Adopting a Waiting Child

Posted by Tabitha:

Our family is very excited to be in the process of bringing home our next child, another girl, Kacee, who will become the baby of our family. Our family dynamic will once again change and everyone will need to make adjustments.

This time around, not only will there be the adjustment of adding a new family member and everyone’s role in the family changing, we will be adding another layer in that Kacee has Microtia Atresia. We do not want Kacee to be defined by her medical condition. Some folks may be questioning our decision to adopt again and even more so to adopt a child with a known medical condition — and a medical condition that probably many of our family and friends are not familiar with.

We’ve decided to address these issues in the blog and hopefully it will cover questions/concerns that anyone may have but does not feel comfortable asking. So, this post will be somewhat lengthy and not the typical light hearted blog posts usually on here. After this post, we will return to posting the family activity posts typically posted and will no longer focus on the issues of Special Needs Adoption and Microtia Atresia. While these issues are a component of our lives- there are not and will not become a focal point.

We decided to adopt again because we like being parents. We preferred to adopt from China again because China still has one of the best, if not the best, internationally run adoption programs. We also want Kacee to share a birth culture and background with Karli and Kenzie.

As most of you know, the wait to adopt from China grew to a much longer wait when we adopted previously. This wait has continued to grow even longer. Since we brought Kenzie home (September 2007), China has only processed 4.5 months of approved adoption paperwork. The wait to adopt a *healthy* baby, as young as possible, is over 4 years from the time China receives the application. Granted, this is not a reason to adopt a child with medical needs, but many of the medical needs in China adoptions are not what we would consider to be serious. Many are easily correctable with surgery or some other type of treatment that is readily available in the US.

After we were home with Karli for 7 months, I was in one of my chat rooms and saw a plea for families for four children whose files were to be returned. Children whose files are returned are often not eligible to be adopted again since they had their chance of finding a family. Little did I know that we would soon embark on the paper chase for one of those children.

Hutson and the big kids were at church camp for the week. When they returned, I mentioned one of the children. All I knew at that point was that she was a female and 16 months old. We talked about it and decided to request some more information. That was a Saturday evening, and by Sunday afternoon, the agency had emailed us the medical information and tests as well as 7 photos. As soon as I saw that adorable little girl I was hooked. We researched her medical condition and talked to the agency. Everything just fell into place including a grant from the agency. We locked in her file the day it was to be returned to China.

I think God everyday that we found Kacee before her file was returned. We are so anxious for her to join our family.