Major Adoption-Related Events

  • 09-04-29 Part One Sponsorship Application Completed and Sent
  • 08-11-04 Dossier in Ethiopia -- the wait begins
  • 08-10-24 Dossier on its way to Ethiopia
  • 08-10-23 Dossier back to Imagine
  • 08-10-17 Dossier to Ottawa
  • 08-10-07 Dossier (finally complete) at Imagine
  • 08-09-10 Dossier (most) Sent to Imagine
  • 08-09-04 Provincial Approval Received
  • 08-07-08 Completed Dossier Sent to Province for Approval
  • 08-06-26 HAR Signed and sent back to ABC
  • 08-05-16 HAR Started
  • 08-04-22 Int'l Adoption Self-Study Course Completed
  • 08-04-07 Application sent to ABC
  • 08-02-19 Initial Application faxed to Imagine
  • 08-02-16 References Requested from Friends

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Unreferable Healthy Babies

What is a healthy baby? This is what I started wondering last week. I put in my request with Imagine for a healthy baby girl, but there were no questions in the application about exactly what I would consider as far as health-related issues. When I think healthy, I think of a person with functional organs, basically. Someone who isn't going to stop breathing, or go into kidney failure or cardiac arrest. Someone whose brain works well and whose spine does its job. That's pretty much what I thought would count as healthy. But I was wrong.
I emailed Erica at Imagine last week, and basically asked her, what healthy looked like to them. I found out that children with club foot, or cleft palette or deafness aren't even proposed for adoption! WHAT?! I don't understand. I figured, maybe there are related complications with those first two, but when I talked to a friend today who is an OBGYN, she said, no, all those things are totally manageable. With surgery, cleft palette can be repaired, and with club foot, it can also be fixed (sort of). One foot might be slightly smaller or one leg slightly shorter, but basically, it'd be okay. So I don't understand why these little ones don't get referred. I mean, this stuff can happen to a child I give birth to. Something like fetal alcohol or fetal drug effects, wouldn't, but these things? It can happen! And instead of being referred and becoming a part of a family in Canada, where deformities can be taken care of surgically, they stay in orphanages in Ethiopia, and live out their lives with these malformations and that's just something they just have to live with.
Maybe I'm ignorant of the big picture, but it seems wrong to me to pass over these little guys. How must that feel to grow up without a family, probably realizing at a certain age that they had to spend their childhood in an orphanage because of the way they look, or because they were disabled in some way? What would that do to a person's sense of self worth? Thinking of it makes me want to cry. I don't want to volunteer for a life change. I don't want to seek out a child with spina bifida or CP or something like that. I'm a bit selfish I guess, to not want to give up hiking or wall climbing as a family. I would do it if my child, it turned out, was physically unable to do these things, but I wouldn't go looking for a child who couldn't. But physical deformities? These are fixable. These are manageable.
I'm emailing Erica tomorrow to let her know I'm open to one of these "unreferable" kids. I hope some who read this will be as baffled as I am and do the same.

7 comments:

Single PAP said...

hmmmm..interesting. in the states, these kids are still referred. we have to check off what sorts of physical limitations we are willing to accept and cleft lip/palate and limb deformities are choices. good for you for making that call!

Anonymous said...

We are in Alberta, and had to be very specific in what medical issues we were willing to consider, it was one whole session of our homestudy that was focused on our requested child. It had to be approved by the province as part of our homestudy. I do know many people in Canada that have adopted children with medical issues, so it is definitely done, just not if you have said you only want a healthy child.

Good luck with your decision!

Lisa S said...

hi....clubfoot is repaired by casting using rhe ponseti method. http://www.nihaoyall.com/
she has adopted 2 boys with clubfoot and they have normal feet now. please pass this info on as surgery is bad, causes arthritis, and other issues. Dr. Ponseti is amazing!!!Good luck on your rollercoaster ride : )

Melissa said...

Thanks for your feedback. Anonymous -- I wish that had been done in my HAR, but my writer was brand new (I was her first), so I guess she missed it. I emailed her today to amend the HAR, but I have to get that and then have that approved by Alberta, and then send it to Imagine, because they can only referred me a child as specified by my HAR. And I said healthy. I think the likelihood is I would get a healthy child anyway, but I just didn't want to close myself off.

Barbara said...

Even if you say you're ok with certain medical conditions, I'm not sure you'll get a referral of that nature. When I was in Ethiopia, the Imagine transition home sent back a child who was diagnosed with Hepatitis. I had specifically said that I was ok with that (I too was given a list of potential health issues that I had to review and approve/disapprove) and I'm sure other parents have said the same. Yet, this baby was returned to her parents....

Barb said...

Hey Melissa!
With IA you can specify in your home study that you will accept a child with certain medical conditions. The referral usually happens really fast. I know of one other parent that did this and had their daughter in record time! Her issue is 100% correctable and will be repaired at the correct age.
Barb

Mamato2 said...

One of the first blogs I read and still read centers around "lucy", now 3 who has a "tiny foot". She is bright and beautiful and unstoppable. http://raisinglucy.blogspot.com/
Sad to think that maybe, here, she'd not been given the chance to grow and shine, like she has with her mama in Minnesota!