Jun 11

Jun 11 Party of five?

First of all, we are still trying to tie our feet to the ground following your response to our adoption announcement. Thank you. You all sure know how to make a family feel supported and loved… and thank goodness because we have a long way to go before we get to bring our little one(s) home.

We are still fairly early in the process: gathering official documents, scheduling every kind of evaluation under the sun, becoming bff’s with our local notary and learning all we can about adoption, its accompanying trauma and the culture of the country from which we are adopting. Oooh, on that note, we will not be publicly sharing the country we have chosen to adopt from so as to ensure some anonymity and safety as we proceed.

Our general (and optimistic) timeline is that we have all initial paperwork, training and evaluations completed by the end of September and submitted to the foreign government. At which point we will be able to start looking at children’s dossiers - which I suppose sounds better than child files which makes me think of binders full of women. I digress - this part will be emotional in its own right. Who am I kidding - this whole process is emotional and I don’t even have the excuse of pregnancy hormones coursing through my veins.

So, here’s the thing, nearly all international adoptions are considered “special needs”. You already know how I feel about that word - it is their categorization not mine - I’ll be trading it out for disability moving forward. Now, what these countries consider disabled and what we consider disabled are two entirely different things. For example, a surgically repaired cleft lip/palette, a facial birthmark or being a sibling group is a disability in their book. However, there are a number of significantly disabled kiddos as well. Here’s where it will get tricky: I know in my heart that we have the experience, empathy and love necessary to care for a child with significant medical needs. However, I also know that we are not doing this to ‘save' a ‘lucky’ child, but instead to grow our family.

One of the main reasons we are adopting is so to enhance Jackson’s life both now and in the future. I want him to experience a healthy sibling relationship: to have a peer, not be a caregiver. I also want him to have a sibling support system for when Miguel and I pass - not someone that he will then be supporting. Having lived the medically complex life, the guilt I feel writing these words is intense. But adoption is a choice, our choice, and, at this moment in time, our first priority is for the well being of the family we have now.

Still, there is a five page list of medical, physical and mental illnesses and disabilities that we must go through and decide if we are comfortable adopting a child that has received any of these diagnoses. I printed out the pages and tucked them away unable to fill it out yet. I already saw epilepsy on the list, I already know that we will mark no in the box next to it, and my heart is already breaking because of it.

Others have reminded me that we have already had our fair share of medical complexities and that it’s ok to want a healthy child. Rationally, I know this is true - I also know the universe doesn’t keep a tally of what is fair.

Which brings us to siblings. Because siblings are harder to place they fall into the disability category even though they may have no medical, physical or mental complications. When we started the adoption process, we hadn’t considered adopting two children, but we have the space in our home and our hearts and Jackson just about jumped out of his skin with excitement at the prospect of not just one new sibling, but two.

Suffice it to say, that however many children join our family, and whatever their disabilities may or may not be, we will be making the best decision for the well-being of our family now and the family we hope to become. Adopting presents its own trials but we will take it in inchstones just as we have since Adelaide taught us how five years ago.