Cole and I began feeling led to adopt a child with Down Syndrome in the fall of 2007. We fell in love with MANY children on Reece’s Rainbow but long travel requirements for many of them were not practical for our family. As we continued to pray and research we were shocked to discover that over 90% of babies diagnosed with DS in the US are aborted. Shortly after learning this there were two babies in need of adoptive families because they were not previously diagnosed and when they were born and diagnosed the original adoptive parent backed out. They both required homestudy ready families since they needed immediate placement. We decided to get our somestic homestudy ready specifically for a child with Down Syndrome. About 7 months later we saw a post from an agency looking to place a 2 month old baby boy but the mom didn’t want to consider families with more than 3 children….we were out. Two months later I saw another post, mom looking to place her now 4 month old son with DS. Something in me just felt this was my son all along. I called my social worker to see if she would call the agency and explain that we were not just hoarding children and if there was anyway they would just show the mom our profle anyway. I was fine if the mom saw our family and read our profile and said “no way” but the thought that the social worker was making that call dorve me crazy. When I explained to my social worker about the situation and told her the name of the agency in TN she hesitated. She informed me that she thought our music ministers aunt ran that agency. (are you kidding me, God you continue to amaze me) Our music minister used the same social worker a few years earlier. I called him and asked if he would mind calling his aunt and explaining the situation and vouching for our family that we weren’t crazy (maybe just a little) and see if there was anyway they would let the mom view our family profile. The next day we were called because the birth mom wanted to set up a conference call for the next day. We did, it went great, she amazed my with how she knew every deatil of our family. She had studied that homestudy in detail and she wanted us to meet in person. We headed to Nashville that Thursday and Friday morning, February 13, 2009, we met in a room at Mariam’s Promise with the social worker, birth mom, her older daugher and sweet baby Eli. It was an emotionally exhausting meeting. Not knowing the right words to say to this precious mom who clearly loved her son dearly, as evidenced by her sacrifice and persistence to care for him herself until she found the right family. One that she knew he would be loved and adored so that she could move on and heal. She and her sister had been adopted and had a wonderful adoptive family so she knew how good adoption could be and needed to have that peace because sadly, her circumstances we not such that she could care for another child with special needs. Sweet Eli was an angel and fell asleep in my arms while we were visiting. You could feel the birthmoms peace as she saw us connect and she was relieved to see him so content. After visiting for about an hour or so and answering some questions we all went to lunch together and get to know each other better. We really enjoyed getting to know mom and sweet big sister. She wanted us to take custody as soon as possible so we made plans to return the following Friday to take custody.
to be continued……kids are up from naps 🙂
