009 national survey that shows a changing shift in how Americans perceive adoption.

Nearly 80 percent say more should be done to encourage adoption, and about 65 percent hold a favorable view of adoption, according to the National Adoption Attitudes Survey commissioned by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.

Thomas, the late founder of the Wendy's restaurant chain who was adopted in 1932 when he was 6 weeks old, was a well-known advocate for adoption.

The foundation's 2009 survey also found that 40 percent of American adults have considered adopting a child.

Adoption By Choice, a private Christian nonprofit agency that has been facilitating local adoptions since 1993, worked with about 60 families a year for the past decade, twice as many as the organization did in the 1990s, officials said.

"People are getting married later in life, which delays starting a family, so many of them don't know if they will have difficulty with conception until they're older," said Lisa Baronner, the agency's co-director.

Adoption By Choice, 4402 Peach St., facilitated about 90 private adoptions between 2000 and 2010.

The birth mothers, all from Erie County, are counseled by agency staff and social workers through the process of viewing letters and photographs of adoptive parents from Erie and across the country before the mother makes her selection.

Ages of the birth mothers average between 18 and 23, younger than what the nonprofit saw a decade ago.

"We've got more birth mothers now than ever before," said Glenna Cyphers, co-director of Adoption By Choice.

In past years, the agency typically counseled about three birth mothers a month. Currently, the nonprofit has seven.

"The birth mother is allowed a more active role in the placement of the child," Cyphers added.

"The baby is placed with a loving family that the birth mother has had the opportunity to select, meet and maintain a relationship with in the future."

Family Services of Northwestern Pennsylvania, 5100 Peach St., handles adoptions of children living in foster care or child welfare facilities across the region.

Infants are rarely in the mix, with toddlers often being the children placed. There is no cost to adoptive parents, as expenses are covered through the Pennsylvania Statewide Adoption and Permanency Network.

In 2010, Family Services facilitated 78 adoptions, a 65 percent increase from 2004 and the highest total since the group began keeping adoption records 32 years ago, officials there said.

In 1979, the agency facilitated 14 adoptions.

"More state funding over the years has helped. More staff dedicated to adoptions has helped," said Tom Vinca, president of Family Services.

The agency is partnering with the Erie SeaWolves on Aug. 2 at Jerry Uht Park to have staff available to discuss the organization's adoption program and services.

"The adoptive parents are so pleased to contribute in a positive way to a child's life, but it's the kids who are really thrilled," Vinca said. "After bouncing around from foster parent to foster parent, some kids think they'll never have a set of parents again."