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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The health question

Today, I asked in one of my online groups, when can we specify the health issues we would be able to accept at our adopted baby. I got bunch of very nice responses, which were very helpful, except one. The lady in that response plainly told me, that if we are not willing to welcome a child with serious health issues, we should reconsider adoption.

That hurts.

Not everyone is able to adopt a child with very serious health issues. Kudos to those who can !!! We can't, for various reasons. First, my whole family is so far away (7000 miles), my husband's parents are not that well. We both have to work to pay our bills, even though I would love to stay at home, we can't do that. I don't feel that we would get too much support around, if we would be looking for a very ill child. I also travel a lot to Europe, to be with my family at least once a year, and that could make it impossible.

But should we reconsider adoption? I don't think so. We can actually apply for a healthy baby. Not everyone who is not able to care for seriously handicaped child is inelibible to adopt a healthy child. We could accept certain issues, but not a very seirous one. I am so sorry to admit it, but it's true.

The author of that email went on, and mixed apples and bananas, asking, that we cannot know if our own child would have serious issues. But that is very true... we couldn't. However, we wouldn't ask upfront to have a child with a serious illness, or seek to create one. Unlike adoption, that you cannot choose.

One question in the questionnaire asked, if we would be able to accept a child with a short life expectancy. I don't know... it would really seem odd to me to wait for a baby 5 years, and spend thousands of $$$ and only have the baby for a very short while, then start the whole process again. It probably didn't apply to China, though.

So back to that question, no, because we are not seeking to adopt a child with very serious illness or health issues known upfront, doesn't make us bad people and we are not going to reconsider our adoption. If that happens, it happens, and we will deal with everything, but we are not going to plan this.

And I would like for this lady to talk to someone about her anger and jealousy, because it's not helping anyone.

Friday, October 10, 2008

TB test negative !!!

We got our results, yay !! I was freaking out cause since Im from Czech(oslovakia) we all immunize our children over there and apparently you can get a reaction looking like a positive result, resulting in extra tests, and x-rays which is nothing something I can have right now. But, even though I was watching my hand whole 48 hours (including when I was sleeping I'm sure), I didn't react at all !! Huge relieve. And we even met Carissa there, what a coincidence !!! So now we have to send the paper work in, all we have left is a photo of us, questionnaire and the medicals, and we can start our homestudy. How exciting....